The Eye
October 14, 2004
What is a powerful bond? I asked myself last night. I think of an example that uses the eyeball. If you take the general anatomy of the eyeball as seen in daily life, you see the iris, pupil, and the whites of the eye. Sometimes in older people you see the cloudy lens of a cataract. People with jaundice have yellowed whites of their eye. We are struck by the colors of our irises- so blue, we might say to ourselves. Exploring the anatomy of the eye further gets me every time. The eye rarely falls out of its socket- thank goodness. Clearly there is the optic nerve and the muscles that hold it firmly in place. But remove the entire anatomy of the eye and spread it out before you. The eye has four huge muscles that hold it in place. They intersect perpendicularly at the eyeball. They are a strong safety net that seem to almost cradle the eye. see figure here . The muscles abduct, adduct, lift, and lower the eye. Sometimes these muscles are weak and the eyes are unable to misalign. This is lazy eye. Sometimes the nerves paralyze and then the eyelid droops, the eyes cannot abduct and thus a person cannot climb the stairs or read as they used to. The muscles and nerves are everything to a structure that, in daily life, looks so striking and independent of itself.
