Gravity's Rainbow in depth on Studio 360

[David Morris]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or
connections in random or meaningless data.

The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad,[1] who defined it as the
"unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific
experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to
represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random nature in
general, as with gambling, paranormal phenomena, religion, and even
attempts at scientific observation.

Conrad originally described this phenomenon in relation to the
distortion of reality present in psychosis, but it has become more
widely used to describe this tendency without necessarily implying the
presence of neurological differences or mental illness.

In 2008, Michael Shermer coined the word 'patternicity', defining it
as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless
noise."[2][3] In The Believing Brain (2011), Shermer defines
patternicity as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both
meaningful and meaningless noise." The Believing Brain thesis also
says that we have "the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning,
intention, and agency", which Shermer calls 'agenticity'.[4]


On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:14 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
>
> Pareidolia ( /pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological
> phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or
> sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing
> images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon
> rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The
> word comes from the Greek para- ("beside", "with", or "alongside", in
> this context meaning something faulty or wrong, as in paraphasia,
> disordered speech) and eidōlon ("image"; the diminutive of eidos –
> "image", "form", "shape"). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.
>
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I would say 'tis Imagination. And we strive to impose order from one of
>> several Vantage Points or Inconveniences.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 3/6/2012 5:40 PM, John Bailey wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Read this a few days ago and it niggled at me in some way I couldn't
>>>> understand...
>>>>
>>>> ...then I got to thinking how this scientist's conclusions re: GR are
>>>> pretty much the opposite of mine.
>>>>
>>>> To me the novel shows how the human tendency to impose order is
>>>> problematic at best, and more often terrible.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Would you say this tendency to impose order is a definition of paranoia?
>>>
>>> I'm reminded of some lines in Michael Wood's review of GR.
>>>
>>>
>>> " . . . . From Auschwitz we can get to Hiroshima, but how do we get to the
>>> roots of either? We can’t bear this blankness, and so we invent roots,
>>> social, psychological, racial, anthropological, archaeological.
>>>
>>> "All these inventions are paranoias, Pynchon is telling us, they create
>>> connections where there are none, and he sets out, in Gravity’s Rainbow as
>>> in V., to make elaborate, sympathetic, but devastating mockery of all such
>>> enterprises . . . ."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> P
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Maybe his "living green" will lead to Imipolex G.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:10 AM, Jordan Hunnicutt<antipusrises at gmail.com>
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but here is a short story
>>>>> about
>>>>> a professor of biochemistry that goes in depth with Gravity's Rainbow.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.studio360.org/2012/feb/24/aha-moment-gravitys-rainbow/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>