perception and illusion

[...]... Aristotle did not adopt this view, referring the processes of perception to the heart In the context of touch, Anaxagoras (ca 500–438 B.C.) discussed sensing warmth and cold, and Democritus contrasted heavy with light, and hard with soft Plato wrote that touch distinguished between hot and cold, hard and soft, heavy and light, as well as rough and smooth Theophrastus himself said relatively little about... separated in depth An illusion, on the other hand, provides a 6 CHAPTER 1 unitary impression of size or orientation that happens to contradict physical measurements I have introduced the distinction between allusions and illusions to avoid the theoretical confusions attendent on the use of the term illusion in the context of pictorial depth; there is no duality in the perception of illusions, whereas... of lust, hunger, and security” (E Darwin, 1794, p 506) Thus, there is sensitivity to the visual, auditory, aromatic, and tactile characteristics of a mate, the smell, taste, texture, and appearance of food would be sought, and the environmental features that afford protection from the elements will be selected and fought over As Erasmus Darwin hinted at, and Charles Darwin clarified and amplified, individual... experienced Both Plato and Aristotle considered that color was of paramount importance in perception, and that it could be dissociated from light They appreciated that pigments could be extracted from certain substances, and they were well aware of the ways in which they could be mixed by artists However, they stressed the importance of black and white: Plato treated them as opposites, and Aristotle considered... widely divergent Much the same applied to the study of perception The principal contrast that existed was between those who sought to observe and try to account for those observations and those who considered that thought was above perception The observational tradition has grappled with the vagaries of perception the differences that occur over time and the contrasts that can take place in an instant... seen the stars or the sun or the heaven But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also a means of research into the nature of the Universe.” (1946, p 107) Plato was a philosopher and a poet whereas Aristotle was a scientist and a systematic teacher Aristotle was one of Plato’s students but displayed... probe the nature of the physical world and our perception of it Leonardo’s observational skills were without equal, and he was acutely aware of the distinction between viewing a scene and a pictorial representation if it: “A Painting, though conducted with the greatest Art and finished to the last Perfection, both with regard to its Contours, its Lights, its Shadows and its Colours, can never show a Relievo... unequal, tumultuous and disorderly flow of humors and pneuma Therefore it is only natural that people subject to skotoma are on guard against any motion of this kind.” (Siegel, 1970, p 138) The situation remained relatively unchanged through the medieval period: “Aristotle’s account of sensation and perception was held in great esteem in the Middle Ages, and his systematic approach and many of his specific... finer distinctions are made Contour and color are often considered as separate features of the objects to be processed This results in space and color being treated as independent aspects of vision, and students tend to pursue one or the other This was not the case when the initial steps were made at recording perception The early artists used their skills to decorate and depict with whatever means were... were domesticated, and ownership of land could be asserted Nonetheless, long before these cataclysmic changes in human habitation took place, examples of sophisticated visual art had been produced in the caves as far afield as southern Europe and Australia These art works, and those that followed in the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman times, reflected the nonverbal records of perception (see Massironi, 2002) . alt="" Perception and Illusion Historical Perspectives Library of the History of Psychological Theories Series Editor: Robert W. Rieber, City University of New York, New York, NY PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION Historical. features of perception but the oddities or departures from the common and com- monplace accuracies of perception. With the move from the natural world to the laboratory the oddities of perception. to be a world of illusions, and the essence of thought was to be sought in PREFACE ix mathematics and ideal forms. Plato’s idealism remained a dominant force in both science and philosophy. His