pareidolia
noun

- the human ability to see shapes or make pictures out of randomness

The Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The word "pareidolia" comes from the Greek words para- (παρά), which means "beside, near, alongside, beyond, altered, or contrary", and eidōlon" (εἴδωλον), which means "image, form, or shape". Pareidolia is thus something like "faulty image" or "wrong shape".

The word "pareidolie” was first used by the German psychiatrist Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum in his paper ‘On Delusions of the Senses’ (1866). He proposed pareidolia as a term for ‘delusions of the judgment’ caused by ‘imperfect perception’. Sadly, as a result of Kahlbaum’s influence, scholars came to see pareidolia negatively, rather than as a sign of creativity. It was even considered to be a symptom of psychosis, schizophrenia, or a sign of dementia.

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PAREIDOLIA & CREATIVITY

The creative aspect of pareidolia came to the fore later in the 19th century with the popular practice of ‘klecksography’. Back then, one wrote with ink pens that could accidentally drip ink onto the paper. Literary figures of the time, such as the French Romantic writers Victor Hugo and George Sand, saw figures and other images in these inkblots and embellished them.

Another prominent practitioner of klecksography was the German poet, physician and writer Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner. His posthumous publication 'Kleksographien' (1890) is a collection of inkblot art with accompanying short poems about the objects that he perceived in the images.

Have you ever looked at the clouds and discovered sheep, poodles or faces in their shapes? Then you’re in good company: William Shakespeare, from his journal:

“If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms. With such walls and blends of different stones it comes about as it does with the sound of bells, in whose clanging you may discover every name and word that you can imagine.”

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“I was happy to learn that PAREIDOLIA is quite normal, I often see faces in clouds and rocks and trees.”

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