Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Apophenia
/ˌapəˈfiːnɪə/noun
The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.
The Greek roots
ἀπό
apó
away from, out of
φαίνειν
phaínein
to show, appear
Literally: “a showing forth from”
The story of the word
The German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad coined Apophänie in 1958 for the early stage of schizophrenia in which a patient sees the world suddenly saturated with private significance. The term then escaped the clinic and now covers gamblers reading streaks into random numbers and conspiracy theorists joining unrelated dots. Pareidolia, faces in clouds, is the visual special case rather than a synonym.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1958
Same family
phenomenonepiphanyapostasydiaphanous
In a sentence
Backtesting a strategy on noisy data is an invitation to apophenia.
He calls his own conspiracy phase a long bout of apophenia.