blindsight

Etymology

From blind + sight. Coined in a 1974 paper in the Lancet by Sanders et al.

Why this word is great

BLINDSIGHT — [Noun] The ability of some blind or partially blind individuals to respond to visual stimuli without conscious awareness of them. From blind (lacking sight) + sight (vision), coined in a 1974 paper by Sanders et al. in the Lancet. Unlike clairvoyance (which implies supernatural vision) or visual perception (which requires conscious recognition), blindsight is the eerie competence of a damaged brain, navigating the world by unseen maps. It is a hand flinching from an unseen object, a foot avoiding an obstacle the mind cannot name, or a face turning toward light without knowing why—proof that the body remembers what the mind forgets, a silent dialogue between body and world, conducted beneath the threshold of awareness.

noun

The responsivity shown by some blind or partially blind people to visual stimuli of which they are not consciously aware.“On more pointed testing Sanders and I, along with the National Hospital psychologist Elizabeth K. Warrington, discovered to our amazement that Daniel's "blind" field was not blind at all in the usual sense. . . . When objects were placed in his blind field, he made virtually no errors locating them, though he could not tell us what they were. . . . "I couldn't see anything, not a darn thing," Dani”