pareidolia

顔のように見える石がずらりと並んでします。

Japan's Museum Of The Many-Faced Rocks

The rock face museum has been featured on popular Japanese TV shows and has grown in popularity recently. The founder likely had some degree of pareidolia, a psychological tendency where the mind perceives human traits or familiar patterns where none exist. Most people see animals or faces in clouds and to those that collect rocks it’s inevitable to find human characteristics in them as well.

From a scientific and geologic standpoint, the humanizing features in rocks are due to weathering of certain minerals or imperfections within the rocks. Weathering and cracking often occur along planes of weakness, a sedimentary layer, existing fracture, or a filled vein. You can also get unusual weathering patters based on the type of mineralogy of the rock. For instance, quartz will be much less likely to weather as compared to micas due to its structural lattice.

（一部抜粋）

http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/11/21/japans-museum-many-faced-rocks/#85e5001643e5

今回取り上げる単語は、pareidolia /pærᵻˈdoʊliə/です。

『自然科学系英和大辞典』（第三版，小倉書店）で引いたところ、「幻覚，パレイドリア（変像）」と載っておりました。

インターネット辞書サイト The Skeptic’s Dictionaryによりますと、 “Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct.”と定義されておりました。（http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html）

実際に画像検索をしてみると、顔のようにみえる不可思議な画像が沢山出てきます。（Gomez）