#phenomenon

Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#actually #almost #biologists #due #evolution

Psychologists have devised some ingenious ways to help unpack the human "now." Consider how we run those jerky movie frames together into a smooth and continuous stream. This is known as the "phi phenomenon." The essence of phi shows up in experiments in a darkened room where two small spots are briefly lit in quick succession, at slightly separated locations. What the subjects report seeing is not a succession of spots, but a single spot moving continuously back and forth. Typically, the spots are illuminated for 150 milliseconds separated by an interval of fifty milliseconds. Evidently the brain somehow "fills in" the fifty-millisecond gap. Presumably this "hallucination" or embellishment occurs after the event, because until the second light flashes the subject cannot know the light is "supposed" to move. This hints that the human now is not simultaneous with the visual stimulus, but a bit delayed, allowing time for the brain to reconstruct a plausible fiction of what has happened a few milliseconds before. In a fascinating refinement of the experiment, the first spot is colored red, the second green. This clearly presents the brain with a problem. How will it join together the two discontinuous experiences—red spot, green spot—smoothly? By blending the colors seamlessly into one another? Or something else? In fact, subjects report seeing the spot change color abruptly in the middle of the imagined trajectory, and are even able to indicate exactly where using a pointer. This result leaves us wondering how the subject can apparently experience the "correct" color sensation before the green spot lights up. Is it a type of precognition? Commenting on this eerie phenomenon, the philosopher Nelson Goodman wrote suggestively: "The intervening motion is produced retrospectively, built only after the second flash occurs and projected backwards in time." In his book Consciousness Explained , philosopher Daniel Dennett points out that the illusion of color switch cannot actually be created by the brain until after the green spot appears. "But if the second spot is already 'in conscious experience,' wouldn't it be too late to interpose the illusory content between the conscious experience of the red spot and the conscious experience of the green spot? ↗

— Paul Davies

#now #phi-phenomenon #psychology #reality #time

What I've learned is there's a scientifically proven phenomenon that's attached to gratitude, and that if you consciously take note of what is good in your life, quantifiable benefits happen. ↗

— Deborah Norville

#benefits #consciously #good #gratitude #happen

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it. ↗

— Pope John Paul II

#absurd #always #could #death #humanity

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#because #explanation #happen #happened #most

Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization. ↗

— Lawrence Summers

#contagion #globalization #much #phenomenon #very

An honest observer of the evolution of conditions in Egypt would discover that terrorism is an alien phenomenon, strange to our values and heritage. ↗

— Hosni Mubarak

#conditions #discover #egypt #evolution #heritage

Fame is an interesting phenomenon. ↗

— Paulina Porizkova

#interesting #phenomenon

And of course I've got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I'm now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You're suddenly hip. ↗

— Gary Oldman

#became #become #being #cool #course

'Boardwalk' begins literally on the first day of Prohibition, which I think was a wonderful way to start - to have the story kind of come out of this massive historical phenomenon. And the more I researched the '20s, the more I discovered just how interesting it was. ↗

— Michael Pitt

#boardwalk #come #day #discovered #first