Donald D. Hoffman is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. His research on perception, evolution, and consciousness received the Troland Award of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution of the American Psychological Association, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and is the subject of his TED Talk, titled “Do we see reality as it is?”

"In some sense, kids don't have words early on. So they're just seeing without a filter of words. And I even have memories myself as a young child of just the wonder. I remember walking to kindergarten and seeing this bush with all sorts of flowers on it, and all these monarch butterflies on it. And I was completely transfixed. Here I was, five years old, I was looking at magic, and I knew I was looking at magic. And I stayed there so long that I was late to kindergarten. And I learned that I got in trouble for that. So taking time to enjoy the magic, I learned early on was something that would get me in trouble. Our growing up and becoming adults, we often learn to not give time to the magic because there is no time for it. You need to get onto the next thing."

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/

The Case Against Reality

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org