Understanding vision - whether from a neurobiological, psychological or
philosophical perspective - represents a daunting challenge that has
been pursued for millennia. Here, the authors consider the evidence
that, with respect to the perception of geometry, the human visual
system solves problems by incorporating past human experience of what
retinal images have typically corresponded to in the real world. This
empirical strategy, documented by extensive analyses of scene geometry,
explains many otherwise puzzling aspects of what we see.