Pareidolia

© 2014 Michael Fiveson

Frank Zappa? Albert Einstein? Che Guevara?  A face, formed by the elements and found on a wall.  I confess, I see faces everywhere. I see dumb people too, but that’s another story.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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, a form of apophenia. 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 when played in reverse.

The word comes from the Greek words para (παρά, “beside, alongside, instead”) in this context meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of; and the noun eidōlon (εἴδωλον “image, form, shape”) the diminutive of eidos. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, seeing patterns in random data.