Hermann von Helmholtz is credited with the first study of visual perception in modern history. In his Treatise on Physiological Optics, Helmholtz concluded that the human eye was optically quite poor and that the inadequate information gathered by the eye seemed to make vision impossible. His conclusion was that vision could only be the result of some form of unconscious inferences, that assumptions and conclusions must be made from incomplete data based on previous experience.
Extract from Moor Mill Pits (forthcoming), Guy Dickinson