Pareidolia

It's my new word. Wikipedia says, "Pareidolia, first used in 1994 by Steven Goldstein, describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable." It gives examples of seeing the face of the Man in the Moon or pictures in clouds, or hearing messages in rock lyrics played backwards. I suppose constellations would be another example.

When I first read Foucault's Pendulum (by the intimidatingly brilliant Umberto Eco), I immediately saw the theme to be the human compulsion to seek order in what are essentially random events. (Although it occurs to me at this moment that seeing such a theme in the book could, itself, be an example of pareidolia.) Ever since, I've been seeing pareidolia everywhere I look; among the most nefarious has been the absolute certainty of the presence of weapons of mass distruction in Iraq.

As I write, I often find myself making pareidolia work to my advantage: being essentially clueless about what happens next in a story, I'll sometimes introduce a new element, more or less at random. Lo! It turns out that this is the precise thing I needed to move the story along!

Pareidolia is clearly a two-edged sword. Or just looks like one.