Optical illusions: the science of visual illusions

Historical Significance: Alfred Paul Seckel (1958 - 2015) was an American authority on visual and other types of sensory illusions, and how they related to perception. Seckel collected, researched, and experimented with illusions to understand what conditions are necessary for them to work. Throughout the 1980s, Al Seckel was active in the Freethought movement. In this capacity he authored a number of articles and pamphlets. He also edited two books on the English rationalist philosopher Bertrand Russell. In 1983, Seckel and John Edwards co-created the Darwin fish design, which was first sold as a bumper sticker and on T-shirts in 1983-84 by a southern California group called Atheists United. Seckel was affiliated with California Institute of Technology vision scientist Shinsuke Shimojo and computational neuroscientist Christof Koch.[11][12][13] Seckel has written a number of books on visual illusions and has given invited talks at many universities around the world, and at many prestigious conferences, His book, Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, and the Artists of Optical Illusion (2004), collects the work of many prominent international visual illusion artists, including among others Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), Salvador Dal? (1904-1989), M. C. Escher (1898-1972), and Rex Whistler (1905-1944). His book The Art of Optical Illusions placed first on the American Library Association's "Top 10 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers" list for 2001.[15] Some of his other books on optical illusions and perception, which focus more on the science that mediates illusions and perception, have been used in college courses on visual perception.