so slowly, below man’s sensory threshold, that no one could feel the

acceleration implicit in the considerable rotation. When a surrounding curtain

was then opened in the place on the platform where the Statue had earlier

appeared, it seemed to have disappeared.

 

And even when perception does get through to man’s brain, it is often

misweighted, because what is registered in perception is in shockingness of

apparent contrast, not the standard scientific units that make possible science

and good engineering.

 

A magician demonstrates this sort of contrast- based error in your nervous

system when he removes your wristwatch without your feeling it. As he does this,

he applies pressure of touch on your wrist that you would sense if it was the

only pressure of touch you were experiencing. But he has concurrently applied

other intense pressure of touch on your body, but not on your wrist, “swamping”

the wrist pressure by creating a high-contrast touch pressure elsewhere. This

high contrast takes the wrist pressure below perception.

 

Some psychology professors like to demonstrate the inadequacy of contrast-based

perception by having students put one hand in a bucket of hot water and one hand

in a bucket of cold water. They are then suddenly asked to remove both hands and

place them in a single bucket of room- temperature water. Now, with both hands

in the same water, one hand feels as if it has just been put in cold water and

the other hand feels as if it has just been placed in hot water. When one thus

sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast, where a simple temperature