[Jun8]

Excellent post! The fact that blindness can actually be an asset in modeling higher dimensional objects (or complex ones in 3D) in mathematics is interesting. It reminded me of reading that the name "swallowtail" was coined by a blind mathematician (name escapes me now) for a certain kind of bifurcation in catastrophe theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory#Swallowtail_...).

On a different but related note: Some people in the deaf community has long argued that deafness is not an handicap and in fact can be considered as "a difference in perception", akin to having a different native language or coming from a different country. Although the more radical aspects of such a position is untenable (some deaf parents declare they would rather have deaf child rather than a gearing one) the fact that having constraints put on perception will lead to increases in other aspects of it is quite interesting, I think. Should we call it "the conservation of perception"?