Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
vertebrates, before multicelled organisms, and probably even
before life arose on Earth. It is a characteristic conceit of our
species to put a human face on random cosmic violence.
Humans, like other primates, are a gregarious lot. We enjoy one
another's company. We're mammals and parental care of the young
is essential for the continuance of the hereditary lines. The parent
smiles at the child, the child smiles back, and a bond is forged or
strengthened. As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and
we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains. Those infants
who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back
less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents and less likely
to prosper. These days, nearly every infant is quick to identify a
human face and to respond with a goony grin.
As an inadvertent side effect, the pattern-recognition machinery
in our brains is so efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of
other detail that we sometimes see faces where there are none.
We assemble disconnected patches of light and dark and unconsciously
try to see a face. The Man in the Moon is one result.
Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup describes another. There
are many other examples.
Sometimes it's a geological formation, such as the Old Man of
the Mountain at Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. We recognize
that, rather than some supernatural agency or an otherwise
undiscovered ancient civilization in New Hampshire, this is the
product of erosion and collapse of a rock face. Anyway, it doesn't
look much like a face anymore. There's the Devil's Head in North
Carolina, the Sphinx Rock in Wast Water, Cumbria, England, the
Old Woman in France, the Vartan Rock in Armenia. Sometimes
it's a reclining woman, as Mt Ixtaccihuatl in Mexico. Sometimes
it's other body parts, as the Grand Tetons in Wyoming -
approached from the West, a pair of mountain peaks named by
French explorers. (Actually there are three.) Sometimes it's
changing patterns in the clouds. In late medieval and renaissance
Spain, visions of the Virgin Mary were 'confirmed' by people
seeing saints in cloud forms. (While sailing out of Suva, Fiji, I
once saw the head of a truly terrifying monster, jaws agape, set in
a brooding storm cloud.)
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