Al Seckel (born 1958) is an American authority on visual and other types of sensory illusions, and how they relate to perception. Seckel collects, researches, and experiments with illusions to understand what conditions are necessary for them to work, with particular focus on how they can be explained in terms of the electrophysiology and neuroanatomy of the retinal and cortical networks that mediate visual perception.
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Throughout the 1980s, Al Seckel was active in the freethought movement. In this capacity he authored a number of articles and pamphlets. He also edited two books on the English rationalist philosopher Bertrand Russell. In 1983, Seckel and John Edwards co-created the Darwin fish design, which was first sold as a bumper sticker and on T-shirts in 1983-84 by a southern California group called Atheists United.[1] Chris Gilman, a Hollywood prop maker, manufactured the first plastic car ornaments in 1990, and licensed the design to Evolution Design of Austin, Texas.[2] When the emblem evolved into a million-dollar business, Evolution Design began threatening to sue distributors of look-alike and derivative products (like a Jewish "gefilte" fish). Seckel in turn sued Evolution Design for copyright infringement. Seckel did not seek royalties, but wanted Evolution Design to allow free use of the design by anyone authorized by him. Although Seckel was able to produce examples of the design that predated Gilman's claimed 1990 copyright date, the suit was settled when it became apparent that Seckel and Edwards had allowed the design to fall into public domain.[1]
In 1984, Seckel started the Southern California Skeptics (SCS), and became a spokesperson for science and its relationship to the paranormal.[3] SCS co-sponsored and produced a monthly series of lectures held monthly at the California Institute of Technology, other meetings were also held on the campus of Cal State Fullerton, that explained alleged paranormal phenomena such as Extra-sensory perception and firewalking.[4][5][6] Seckel also wrote about investigating various supernatural claims from the scientific perspective. One such investigation, led by James Randi, concerned faith healer Peter Popoff, who used a hearing transmitter to give the impression that he was psychic and hearing private information from God.[7] Seckel also wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times and the Santa Monica Monthly News from 1987–1989, explaining apparently amazing or paranormal phenomena in scientific terms.[8]
In 1987, SCS and Seckel helped sponsor an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Edwards v. Aguillard, challenging the constitutionality of a Louisiana law calling for the classroom inclusion of creation science.[9] The brief was written by a group of attorneys led by Jeffrey Lehman (later president of Cornell University), and SCS board member and Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann recruited the signatures of 72 Nobel Laureates, 17 State Academies of Science, and 7 other scientific organizations.[6] It argued that "creation science" was counter not only to the study of evolution, but to all sciences. The court decided a 7-2 vote that so-called "creation-science" was in fact, religion disguised as science, deliberately construed as such in order to circumvent the consititutional prohibitions of keeping Church and State separate, especially in the public science classroom. All of the opinions cited the brief, including the dissents.[10]
In late 1990, due to a sudden onset of leukemia, Seckel had to enter the hospital, where his health quickly deteriorated. The Southern California Skeptics folded. In 1991, Michael Shermer started a new Los Angeles-area skeptical group called The Skeptics Society, using SCS's mailing list and involving many of its original board members. Seckel started to recover from his illness in 1994, turning his full attention to studying the human brain, specifically vision and how it relates to perception.
Seckel collects, researches, and experiments with visual and other types of sensory illusions. Up through 2005, Seckel was affiliated with California Institute of Technology vision scientist Shinsuke Shimojo and computational neuroscientist Christof Koch.[11][12][13] Seckel has written a number of books on visual illusions and has given invited talks at many universities around the world, and at many prestigious conferences, including TED and the World Economic Forum, Davos.[14]
His book, Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, and the Artists of Optical Illusion (2004), collects the work of many prominent international visual illusion artists, including among others Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593), Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), M. C. Escher (1898–1972), and Rex Whistler (1905–1944). His book The Art of Optical Illusions placed first on the American Library Association's "Top 10 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers" list for 2001.[15] Some of his other books on optical illusions and perception, which focus more on the science that mediates illusions and perception, have been used in college courses on visual perception.
In 1994, Seckel designed and put up the first free interactive website on illusions[12][16] and has developed visual illusion installation for museums around the world.[11] Seckel has also written a series of optical illusion picture books for children including Ambiguous Illusions (2005), Action Optical Illusions (2005) and Stereo Optical Illusions (2006). Seckel wrote a monthly column on illusions for National Geographic Kids magazine.
In 2005, Seckel was one of the judges at the first "Best Visual Illusion of the Year" contest held in A Coruña, Spain at the European Conference on Visual Perception.[17] In 2006 he was listed as one of the contest's sponsors.
During the late 1990s, Seckel and rare-book dealer Jeremy Norman purchased, collected, and organized the original papers of many of the pioneers in the history of the development of molecular biology, so that these papers would be preserved together for scholarly use.[18] At the time they were collected, the papers had no apparent market value and institutions were not interested in keeping the archives of their retired scientists. After the Wellcome Trust purchased the papers of Francis Crick for $2.4 million, Norman offered his collection for sale piecemeal through Christie's. Seckel brought forth a lawsuit against Norman and Christies to keep the collection in one piece. A settlement was reached where Norman through Christies was allowed to sell the collection in its entirety to preserve free access to scholars.[19] Former colleagues and associates of Watson and Crick attempted to raise the asking price of $3.2 million so the collection could be donated to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where Watson and Crick had done their pioneering research, but were unsuccessful. The collection was eventually acquired by molecular biologist J. Craig Venter, who has said he will keep the collection at the J. Craig Venter Institute.[20]
Seckel has one daughter Elizabeth, born in 1987. His father is an artist and his mother (Ruth Schonthal) is a classical composer. He has two older brothers. He was born in New Rochelle, New York. and now resides in Malibu, California.