Observations placeholder
Koestler, Arthur - Janus - The nature of genius
Identifier
002679
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Einstein [from Problems of Scientific Revolution by Karl Popper]
The words of the language as they are written or spoken do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought … which relies on more or less clear images of a visual and some of a muscular type. It also seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit-case which can never be fully accomplished because consciousness is a narrow thing
A description of the experience
Arthur Koestler – Janus [Talking about pure blue sky inventions]
All the biological evidence indicates that such a radical re-shuffling operation requires the intervention of mental processes beneath the surface of conscious reasoning, in the twilight zones of awareness. In the decisive phase of the creative process the rational controls are relaxed and the creative person’s mind seems to regress from disciplined thinking to less specialised more fluid ways of mentation.
A frequent form of this, is the retreat from articulate verbal thinking to vague, visual imagery. There is a naïve popular belief that scientists arrive at their discoveries by reasoning in strictly rational, precise, verbal terms. The evidence … indicates that they do nothing of the sort … Jacques Hadamard’s famous enquiry among American mathematicians [showed that] nearly all .. relied on visual imagery of a vague, hazy nature.