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Why We See Faces - Everywhere
Berek Half Hand writes "Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a great personal story of a paranormal visitation to his shower. His report explains a lot about human nature and how our brains our wired. Those of you who may be Kate Campbell fans will also immediately think of 'Jesus and Tomatoes' and the famous Nun Bun."
Check out Stone Faces Gazetteer
Some of these, especially the sleeping giants and one particular offshore head, are downright eerie.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you found this article interesting, you may want to read Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion by Stewart Guthrie.
In one word, this book is about Anthropomorphism - The ascription of human characteristics to things not human.
Perhaps this is a good time to plug Oliver Sachs' classic The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a collection of essays about bizarre cognitive disorders such as Tourette's Syndrome. It is of interest here because the title story is about a man whose face-recognition "software" was broken - not just the ability to distinguish Peter from Paul, but the basic ability to recognize a face as a face. Bizarre and a bit scary, but a very good read, and very thought provoking.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I can't believe that when this man talks about the deaths of the bolshevik regime, he talks about the tsar family and the bourgeois.
What about the tens of thousands of peasants that were massacred by the Tcheka? What about the Krondstadt butchery? What about the gulags?
Who cares about the tsar. He was an asshle too.
has a great explaination of this effect in his book "The Demon Haunted World."
...Parental care of the young is essential for the continuance of the hereditary lines. As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains."
He states, "Humans, like other primates...enjoy one another's company.
He continues, "As an inadvertant side effect, the patter-recognition machinery in our brains is so efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of other detail that we sometimes see faces where there are none."
Anyway, one of the small stories in the book is a bout a man who had a very minor stroke which affected the area of the brain that only recognizes faces. The man would recognize people by their voice, rhythym of their walk, etc. Oddly enough, too, is that the brain did not 'know" that it had been affected, and the mans brain could not grasp the fact that faces exist. Fascinating stuff
..........FULL STOP.