When Galton talks to members of the "general society," the reception is entirely different. Like many with the condition today, they assume that the term "mental imagery" is just an expression. To his surprise, he finds that "the great majority of the men of science" that he initially asks find his query nonsensical since they believe that no-one actually can see things in their imagination at will. In it, Galton asks people to visualize their full-of-food breakfast table as clearly as possible and describe how clearly they see it. Amongst all his papers, you can find one titled "Statistics of Mental Imagery". He also made significant contributions to the field of statistics and created the world's first weather map. Some of them were utterly harmless, such as his study of the optimal method for making tea (very English, right?) or his quite interesting idea of scientifically measure the power of prayer (which he found was zero – his argument being, that since everyone was praying for a long life of the current King/Queen, their lives should be unusually long, which they statistically were not). This has, of course, cast a shadow over the less horrible things he did. Perhaps the name Francis Galton sounds familiar? He was an English scientist, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and is today mostly known for being the father of eugenics, or race biology. Initial aphantasia research on mental imagery This is mirrored in the fact that aphantasia got its name not until 2015! Its scientific history starts a bit earlier though, in the year 1880. It resembles the concept of color blindness – you won't discover it until it's a problem. We all live inside our own very private bubble of consciousness and naturally suppose that the bubbles of others are of a similar substance. It may seem absurd, but when you think about it, these kinds of things are not easily found out. Maybe it is right now, through reading this article, that you come to realize this for the first time! Many people with aphantasia don't discover that they have it until well into adulthood. Perhaps it is even more surprising for you, the non-visualizing 2 %, that the rest of us have this then seemingly super-human capacity. Most of us would imagine that the ability to vaguely see things in front of you, when daydreaming or say, reading a work of fiction, is an all-embracing part of the human experience. For the other 98 % of us, the non-Johns, this is very surprising. In the US, that's about as many as are named John. You are not alone though, the studies made so far predict that about 2 % of the population would get the same result. The sun? If none of these cite even the slightest visual element in your perception, then we can confirm it: you are most likely an aphantasiac. What do you see when I ask you to imagine a red triangle? Just to make sure, let's try some more stuff: The blindness of the inner eye, so to speak. Aphantasia is the inability of voluntary visualization. If you were unable to answer it because you didn't see an apple, you might have what is nowadays known as aphantasia. What color is it? If you answered this question by "looking" at the apple, you imagined with your inner eye, your brain likely works like that of most people. Imagine yourself taking a bite out of a big, juicy apple.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |