Misconceptions Of Perception: The Face On Mars

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Misconceptions of Perception The Face on Mars is a famous picture taken by the Viking One Spacecraft that gripped the American population in 1976. The picture was of the martian region Cydonia the subject of the photo was a large rock formation. The formation appeared to have a large version of the human countenance. This photo would go on to become a pop-culture icon and inspire such theories as it was a martian sculpture to the people of Earth, however in 2001 there was another photograph taken of the exact same rock formation in the Cydonia region. The second photograph was taken by a much higher resolution camera and completely disproved any theories about the rocks being a face. The seeing of the face was a classic case of pareidolia. Pareidolia is the imagined of…show more content…
Memories lead to expectations, when a tree is walked by everyday for two years, the person doing the walking feels very confident that he or she knows that tree very well and can recognize it in a heart beat, and, while yes, the person may know the tree from the outside that individual does not know how the tree had been around for twenty years before the person began that walk and will continue to be around long after that walks stops. Even though the person may know that the tree is often visited by the local bluebird population he or she does not know how many birds are in the tree at the time or that one of those birds is poised to attack a near by insect. Author Annie Dillard relate’s a story in her essay “Sight into Insight” about “looking at a bullfrog that was so unexpectedly large I couldn’t see it. ”(648) Dillard has seen a bullfrog before, yet because this particular one that she is mentioning is so large and does not match the description of a bullfrog that she has in her memory and therefore expects to see that she takes a long time looking right at the frog before she realizes that it is the frog that is what she is seeing right in front of

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