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 An essay by Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  – Albert Einstein
I don’t mean that the real world doesn’t exist with all its objects, scattered and absorbed radiation, etc., but rather that we only “see” a very small part of what is in front of us, and that part is heavily filtered, selectively enhanced, interpreted, and corrected.  In short we experience a colorized illusion, or better a simulation of the world that is ”visible” from our perspective.  And that simulation is about 100ms out of date by the time we experience it, except for selective parts that have been extrapolated in time to predict the “now.”  This and every other comparison of “reality” with perception is controversial. 1   However, useful predictions or “future seeing” based on experience should come as no surprise.  Evolution works to increase our survivability rather than to accurately record all aspects of our environmen...

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Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
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Charles S. Johnson, Jr. received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from MIT. He taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Yale University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is now Professor Emeritus. He has published approximately 150 papers on magnetic resonance and light scattering as well as books on laser light scattering and quantum mechanics. His interest in photography goes back to the 1950's; however, for many years his career in science left little time for serious photography. Now he is an avid nature photographer, and he blogs about photography here. In addition, he is making use of his scientific background to research and write about the physical and psychological bases of photography. His recent book, Science for the Curious Photographer, 2nd Ed, includes discussions of light and optics, sensors, factors that determine image quality, and the human visual system.
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