Five For Your Hive: Moment of Illumination
Four-phase approach, Einstein, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Sir Ken Robinson, Poems
Moment of Illumination
How are ideas formed in the mind of a scientist? What types of logical procedures do they use? Theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi recounts a simple strategy used by French mathematicians Henri Poincaré and Jacques Hadamard in A Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems—a four-phase approach while formulating a theorem. “It begins,” Parisi writes, “with a preparatory stage in which the problem is studied and researched, with unsuccessful attempts at solutions with no progress.” Second, “there is a period of incubation in which the problem is abandoned” for a good while, letting it rest at the back of your mind. Third, this incubation ends suddenly with a “moment of illumination” that often “occurs in a situation unrelated to the problem you’re trying to solve”. This might happen when conversing with a friend about topics with no connection to it. Last, "the general way to tackle the problem” will reveal itself, and the solution eventually derived. Pausing one’s concentration and allowing ideas to settle—to prepare the mind for the moment of illumination—is a common theme in the universe of creativity.
The Tale of The Falling Man
Einstein was sitting in his office at Bern when all a sudden, he had an epiphany: If a person falls freely, he will not feel his own weight. The theory of relativity was not an abrupt realisation, but born from a conversation incubated in his mind. Story was, a house painter was decorating the outside of Einstein’s apartment when suddenly he lost balance and fell backwards to the ground. Several days later, Einstein remarked to his neighbour: “Who knows what the poor house painter must have been thinking as he fell,” and his neighbour replied, “I spoke to him, and he said that as he fell he did not feel as if he was still on the chair, almost as if there was no force of gravity.” Dubbed as “the tale of the falling man”, “this realization,” Walter Isaacson writes in Einstein: His Life and Universe, this moment of illumination, “launched him on an arduous eight-year effort to generalize his special theory of relativity and impelled impelled [him] toward a theory of gravitation”.
Seven Days A Week
Charles Schulz, the man famous for bringing to life Charlie Brown and Snoopy, was always asked the same question. “I’m often asked where I get my ideas,” Schulz writes in My Life With Charlie Brown. “They come from sitting in a room alone and drawing seven days a week, as I’ve done for 40 years.” Mundane, boring work, every single day. What Schulz was really doing was incubating—letting the ideas form and build on itself—and preparing for the golden one to emerge.
Back of our Minds
According to Sir Ken Robinson, being creative is not a purely intellectual process— not only about thinking. It’s about feeling. “Creativity,” Robinson writes in Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, “often taps into areas of consciousness that are not regulated by conscious thought.” Our ideas—the best ones—unconsciously come to mind without conscious thinking. It comes like a moment of illumination, where the mind snaps and the bulb lights. Therefore, to achieve this momentary epiphany, Robinson says, “it is often better to sleep on a problem or put it to the ‘back of our minds’ where our subconscious mulls it over in ways that we can’t control and may deliver a solution to us unbidden.” It may be worthwhile to do unrelated things—walk your dog, catch a nap, play the violin—then come back later with the answers already in your mind.
How Does The Idea of a Poem Come?
Einstein invited Saint-John Perse to Princeton to find out how the poet worked. “How does the idea of a poem come?” Einstein asked, to which the poet replied, “It’s the same for a man of science…it is a sudden illumination, almost a rapture.” So, how are ideas formed in the mind of a scientist? A cartoonist? A human being? They prepare, then they incubate. They let their minds settle and rest. They approach the problem with a fresh mind and new pair of lenses, to prepare for the moment where right the right idea and logic collide.