What changes as one shifts from recognizing the following toar as being either the phenomenon of an old woman or the phenomenon of a young girl?
| Young Girl-Old Woman Illusion |
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A famous perceptual
illusion in which the tzelem Elokim switches between naming the following toar as a "young girl" and an "old woman". An anonymous German postcard from 1888 (left figure) depicts the image in its earliest known form, and a rendition on an advertisement for the Anchor Buggy Company from 1890 (center figure) provides another early example (IllusionWorks). For many years, the creator of this figure was thought to be British cartoonist W. E. Hill, who published it in 1915 in
Puck humor magazine, an American magazine inspired by the British magazine
Punch (right figure).
5 comments:
This is a popular image in psychology books.
"Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see."
I think what changes is the name the seer is trying to fit all the features into. I remember the first time I saw this picture, I only saw the young girl. When someone told me that it was also an old woman, I could not see it. It took me a while, and I finally did. But if that person did not tell me that it was also an old woman, I don't think I ever would have seen it. It was only after I tried to see the features of the yound woman in a different way, that the old woman "appeared".
So the first step was to consider that the picture was also of "something else" besides just what I originally thought. Then it was a matter of seeing the features of the young girl in a different way until the old woman came into focus.
I have to ask, what are you getting at with this post?
Also, why include all the history as you did? Does that somehow fit in to your point?
Hope no one minds, I wanted to post this song here as a parallel to this post because it has a word play at time 1:58 on the age of Israel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRaZBsDqLCg
"She's sixty according to the calendar but in all other ways she's clearly barely sixteen years old or maybe she's just 6 because she's real and not a symbol not a flag nor a badge. the past is behind, she watches for what's coming"
So given the lyrics of the song, Israel can be viewed as a young girl because young means to have many years ahead, and therefore Israel belongs to the future, but Israel is also ancient because the land of Israel is defined in the Bible as the Promised Land and there has continuously been here a Jewish presence, and so Israel existed before 1948.
Dan
I am continuing the theme of tzura and toar. The toar, the physical properties of the "woman" remain completey the same. Yet, the mind seeking tzura, shifts in its naming, exactly as you say. In similar fashion, one reads the same story in Chumash, yet the meaning shifts in the mind.
Moonlight
could you spell out the parallel?
M-I-S-C-O-N-C-E-P-T-I-O-N-S
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