Somewhat more than a century and a quarter past, Dugald Stewart, philosopher and critic second only to Sir William Hamilton, wrote:
In considering the phenomena of perception, it is natural to suppose that the attention of philosophers would be directed, in the first instance, to the sense of seeing. The variety of information and of enjoyment we received by it; the rapidity with which this information and enjoyment are conveyed to us; and above all, the intercourse it enables us to maintain with the more distant part of the universe, cannot fail to give it, even in the apprehension of the most careless observer, a preeminence over all our other perceptive faculties. Hence it is, that various theories, which have been formed to explain the operations of our senses, have a more immediate reference to that of seeing; and that the greater part of the metaphysical language, concerning perception in general, appears evidently, from its etymology, to have been suggested by the phenomena of vision.