Famous Illusions

Famous Illusions

For centuries magicians have been fooling audiences with false reality. Many scientists suggest that cavemen drawings may have even been a form of magic as they believed that drawing their hunting trips will cause them to come to life. Obviously this did not work however it allowed the cavemen to have some self confidence when they went hunting.

During the middle-ages any sort of magic or conjuring was considered sinful due to religion portraying it as evil witchery however by the 17th century the interest in magic was minimal. This was mainly due to scientific advances, that  were able to disprove such illusions.

So now, magic is just a form of entertainment however some still believe it to be reality.


An act that I have been personally interested in recently is Penn & Teller as they invent cunning ways of fooling the audience as well as offering abstract ways of thinking. 

There's one trick in particular that interests me as it seems to resemble Plato's analogy of the cave, it's an illusion called 'Shadows' which Teller himself invented and executes so well: 

"People would fool themselves just to make that image be real to them" - Penn Jillette 

So it seems that illusions may be created by the self as well as the environment - causing us to live in a eternal loop of false reality. 

(Source(s): http://library.thinkquest.org/J0111851/history_of_magic.htm)