apophenia
Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word apophenia. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word apophenia, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say apophenia in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word apophenia you have here. The definition of the word apophenia will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofapophenia, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
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
Noun
apophenia (countable and uncountable, plural apophenias)
- (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, 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: […]
