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The Science of Illusions

by Jacques Ninio.
Translated by Franklin Philip
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, USA 2001.
211 pp., illus. $25.00 US paper.
ISBN: 0-8014-3770-9.
Reviewed by David Topper. The University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9 Canada.
E-mail: Topper@Uwinnipeg.ca


Jacques Ninio has cast his net widely: this book is not only about geometrical and optical illusions; it encompasses auditory illusions too. There are also chapters on the cultural influences on perception (and hence on illusion) and on the art (and illusionism) of the magician. The book begins with an introductory section consisting of several pages of descriptions of illusions, in no apparent order, such as: "The sound of the ocean in seashells," or "A room emptied of its furniture looks smaller." Among them is this one: "To read a letter from you and to have the impression that you are speaking to me: when I am reading a letter from a person I know well, I hear him pronounce, with the exact intonation of his voice, the words that I am reading, and that he may never have said in my presence." I was delighted to read this because it is something I have thought about but never saw expressed as such. A analogous illusion (not in this book) that I experience is this: when looking at a picture of a place I have been, I am aware of what is beyond the picture frame; I even think about what is behind me - in short, I have the illusion I am in the pictorial space, not just looking at the picture.

The core of the book is eight chapters based on his classification system of illusions. Categories include illusions based on contrasts, on constancies, and on the limits of the human perceptual system. His eight categories are put forward to replace the well-known system of the perceptual psychologist R. L. Gregory, editor of the journal Perception. Gregory's classification can be found in volume 20 (1991), pages 1-4.

Yet many of the illusions discussed are geometrical - of the 'see how this line appears longer than that line' variety. I was pleasantly pleased to experience some illusions I had not seen before. But some did not work for me; what was purported to look larger sometimes looked smaller, or vice versa. One illusion, in which it is supposedly "practically impossible to count" all the dots, was a breeze - I counted all the dots correctly three time in a row, and quit. Ninio also includes one of the first tactile illusions - Aristotle's argument that if you cross your fingers over a ball it feels like two balls. I have tried this many times and never experienced the illusion of two balls; in fact, I do not think I have ever met anyone who experiences it. Perhaps it is the authority of Aristotle, still prevalent in some philosophical circles, that keeps it alive. I was surprised that there was no mention of the Necker Cube anywhere in the book.

As to the cause of illusion, Ninio's approach is eclectic. He asserts that there is no one theory to explain all illusions. Some can be explained by neurological factors; others required cognitive theory. In some cases he remains open, since there does not seem to be a unique answer as to the cause. This book is readable for both a general audience and the specialists. As such it makes a contribution to a subject that many (myself included) continually, and endlessly, find fascinating. Some of us just like to be tricked!

For readers of Leonardo, however, there are few references or direct applications of the subject to the visual arts. On that topic I highly recommend Robert L. Solso's, Cognition and the Visual Arts (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), a work chock-full of marvelous and stimulating examples.

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Updated 7 Sptember 2001.




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