1.1 Schematic eyes hint at the precision with which living eyes are constructedThe Swedish ophthalmologist and physicist Allvar Gullstrand, in work for which he would later receive the Nobel prize, was among the first to devise an anatomically accurate optical model of the eye, the “exact eye” (Ehinger and Grzybowski, 2011). Featuring four spherical refractive surfaces and a lens with a non-uniform refractive index, Gullstrand’s exact eye was an important advance in understanding ocular image formation.Optical models utilize input data such as the radius of curvature and asphericity of the lens surfaces and the shape of the lens internal refractive index gradient. Parameters are sometimes specified to the second or third decimal place, raising a simple but rather fundamental question: what processes control the size and shape of the living, biological lens with such evident precision? This is the issue that we will try to address in this paper. Whatever the nature of the growth control mechanisms, they must indeed be robust. For visual creatures such as ourselves, mismatches in the size or shape of optical components would have catastrophic effects on evolutionary fitness, and are presumably subject to strong negative selection.
1.1 Schematic eyes hint at the precision with which living eyes are constructed<br>The Swedish ophthalmologist and physicist Allvar Gullstrand, in work for which he would later receive the Nobel prize, was among the first to devise an anatomically accurate optical model of the eye, the “exact eye” (Ehinger and Grzybowski, 2011). Featuring four spherical refractive surfaces and a lens with a non-uniform refractive index, Gullstrand’s exact eye was an important advance in understanding ocular image formation.<br><br>Optical models utilize input data such as the radius of curvature and asphericity of the lens surfaces and the shape of the lens internal refractive index gradient. Parameters are sometimes specified to the second or third decimal place, raising a simple but rather fundamental question: what processes control the size and shape of the living, biological lens with such evident precision? This is the issue that we will try to address in this paper. Whatever the nature of the growth control mechanisms, they must indeed be robust. For visual creatures such as ourselves, mismatches in the size or shape of optical components would have catastrophic effects on evolutionary fitness, and are presumably subject to strong negative selection.
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