A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight

[Celebration]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124535297048828601.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

It happened to Archimedes in the bath. To Descartes it took place in bed while watching flies on his ceiling. And to Newton it occurred in an orchard, when he saw an apple fall. Each had a moment of insight. To Archimedes came a way to calculate density and volume; to Descartes, the idea of coordinate geometry; and to Newton, the law of universal gravity.


In our fables of science and discovery, the crucial role of insight is a cherished theme. To these epiphanies, we owe the concept of alternating electrical current, the discovery of penicillin, and on a less lofty note, the invention of Post-its, ice-cream cones, and Velcro. The burst of mental clarity can be so powerful that, as legend would have it, Archimedes jumped out of his tub and ran naked through the streets, shouting to his startled neighbors: "Eureka! I've got it."

.....snip....................


Daydreaming is more demanding than it seems, researchers reported in "Experience Sampling During fMRI Reveals Default Network and Executive System Contributions to Mind Wandering" in Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.


..........snip............

"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."

She suspects that the flypaper of an unfocused mind may trap new ideas and unexpected associations more effectively than methodical reasoning. That may create the mental framework for new ideas. "You can see regions of these networks becoming active just prior to people arriving at an insight," she says.

[lindisfarne]

1. Penicillin's discovery wasn't insight. It was pure luck - and having the knowledge to recognize

what that luck had produced. What does the WSJ know about science? About as much as a creatinist.

[SharonAnn]

3. The knowledge to recognize it was Insight!

[lindisfarne]

4. Simple knowledge is not "insight". Insight definitely requires knowledge, but it is generally

thought to require more than that. Exactly what is the tricky part.

If everyone with knowledge could easily see the answer to a problem, it wouldn't be considered "insight".

[Celebration]

5. Yes, I agree with that

Penicillin discovery was both luck and insight. Someone with no insight would have probably just dismissed it.

[ensho]

2. and kids of all ages need time alone to think and imagine

keeping a child busy 24/7 is not a good thing.

[glitch]

8. Scares the hell out of me to see people raising their kids this way.

Especially when it involves a reliance (dependence?) on authority figures.

[LaurenG]

6. I think daydreaming should be encouraged as an active problem solving skill set!

Great article and thanks for posting this Celebration!

:kick: and rec'ed.

[Kind of Blue]

7. Thank you, Celebration, for posting!

That's my method of problem solving, relaxed and/or in a positive frame of mind. I think that's why I bake and paint so much :rofl: It clears the mind and Eureka, a solution arises or a flash of an event to happen. I'm glad the writer included more articles.
:kick:

[juno jones]

9. To this I would add the 'dicovery' of the DNA helix.

Purportedly grokked while the originator (cannot remember his name right off, bad girl) was tripping on acid.

A lot of scientific breakthroughs seem to be intuitive.

[caraher]

10. where did you hear that story?

I don't think there's a lick of truth in it. The story of working out the structure of DNA is pretty well-documented and involved no tripping...