This Is Not A Pipe
Unknown -- attributed at one time or another
to everyone but John Wayne.
"Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets."
"I see."
"And do you see", I said, "men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent."
"You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners."
"Like ourselves", I replied."
"... all the eye does is deliver a bunch of colored dots. It is in the brain that the real work of "seeing" begins."Great page, great site!
"Once around mid-day I met my mother on the sidewalk and did not recognize her. . ."
![[an icon which links to the site of Scott McCloud]](http://members.tripod.com/~doggo/eyes.gif)
"To illustrate how our perception is subject to bias several optical illusions are presented below. While they address only visual perception, they illustrate that perception is an active construction of the mind, rather than a faithful reproduction of reality."-- some of these are quite nice, but others are examples of tesselations rather than optical illusions.