Visual Illusions: Their Causes, Characteristics and ApplicationsLuckiesh, Matthew
Science
Visual Illusions: Their Causes, Characteristics and Applications
Luckiesh, Matthew
Optical illusions
As already stated, the perception of distance, size, and form is based
partly upon monocular and partly upon binocular vision, and the simple
elements upon which judgments of these are based are light, shade, color,
intensity, and direction. Although the interpretation of muscular
adjustments plays a prominent part in the formation of judgments, the
influences of mathematical perspective, light, shade, color, and intensity
are more direct. Judgments based upon focal adjustment (monocular) are
fairly accurate at distances from five inches to several yards. Those
founded upon axial adjustment (convergence of the two axes in binocular
vision) are less in error than the preceding ones. They are reliable to a
distance of about 1000 feet. Judgments involving mathematical perspective
are of relatively great accuracy without limits. Those arrived at by
interpreting aerial perspective (haziness of atmosphere, reduction in
color due to atmospheric absorption, etc.) are merely estimates liable to
large errors, the accuracy depending largely upon experience with local
conditions.
The measuring power of the eye is more liable to error when the distances
or the objects compared lie in different directions. A special case is the
comparison of a vertical distance with a horizontal one. It is not
uncommon to estimate a vertical distance as much as 25 per cent greater
than an actually equal horizontal distance. In general, estimates of
direction and distance are comparatively inaccurate when only one eye is
used although a one-eyed person acquires unusual ability through a keener
experience whetted by necessity. A vertical line drawn perpendicular to a
horizontal one is likely to appear bent when viewed with one eye. Its
apparent inclination is variable but has been found to vary from one to
three degrees. Monocular vision is likely to cause straight lines to
appear crooked, although the "crookedness" may seem to be more or less
unstable.
The error in the estimate of size is in reality an error in the estimation
of distance except in those cases where the estimate is based directly
upon a comparison with an object of supposedly known size. An amusing
incident is told of an old negro who was hunting for squirrels. He shot
several times at what he supposed to be a squirrel upon a tree-trunk and
his failure to make a kill was beginning to weaken his rather ample
opinion of his skill as a marksman. A complete shattering of his faith in
his skill was only escaped by the discovery that the "squirrel" was a
louse upon his eyebrow. Similarly, a gnat in the air might appear to be an
airplane under certain favorable circumstances. It is interesting to note
that the estimated size of the disk of the sun or moon varies from the
size of a saucer to that of the end of a barrel, although a pine tree at
the horizon-line may be estimated as 25 feet across despite the fact that
it may be entirely included in the disk of the sun setting behind it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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