Discover

The term 'pareidolia' (pronounced or ), referenced in 1994 by Steven Goldstein,^[1] describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek ''para-'' — beside, with or alongside — and ''eidolon'' — image (the diminutive of ''eidos'' — image, form, shape). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

Contents

Examples

Religious

Rorschach test

Audio

Explanations

Carl Sagan

Clarence Irving Lewis

Gallery

See also

References

External links

Examples

Religious

There have been many instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes, especially the faces of religious figures, in ordinary phenomena. Many involve images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or the word Allah.
In 1978, a New Mexican woman found that the burn marks on a tortilla she had made appeared similar to Jesus Christ's face. Thousands of people came to see the framed tortilla.^[2]
The recent publicity surrounding sightings of religious figures and other surprising images in ordinary objects, combined with the growing popularity of online auctions, has spawned a market for such items on eBay. One famous instance was a grilled-cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary's face.^[3]

Rorschach test

Main articles: Rorschach inkblot test

The Rorschach inkblot test uses pareidolia to attempt to gain insight into a person's mental state.²

Audio

In 1971, Konstantin Raudive wrote ''Breakthrough'', detailing what he believed was the discovery of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). EVP has been described as auditory pareidolia.²
The allegations of backmasking in popular music have also been described as pareidolia.²

Explanations

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human being are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility, but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.^[4]

Clarence Irving Lewis

In his 1929 book ''Mind and the World Order'', epistemologist and logician Clarence Irving Lewis, a founder of the philosophical school of conceptual pragmatism, used the question of how to determine whether a perception is a mirage as a touchstone for his philosophical approach to knowledge. Lewis argued that one has no way of knowing whether or not perceptions are "true" in any absolute sense; all one can do is determine whether one's purpose is thwarted by regarding it as true and acting on that basis. According to this approach, two people with two different purposes will often have different views on whether or not to regard a perception as true. ^[5]

Gallery

Image:Pareidolia_3.jpg|This alarm clock appears to have a sad face.
Image:Martian_face_viking_cropped.jpg|A satellite photo of a Mars mesa, with shadows creating the famous Face on Mars
Image:Treerukuthumb.gif|A tree in the shape of a person bowing or praying
Image:Pareidolia_false_wood.jpg|False wood
Image:Api-lapindo-dalam.jpg | Flame Explosion form Allah's Name in Arabic

See also

★ Apophenia

★ Audio Rorschach

★ Clustering illusion

★ Face perception, for the cognitive process

★ Ghosts as an artifact of pareidolia

★ Images of Jesus

★ Paranoiac-critical method

★ Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena

★ Simulacrum
;Other natural examples

★ Cydonia (the "Face on Mars")

★ Man in the Moon

★ Manicouagan Reservoir

★ Old Man of the Mountain

References

1. Word Spy - pareidolia
2. Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking, , Leonard, Zusne, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989,
3. 'Virgin Mary' toast fetches ,000
4. The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark, , Carl, Sagan, Random House, , ISBN 0-394-53512-X
5. Clarence Irving Lewis, ''Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge''. Dover reprint, 1991. ISBN 978-0486265643

External links

★ Yoism Video and photographic demonstrations of pareidolia

★ Fortean Times examples of pareidolia in nature

★ Examples of pareidolia

★ Skepdic.com Skeptic's Dictionary definition of pareidolia

★ A dragon on a Mexican river (Google Maps)

★ An Indian with an IPod near Medicine Hat, Alberta (Google Maps)

★ Lenin in my shower curtain (Bad Astronomy)

★ Series of images from the news

★ Koranic inscription on a fish

★ The Stone Face: Fragments of An Earlier World

★ Tomato with 'human face' creates sensation in Kyoto

★ Natural phenomenon of Allah's Name, in Arabic

★ A potato is found to bear a likeness to television's Sooty puppet

★ The Pareidolia Museum By Karen Stollznow

★ Feb. 13, 2007 article in New York Times about cognitive science of face recognition

★ Flame explosion from Indonesian National Gass Company Form Allah's Name in Arabic (Indonesian Article)