The Eye of the Mind: Negotiating Science, Faith, and Enlightenment in The Country of the Blind

Nikhila Narayanan

doi:10.63363/aijfr.2025.v06i06.2486

The Eye of the Mind: Negotiating Science, Faith, and Enlightenment in The Country of the Blind

Author(s)	Dr. Nikhila Narayanan
Country	India
Abstract	H. G. Wells’s The Country of the Blind, first published in 1904 and revised in 1939, remains one of the most philosophically rich narratives in modern literature. The story stages an encounter between a sighted mountaineer, Nunez, and a secluded community that has lived without sight for generations. Through this contact zone, Wells interrogates the epistemological foundations of Western modernity-particularly the belief that sight is the primary vehicle of knowledge and that scientific rationality is universally valid. This paper argues that Wells’s story dramatizes the tension between science and faith not as opposites but as competing systems of meaning-making. Nunez’s ocular-centric worldview, rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, fails to communicate within a culture whose knowledge is grounded in touch, hearing, memory, and embodied perception. By portraying blindness as a coherent epistemic framework rather than a deficiency, Wells challenges Western assumptions about knowledge hierarchies. Drawing on theories of perception from Jonathan Crary, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nicholas Mirzoeff, and contemporary cognitive science, this essay demonstrates how Wells destabilizes the authority of sight, critiques the arrogance of scientific universalism, and reveals the cultural contingency of rationality. The metaphor of the “eye of the mind” encapsulates Wells’s central insight: enlightenment arises not from sensory superiority but from epistemic humility, the ability to recognize and negotiate multiple ways of knowing. Through its exploration of perceptual difference, cultural relativism, and human longing, “The Country of the Blind” offers a profound critique of modernity’s faith in vision and reminds readers that knowledge-like perception-is always situated, interpretive, and relational.
Keywords	The Country of the Blind, perception, epistemology, blindness, science, rationality, cognition, modernity, Enlightenment.
Field	Arts
Published In	Volume 6, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-12-13
DOI	https://doi.org/10.63363/aijfr.2025.v06i06.2486
Short DOI	https://doi.org/hbf94g

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The Eye of the Mind: Negotiating Science, Faith, and Enlightenment in The Country of the Blind

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