Overview

The fact that there is an enhancement of contours has long been known; in fact it is a remarkable thing that has been commented on by psychologists many times. In order to draw an object, we have only to draw its outline. How used we are to looking at pictures that have only the outline! What is the outline? The outline is only the edge difference between light and dark or one color and another. It is not something definite. It is not, believe it or not, that every object has a line around it! There is no such line. It is only in our own psychological makeup that there is a line; we are beginning to understand the reasons why the “line” is enough of a clue to get the whole thing. Presumably our own eye works in some similar manner—much more complicated, but similar. (Feynman 1964, The Feynman Lectures on Physics)