Is "sudden illumination" the result of the activation of a creative center at the human brain?

Abstract

IS "SUDDEN ILLUMINATION" THE RESULT OF THE ACTIVATION OF A CREATIVE CENTER AT THE HUMAN BRAIN? JOSE LUIS RODRIGUEZ-FERNANDEZ* Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. (Happy he who has been able to know the causes of things.)—Virgil, Geórgicas II, 490 It has been hypothesized that human creative thinking is the result of (a) the ability to gradually structure a vaguely defined problem, (b)extensive background knowledge in potentially relevant areas, and (c)continuing preoccupation with a problem over considerable periods of time, a process that, obviously, requires strong motivation [1—6].1 Given these conditions it is likely that, if the problem is approachable,2 then a solution, which will shed light on a previous question, can be reached. In most cases the final period in the process of searching for a creative solution is marked by a sudden insight, a few intense seconds in which a final "flash" lights at the human brain and a creative solution to a The author expresses appreciation to Dr. Avshalom C. Elitzur for encouraging him to write this essay; to several members of the Weizmann Institute of Science for their suggestions and comments; and to computer scientists A. Sobelman and Dr. V. S. MartinezZorzano for their penetrating suggestions. *Address: 2 Portsoken Street. 404 Marlyn Lodge, London El 8RB, Great Britain. 'Aristotle considered the conditions to find the truth: "now there are in the soul three things which determine or influence an action and the discovery of truth: sensation, the reasoning power, desire or appetition" [30]. The scholastic philosopher Robert Groseteste (1170—1253), founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, envisaged, as Aristotle had, a "theory of principles explaining repeatedly observed facts being reached by a sudden leap of intuition or scientific imagination," in addition to an orderly process by which the causal principles of things may be reached [31]. 2Planck has defined "phantom problems, as those which lack any solution because either there exist no indisputable method to unravel it or, because considered in the cold light of reason, it turns out to be absolutely void of all meaning" [32].© 1995 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/95/3901-0939$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 39,2 ¦ Winter 1996 | 287 problem is clearly visualized in the mind [1-3].3 In this essay I discuss the possible significance of this very final period of a discovery in creative thinking from a neurological point of view.4 Sudden Illumination and the Creative Moment: Historical Perspective There are several historically documented instances which show the involvement of this sudden phenomenon of the mind in creative breakthroughs . We are told that the Greek mathematician Archimedes suddenly found a solution to the problem of calculating the proportions of gold and silver in a crown while he was entering his bath [7]. Pythagoras had the idea of reducing the musical sound to number during one of his walks: "One day, as he passed a blacksmith's shop, his ear was attracted by the apparently regular musical intervals of the sound that came from the anvil. Finding that the hammers were of different weights, he concluded that the tones depend upon musical ratios" [8]. Similar experiences have been reported at the moment of important discoveries by other mathematicians and physicists like, for instance, Newton, Hadamard, Helmholtz, Poincaré, Kekule, and Einstein [2, 9-13, 17]. In biology the cases are so numerous that writing about all of them would run the risk of boring the reader. A recent and colorful example is the recollection of the discovery of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique of extraordinary importance today in molecular genetics [16]. Its author, Kary B. Mullís, describes how "such a revelation came to me one Friday night in April, 1983," while he was driving surrounded by an air "saturated with moisture and the scent of flowering buckeye." Thinking about a problem on DNA-sequencing experiments , "I was suddenly jolted by a realization: the strands of DNA in the target and the extended oligonucleotides would have the same sequences . In effect, the mock reaction would have double the number of DNA targets in the sample." Curious...