apophenia

From German Apophänie, from Ancient Greek ἀποφαίνω (apophaínō, “to appear”), from ἀπο- (apo-) and φαίνω (phaínō, “appear”), coined by German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in 1958.

• IPA^(key): /æpəˈfiːni.ə/

apophenia (countable and uncountable, plural apophenias)

1. (psychology) The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena.

   Hyponyms: pareidolia, Monte Carlo fallacy

   • 2004, William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, Penguin UK, →ISBN:

     Apophenia, Win had declared it, after due consideration and in his careful way: the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things. And had never, as far as Cayce knows, said another word about it.

   • 2016 April, Hito Steyerl, “A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern (Mis-)Recognition”, in e-flux‎, number 72:

     How to recognize something in sheer noise? A striking visual example of pure and conscious apophenia was recently demonstrated by research labs at Google: […]

• apophenic

• apophenia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia