Perceiving Change with Continuity: Morphologic Patterns in the Fossil Record Using an Analogy

The Belgian inventor and scientist Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801-1883) pioneered one of the first devices aimed at making pictures that seemed to move. Plateau studied various optical illusions that seemed to result from the persistence of the image on the retina of the eye after the image had passed from view. In 1832, he built an apparatus consisting of a flat wheel on which were sequential images of a dancer dancing. When the wheel was turned, the dancer was “seen” to execute the dance. Plateau chose a revealing name for his invention. He called it a “phenakistiscope,” meaning “deceitful view” (Figure 1). The images did not move, but they looked like they did.