Methinks it is like a weasel

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.

William Shakespeare: Hamlet; Act III; Scene II

I have to admit I originally called this blog: "Methinks 'tis like a weasel", but that isn't what Shakespeare actually wrote; I am reminded of Blackadder:

Edmund: Tell me Young crone, is this Putney?
Young Crone: That it be, that it be.
Edmund: "Yes it is". Not "that it be". You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me. I'm not a tourist...

E.H Gombrich uses a similar quotation (Shakespeare not Ben Elton) in his brilliant book Art and Illusion:

Sometimes we see a cloud that is dragonish,
A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air...

Anthony and Cleopatra

This is an example of what Gombrich called, "the beholder's share", in other words the faculty of projection. All perception is projection. We make guesses about what we are seeing: visual perception, like any other type of knowledge, is conjectural. We come up with a theory about what it is we are looking at, a doctor; a woman; Sarah....the accuracy of our guess will depend on our level of knowledge, attention and the amount of information available. A white coat and a stethoscope in the right context can make anyone a doctor, as many a con artist has shown, provided no overwhelmingly contradictory information is present; a comedy red nose or otherwise unkempt appearance might make us wonder and a hospital administrator would be able to apply more stringent tests, one would hope, than a recumbent patient.

It is the indistinct nature of clouds, fire or ink blots that allow us to mobilise our imitative faculty
there is enough information to project almost anything we can imagine, be it a weasel or the face of Elvis, yet the information is vague enough that we can ignore anything contradictory. The key word is imagine, we can only see what we already know. If you don't know what Elvis looks like you can no more recognise him in a cloud than you could in a waxworks museum or a line up. It is the fact that a great many people do know what Elvis looks like that makes him such a popular subject for pareidolia. Elvis isn't really in a cloud he is in your mind.

Comedian: I do impressions (putting on bland voice) "Good Morning, Mrs Jones". That was our postman.

Rory Bremner can only 'do' people you already know. However if you heard him do the unknown Mr. X then heard Mr. X you would probably be able to say, "Ah, that's who he was doing". Imitation, for comedic effect anyway, isn't generally intended to fool (John Culshaw's fake phone calls are an exception) but belong instead to the realm of parody. The effect a parody or any other form of representation has on your perception of the original subject is fascinating, who could hear Tony Blair without also hearing Bremner and/or Culshaw and expect him to say something like, "serious forehead".

Elvis may not be 'in' a cloud but is he 'in' a photograph? In once sense the Elvis-ness of any representation still resides in the mind of the viewer, be it a photograph, a drawing or looky-likey, the difference is that such representations are intended to 'be' Elvis. The further difference with a photograph is that there is a direct physical link between the subject and the photograph, though we have known since long before the days of photoshop that the camera can tell lies; though the lie is in the caption, real or implied, rather than the image itself. Photography, like a footprint or the Turin Shroud, is, or purports to be, an index of reality.

"Methinks it is like a weasel" was the phrase chosen by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker to demonstrate the power of cumulative selection.

I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?

Well it turns out, longer than the universe has been in existence. But using a computer program employing cumulative selection, that is keeping any variations that resemble in anyway the target sentence, the phrase was reached in 41 generations.

Impersonation and evolution meet in the topic of Batesian and Mullerian mimicry.