apophenia means the perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena. Lexicurio rates it Familiar — a strength score of 35 out of 100.
apophenia is pronounced /æpəˈfiːni.ə/.
Why “apophenia” is a great word
APOPHENIA — [Noun] The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena. From German Apophänie, from Ancient Greek ἀποφαίνω (apophaínō, "to appear"), from ἀπο- (apo-, "away, off") and φαίνω (phaínō, "to appear, show"), coined in 1958 by German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad. Unlike pareidolia, which denotes seeing a specific, familiar image in randomness, or confirmation bias, which seeks evidence for an existing belief, apophenia is the subconscious, generative impulse to detect a signal in the noise. It is the gambler sensing a lucky streak in the dice, the patient tracing a prophecy to a stranger’s cough, or the conspiracy theorist weaving headlines and flight numbers into a sinister plot—the mind’s restless compulsion to narrate the terrifying silence of coincidence.
noun
- The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena.“Apophenia, Win had declared it, after due consideration and in his careful way: the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things. And had never, as far as Cayce knows, said another word about it.”