The Impossible Staircase…
…or is it? Have fun wracking your brain on this one. It’s an illusion invented, my sources tell me, by Lionel and Roger Penrose, mathematician, physicist, and also well-known among skeptics as a proponent of the idea of quantum neurobiology.
It was depicted by M. C. Escher in 1961, but earlier conceived by Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd, though neither Escher nor either Penrose are thought to have known it.
This is a good illustration of how our own senses can fool us, and a useful perceptual example of why direct experience is not as consistently reliable as pseudoscience advocates would have us believe.
(Last Update 2011/1/11, 4:30, Crediting Corrections)
Posted on Monday, 15:44, January 10, 2011, in Psych/Brain stuffs and tagged Illusion, Illusions, Image, Images, Optical Illusion, Optical Illusions, Penrose Staircase. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
the illusion is simply that you are viewing a 3 dimensional object when you are not … visualize it for what it is – a flat surface – and the illusion is gone
Wouldn’t that be Escher, not Penrose? (Sir Roger invented bestsellers that are impossible to read.)
Hmmm. It was actually invented by Lionel Penrose and his son Roger, and earlier by artist Oscar Reutersvärd. It was depicted in 1961 by Escher. I’ll have to correct the entry mention posthaste.