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Perception
Richard Gregory Scientist
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Over 30 years ago actually now, I started a journal which is called "Perception". We were quite lucky actually capturing the name, I mean just a simple word like that for the name of a new journal is quite something but anyway we did and I was actually approached, very peculiar this, by two publishers within a month, one very grand publisher and one completely unknown, very, very small publisher, both suggesting that I start a journal on perception. We hadn’t thought of a name but on the subject of perception so I had about two or three weeks thinking about this and I went for the unknown, small man, and he’s called Adam Gelbtuch and I’ve never regretted this choice actually. He’s a small London publisher and it’s been a sort of close relationship with no problems and it’s the one thing I’ve ever done in my life that’s had no major problems and as I’ve got older I have to confess I’ve hived off all the boring bits to other people so I remain editor in chief, according to the front page, actually I sit back and everybody else does all the work. But actually doing this has been really nice because one’s kept in touch with people all over the world, one, you know, has a little bit of a say in what gets a boost. Every now and again we do a special edition to support some particular new way of thinking of some such thing, and it’s been a total pleasure. So I think, in life, a funny decision, when to take on a commitment like that, I mean it is a huge commitment. I write an editorial essay for it every month which is actually quite a lot of work really. I read quite a lot of the papers, not all of them, I have to confess, and when a problem arises, you know, I often have to look into it so it’s a bit of a responsibility and a journal is important and it’s survived for centuries in libraries. I mean it’s going to be there for scholars to look at centuries ahead whereas books are ephemeral, very few books actually continue for any length of time. Journals continue forever. But this is something I’m glad I took on actually. It’s fun, it’s nice, and it’s good when you can pick up a young person, particularly if they make a mess of writing the thing up, instead of somebody rejecting, we often actually rewrite it. If it’s somebody from another language, the Japanese, for example, do excellent work in perception but of course they have linguistic problems many times, instead of simply rejecting the paper because it looks like a muddle, we sometimes take a lot of trouble and really rewrite it, work out exactly what they wanted to say, and then publish it, you know, in what we would call good English sort of thing, so that I’ve enjoyed doing very, very much.

The late British psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol, Richard Gregory (1923-2010), is well known for his work on perception, the psychology of seeing and his love of puns. In 1978 he founded The Exploratory, an applied science centre in Bristol – the first of its kind in the UK. He also designed and directed the Special Senses Laboratory at Cambridge which worked on the perceptual problems of astronauts, and published many books including 'The Oxford Companion to the Mind', 'Eye and Brain' and 'Mind in Science'.

Listeners: Sally Duensing Adam Hart-Davis

Sally Duensing currently is involved in perception exhibition work and research on science and society dialogue programmes and is working with informal learning research graduate students and post-docs at King's College, London. In 2000 she held the Collier Chair, a one-year invited professorship in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Bristol, England. Prior to this, for over 20 years she was at the Exploratorium, a highly interactive museum of science, art and perception in San Francisco where she directed a variety of exhibition projects primarily in fields of perception and cognition including a large exhibition on biological, cognitive and cultural aspects of human memory.

Born on 4 July 1943, Adam Hart-Davis is a freelance photographer, writer, and broadcaster. He has won various awards for both television and radio. Before presenting, Adam spent 5 years in publishing and 17 years at Yorkshire Television, as researcher and then producer of such series as Scientific Eye and Arthur C Clarke's World of Strange Powers. He has read several books, and written about 25. His latest books are Why does a ball bounce?, Taking the piss, Just another day, and The cosmos: a beginner's guide. He has written numerous newspaper and magazine articles. He is a keen supporter of the charities WaterAid, Practical Action, Sustrans, and the Joliba Trust. A Companion of the Institution of Lighting Engineers, an Honorary Member of the British Toilet Association, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Dyers and Colourists, and Merton College Oxford, and patron of a dozen charitable organizations, Adam has collected thirteen honorary doctorates, The Horace Hockley Award from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, a Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Medal from the Institute of Incorporated Engineers, and the 1999 Gerald Frewer memorial trophy of the Council of Engineering Designers. He has no car, but three cycles, which he rides slowly but with enthusiasm.

Duration: 3 minutes, 2 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2006

Date story went live: 02 October 2009