apophenia

English

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /æpəˈfiːni.ə/

Noun

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^[1], 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: […]

Derived terms

• apophenic

Translations

the perception of connectedness in unrelated phenomena

• Armenian: ապոֆենիա (apofenia)
• Belarusian: апафенія f (apafjenija)
• Bulgarian: апофени́я f (apofeníja)
• Catalan: apofènia f
• Czech: apofenie f
• Danish: apofeni c
• Dutch: apofenie f
• French: apophénie (fr) f
• German: Apophänie (de) f
• Greek: αποφάνεια f (apofáneia)
• Italian: apofenia f
• Japanese: アポフェニア (apofenia)
• Kazakh: апофения (apofeniä)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: apofeni m

  Nynorsk: apofeni m

• Polish: apofenia f
• Portuguese: apofenia f
• Russian: апофени́я (ru) f (apofeníja)
• Spanish: apofenia (es) f
• Ukrainian: апофенія f (apofenija)

Further reading

• apophenia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia