Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun psychology The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The term apophenia was coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958.

    Pareidolia and Apophenia James Gurney 2008

  • The term apophenia was coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958.

    Archive 2008-06-01 James Gurney 2008

  • LH, I don't say that the term apophenia has no place or no role to play.

    languagehat.com: APOPHENIA. 2005

  • Internet Safety Technical Task Force Report from apophenia is important information for educators, parents, and policy makers.

    Web Teacher › Useful Links: Internet safety, jQuery, Obama and Tech 2009

  • This is sometimes called apophenia and has been linked to electronic voice phenomena, where people claim to hear the voice of spirits amid the static of tape recordings.

    Mind Hacks: April 2005 Archives 2005

  • This is sometimes called apophenia and has been linked to electronic voice phenomena, where people claim to hear the voice of spirits amid the static of tape recordings.

    Mind Hacks: Scientific American on neuromorphics, laterality, apophenia 2005

  • Some scholars, particularly New Media and literary critics like Danah Boyd (whose long running weblog is called apophenia) have argued that a weblog is, in fact, a technology or a medium of communications that is so highly malleable that it is distinctly capable of supporting a wide range of communicative strategies (Reconstruction 6 [2006]).

    Blogging Archaeology and the Archaeology of Blogging - The Weblog. History and Taxonomy 2008

  • In its most general definition, this experience of seeing patterns in random data is called apophenia - a term that also covers the phenomenon of ‘false positives†™ in statistics, for example.

    techyum :: 2009

  • It's called apophenia, when the human mind interprets random stimuli as having some kind of pattern, such as appearing as a face etc.

    Original Signal - Transmitting Digg 2009

  • In its most general definition, this experience of seeing patterns in random data is called apophenia - a term that also covers the phenomenon of 'false positives' in statistics, for example.

    WordPress.com Top Blogs 2009

  • Coining a word that is as fitting as it is symptomatic of the urge it describes, Warburg spoke of his Verknüpfungszwang. This ‘compulsion to interconnect’ lies not only at the root of his research and working methods.

    Verknüpfungszwang 2023

Comments

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  • Here's the thing about film festivals. When you're averaging eight flicks a day (features and shorts), as the cinetrix did on Friday and Saturday of this year's Full Frame festival, the temptation to indulge in a bit of apophenia is too strong to resist. @ http://pullquote.typepad.com/pullquote/2007/05/ffdff_helicopte.html

    May 12, 2007

  • Apophenia is the perception of patterns, or connections, where in fact none exist. Most psychologists agree that this condition exists in everyone, to some degree; it is a bias of the human mind.

    _Lostpedia.com

    February 23, 2008

  • "In 1958, German neurologist Klaus Conrad coined the term Apophänie to describe schizophrenic patients’ tendency to imbue random events with personal meaning. An apophany has the form factor of an epiphany—the sense of breakthrough, of events finally coming together and making sense—but without any relationship to real explanations. But though Conrad focused on instances of apophany occurring with psychosis, the phenomenon he described applies to the ill and the well alike. Now called “apophenia,” the instinct to pick out patterns from meaningless information is essentially universal."

    -- http://hazlitt.net/feature/goes-all-way-queen-puzzle-book-drove-england-madness

    September 25, 2015