Insightful musings, Joe, thanks. Consider, too, that the photon that enters your eye, in many cases, is a tiny piece of the object you are looking at. It's been called the "Photon Connection" by others. Gazing up at M31 under a pristine desert sky, actual particles of M31 itself have entered your eyeball and are absorbed by your body. Photons from an entire galaxy of stars, winnowed and thinned by vast distance, still make it in small numbers. Like cosmic salmon, though many start the journey in all directions, only a few make it across the unimaginable intergalactic depths into the absurdly small aperture of your pupil. There they impact your retina and trigger neurons, bringing you a picture of their stellar birthplace, a community of suns absurdly distant in time and space. And yet, there it is. One can dissect the physical connection with physics and biology, attach caveats and conditions, but the poetry of the process is too elegant to permit it, in polite society. ;o) 2009/3/26 Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com>
A few thoughts about the source of all our visual astronomy, light:
http://deseretnews.com/blogs/1,5322,10000034,00.html?bD=20090326