Classic `apparent motion' demo modified by bright flash

(see below)


Lucidity and Science, Parts I, II, III

Related links:

Lucidity Principles in Brief

Science, Music, and Mathematics: The Deepest Connections (book published in November 2021)

The Eocene Syndrome

Lucidity, science, and the arts: what we can learn from the way perception works (Kobe Lecture, 2000)

Audit, Education and Goodhart's Law

The Master and his Emissary (a wonderful new insight into how perception evolved)

Prelude to e-book, old draft. (It makes heavy weather of some things but I'm keeping it for the time being, in case anyone feels interested.)

The original published papers on Lucidity and Science are available from the following links with a few minor corrections:

McIntyre, M. E., 1997: Lucidity and science: I. Writing skills and the pattern perception hypothesis. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews , 22, 199-216   (Please note an uncorrected mistake in endnote 58 about musical harmony: instead of `circle-of-fifths proximity' I should have written `harmonic-series proximity'. For clarification, see `harmonic-series proximity' near the bottom of my music page.)

McIntyre, M. E., 1997: Lucidity and science: II. From acausality illusions and free will to final theories, mathematics, and music. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews , 22, 285-303

McIntyre, M. E., 1998: Lucidity and science: III. Hypercredulity, quantum mechanics, and scientific truth. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews , 23, 29-70

NB: see the CORRIGENDUM to Part III, a slightly corrupted version of which was published in the December 1998 issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
The links above the CORRIGENDUM point to pdf scans of Parts I and II and to the html version of Part III originally published by Charlesworth (websearch lucidity charlesworth). In the pdf scan of Part I, two of the quoted figures have been redrawn for copyright reasons. Apart from those figures, the other quoted material comes under the rules of `fair use'. By agreement with the Editor at the time, I own the copyright to everything else in these essays and I wish to make the material available for fair use by others. The discussion of `acausality illusions' in Part II is briefly summarized here. Recently, the publishers (formerly the Institute of Materials, now Maney Publishing) have made the papers available online without corrections but searchable: part I, part II, part III.

Here are links to some supplementary material:

The animation at top right, courtesy of Dr Björn Hassler, demonstrates one of the `acausality illusions' discussed in Part II, p.289. If the animation runs at the correct nominal timings, with one complete cycle taking just under one second, and if you have normal vision, then you will probably see, or sense, what vision researchers call `apparent motion'. The demonstration works best if you fix attention on the spot midway between the two flashing discs. It may help to look fixedly at a pointer or marker, or the tip of your finger, placed midway between. If you sense such an apparent motion, then you will probably sense the left-to-right motion as beginning distinctly before the perceived time of the bright flash. Phenomena like these -- and there are even clearer examples in music -- underline the distinction, sometimes forgotten, between perceived time (a property of the brain's internal models) and physical time (a property of the outside world, such that cause precedes effect).

Here's the way to my draft-revision toolkit (2K), and to lucidity principles in brief (6.5K).

Back to my home page, http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/mem/ ---- back to the Atmospheric Dynamics home page http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/
Michael Edgeworth McIntyre (mem at damtp.cam.ac.uk), DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Silver Street, Cambridge CB3 9EW
Copyright © Michael E. McIntyre 2000. Last updated 14 June 2022
Valid HTML 4.01!