LUCIDITY AND SCIENCE (index)

Related links:

The Master and his Emissary (new insight into how perception evolved)

Lucidity and Science, Parts I, II, III

M.E.McIntyre
Centre for Atmospheric Science
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Cambridge University
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 22, 199-216 & 285-303 (1997); 23, 29-70 (1998).

NB: see the CORRIGENDUM to Part III, a slightly corrupted version of which was published in the December 1998 issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

The links above the CORRIGENDUM point to pdf scans of Parts I and II and to the html version of Part III originally published by Charlesworth (websearch lucidity charlesworth). In the pdf scan of Part I, two of the figures have been redrawn for copyright reasons. Apart from those figures, other material quoted comes under the rules of `fair use'. By agreement with the Editors, I own the copyright to everything else in these essays and I wish to make the material available for fair use by others. The discussion of `acausality illusions' in Part II is briefly summarized here.

The animation at top right, courtesy of Dr Björn Hassler, demonstrates one of the `acausality illusions' discussed in Part II, p. 289 and in lucidity.ps, Appendix 2. If the animation runs at the correct nominal timings, with one complete cycle taking just under one second, and if you have normal vision, then you will probably see, or sense, what vision researchers call `apparent motion'. The demonstration works best if you fix attention on the spot midway between the two flashing discs. It may help to look fixedly at a pointer or marker, or the tip of your finger, placed midway between. If you sense such an apparent motion, then you will probably sense the left-to-right motion as beginning distinctly before the perceived time of the bright flash.

Listed below, mainly for the sake of searchability, are viewable (postscript and gif) files (lucidity.ps, lucidity3.ps, lucidity-music.gif, etc.) containing the original manuscript versions that preceded the published versions. Please note, however, that the expanded Note 58 in lucidity.ps has been superseded by the version labelled `journey into musical hyperspace', a pdf document linked to the Footnote for composers near the bottom of my tiny music page.

Abstract (HTML) (explaining the significance of the `walking lights' animation; see also the draft preface to a book version in preparation)
Text: lucidity.ps, 1.1 Mb, lucidity3.ps, 850 kb -- just the two files; there is no `lucidity2.ps'.
Unix-compressed text: lucidity.ps.Z, 400 kb, lucidity3.ps.Z , 340 kb
gzip-compressed text: lucidity.ps.gz, 400 kb, lucidity3.ps.gz , 260 kb
Figure 1 (gif) - 1.2 kb
Figure 5 (gif) - 6 kb
Music examples lucidity-music.gif - 8.5 kb, and lucidity-orch1.gif - 10 kb, lucidity-orch2.gif - 10 kb, lucidity-orch3.gif - 10 kb. The latter are also available in postscript files lucidity-orch1.ps - ca.100 kb, lucidity-orch2.ps - ca.100 kb, lucidity-orch3.ps - ca.100 kb. Corresponding audio files are available as PC .wav files in my anonymous ftp site. Thanks to Ben Finn of Sibelius Software and to Jeffrey Ginn of Ginn Music for valuable professional help with these.
There are a number of other figures and music examples; these are best downloaded from my anonymous ftp site: click here to reach it directly; browse or print all the files beginning `lucidity' and ending `.gif' (or, if using ftp, type mget lucidity*.gif).

Here's the way to my draft-revision toolkit (2K), and to lucidity principles in brief (6.5K).

Back to my home page, http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/mem/ ---- back to the Atmospheric Dynamics home page http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/

Michael McIntyre (mem at damtp.cam.ac.uk), DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Silver Street, Cambridge CB3 9EW