OPTICS

There were very strong clues throughout the series about illusion (there was even a boat in the marina by that name.)

The science of illusion is quite simple but with complex ramifications. Human eyes skim and our brains tend to jump to conclusions. The act of seeing something begins with light rays bouncing off an object. These rays enter the eyes through the cornea, which is the clear, outer portion of the eye. The cornea then bends or refracts the light rays as they go through the black part of your eye, the pupil. The iris — the colored portion of your eye — contracts or expands to change the amount of light that goes through.

Finally, the light rays go through the lens of your eye, which changes shape to target the light towards your retina, the thin tissue at the back of your eye that is full of nerve cells that detect light. The cells in the retina, called rods and cones, turn the light into electrical signals. That gets sent through the optic nerve, where the brain interprets them.

The entire process takes about one-tenth of a second, but that's long enough to make your brain confused sometimes, conclude neurobiologists.

By arranging a series of patterns, images, and colors strategically, or playing with the way an object is lit, the brain can be tricked into seeing something that isn't there. How you perceive proportion can also be altered depending on the known objects that are nearby. It's not magic — it's an optical illusion.

How can smart individual be "tricked" into seeing what is not there? Evolutionary scientists believe that this is part of a basic instinct of survival - - - the need to instantly recognize the environment and threats and act accordingly.  Early man was not at the top of the food chain. Large animals would attack human beings. When a mammal is a target of a hunter, it needs to develop sensory traits to help level the playing field. Optics was one of those means to detect predators.

 But the information had to be acted upon almost instanteously. And that is where human memory comes into play. If a person has had a similar experience, the brain will store important cues for instant access in case of danger assessment. The better survivors trained their mind and memory to act fast and correctly when in danger.

The application to LOST is apparent. Modern human beings have lost most of their survival instincts. This is because humans evolved into the top predator in most environments. The ability to fashion tools and weapons, strong shelters, and live in communities helped propel that change. But if the roles were reversed, as in the series, the ability to make tools, weapons, shelter, band together and quickly assess danger were all critical to the characters' survival. Or it should have been.

But with the introduction of supernatural or magical elements into the story line, the pure science of human behavior was diluted or removed from the story line equations of cause and effect. The characters were more likely tricked into seeing things that were not present; they were more apt to be manipulated due to their emotional faults than present reality. The island itself could have been a mad creation of a trickster who used the characters like lab rats running a complex maze. And the characters keen sense of believing what they were seeing would have been their ultimate downfall.