Seeing things that aren't there.

[Jehanne]

It's called Pareidolia:



Seeing things that aren't there.

[brewer]

No death skulls in liquor ads.......... disappointed.

[vulcanlogician]

I don't really think this is apophenia at its most exemplary. Sure, it's a hummingbird. But the light or the way the picture was taken seriously makes the tail look like two legs. Everything else is kosher.

A better example of apophenia (or pareidolia) is with clouds or something similarly amorphous. In the photo, the humming birds head is a head. The wings are wings. That's not apophenia. That's recognizing a genuine pattern.

If someone looked at that image and saw a winged man, I wouldn't hold it against them. If they took the photo as proof that winged men exist, then I'd say they need to be more skeptical.

[AFTT47]

The example of this that has long fascinated me is the case of the American astronomer Percival Lowell and his Martian canals. He dedicated his entire life to mapping out the elaborate (and non-existent) canal system he thought he saw through his telescope. He painstakingly mapped literally hundreds of individual canals and even named all of them. He built a first-class observatory for this work with his own money. He published detailed books and gave lectures. All over an illusion.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

The example of this that has long fascinated me is the case of the American astronomer Percival Lowell and his Martian canals. He dedicated his entire life to mapping out the elaborate (and non-existent) canal system he thought he saw through his telescope. He painstakingly mapped literally hundreds of individual canals  and even named all of them. He built a first-class observatory for this work with his own money. He published detailed books and gave lectures. All over an illusion.

 That's partly right.

This from NASA:

The 'Canali' and the First Martians
10.30.03

Schiaparelli Drawing

In the 1800s, observatories with larger and larger telescopes were built around the world. In 1877, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910), director of the Brera Observatory in Milan, began mapping and naming areas on Mars. He named the Martian "seas" and "continents" (dark and light areas) with names from historic and mythological sources. He saw channels on Mars and called them "canali." Canali means channels, but it was mistranslated into "canals" implying intelligent life on Mars. Because of the then recent completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 (the engineering wonder of the era), the misinterpretation was taken to mean that large-scale artificial structures had been discovered on Mars. The importance of canals for worldwide commerce at that time without a doubt influenced the popular interest in "canals" on Mars.
In 1894, Percival Lowel, a wealthy astronomer from Boston, made his first observations of Mars from a private observatory that he built in Flagstaff, Arizona (Lowell Observatory). He decided that the canals were real and ultimately mapped hundreds of them. Lowell believed that the straight lines were artificial canals created by intelligent Martians and were built to carry water from the polar caps to the equatorial regions. In 1895, he published his first book on Mars with many illustrations and, over the next two decades, published two more popular books advancing his ideas.

NASA - The 'Canali' and the First Martians

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Seeing things that aren’t there doesn’t trouble me. It’s the things I see that ARE there that give me the heebie jeebies.

Boru

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Seeing things that aren’t there doesn’t trouble me. It’s the things I see that ARE there that give me the heebie jeebies.

Boru

 Seeing things which aren't there are common in  alcoholics as they begin to sober up. It's called the DT's /the horrors(Delirium tremens) Heard some beauts in AA. One bloke I knew swears he saw this;  kangaroos bounding though his lounge. Each one had a tiny aboriginal jockey.

When I was drinking I would often see this little mouse which would come from the back of the heater  and just it there. To this day I really don't know if he was real or not.

[Jehanne]

One night while driving home late on I88, I saw cows in the road off in the distance. No alcohol, drugs, etc., just exhaustion; I pulled off, walked around and got some caffeine. Odd thing is that I remember them so vividly to this day.

[Fake Messiah]

Pareidolia is not the only instance where people see things that are not there.

For instance, I find Apophenia to be slightly more interesting mental disorder.
Apparently Swedish writer, August Strindberg, suffered from it and because of it thought he was in contact with supernatural powers, so in his "Occult Diary" he noted seeing sticks on the ground as forming Greek letters which he interprets to be the abbreviation of a man's name and feels he now knows that this man is the one who is persecuting him. He then sees sticks on the bottom of a chest and is sure they form a pentagram.

Or he thinks that his pillow in the morning is giving him messages by the shape it has, like a marble head in the style of Michelangelo," and he considers that "these occurrences could not be regarded as accidental, for on some days the pillow presented the appearance of horrible monsters, of gothic gargoyles, of dragons, and one night ... I was greeted by the Evil One himself".