ZKV 108

 

ZKV 108

 

Megalopsia: a visual illusion in which an object appears to be larger than it is in reality.  Also called macropsia.

 

I found the word MEGALOPSI hidden in a line of a letter puzzle (bogstavkassen) in a Danish newspaper yesterday. In this puzzle, horizontal lines of nine letters contain letters of apparently hidden words for which clues of varying levels of difficulty are supplied. 

 

One thing I immediately noticed. Megalopsia appears to be larger word than macropsia is  – or at least longer. But even before that, a question mark flashed away in my brain. How does one measure megalopsia? Let’s say I am given a ruler marked in centimetres (since I live in Denmark). I am told there are 30 centimetres on the ruler. Fine. Let’s say I see everything twice as large as it is. Then the ruler is twice as large as it is. And each centimetre is twice as large as it is. So where is the problem?

 

The optician tells me something in my eyes is twice as large as it should be. Fine, I reply, I don’t doubt you are good at your profession. But apparently my eyes are twice as good as yours are. So maybe you ought to trust me when I say that your world is only half the size it is in reality. 

 

The vast majority of humans see the world as I do, he replies. Is that democracy? Can the majority never be wrong by definition?, is my query. For that smacks of megalomania. But, unfortunately, I am unable to define what that is.