Eureka experience

Before X discuss the conclusion to which this premise leads me, let me discuss an equally Important second characteristic of the Innovator. This other characteristic is related to the "Eureka" experience, the "sudden flash of genius" reported of innovators, inventors and other creative people. You remember that Archimedes was In his bath when suddenly, as If with a blinding flash of insight, he saw the solution to his problem of the golden crown. We are told that Isaac Newton was In his garden and, observing an apple fall, suddenly saw the universal law of gravitation In all Its majesty. 

But let us go to an innovator to tell us of his "Eureka experience." His experience is worthy of our attention, since James Watt is one of the most creative Innovators In history. 

While courting Stephanie, in the winter of 1861-62 Kekule began to work on the first installment of the second volume of his textbook. If we are to believe the famous story he told in 1890, it was probably about this time, in the early months of 1862, that another eureka experience occurred. 

Both sets of reminiscences recount a series of eureka experiences, that is, sudden illuminations that occur on occasions that are unconnected with the hard work on the problem at hand. Such phenomena are suggestive of the existence of unconscious cognition. Poincar mentioned that these kinds of episodes happened to him not just once, but with some regularity he specifically noted that the kinds of episodes that he described as associated with this particular series of discoveries were repeated throughout his career. He also commented that he often had ideas "come to me in the morning or evening in my bed while in... 

Let us therefore accept that eureka experiences are common (that is, general) to the human species, and possibly even common (that is, frequent) in the lives of many individuals. One could suggest explanations for this phenomenon that do not imply that it is the result of productive processing by the unconscious mind. It could simply be, for example, that ideas sometimes may come more readily to a mind that is in a state of relaxation or, alternatively, that intensive directed mental work can sometimes result in the channeling of thought in an unproductive direction, so progress is made precisely when the directed character of the work ceases. But these hypotheses do not seem to match very well the circumstantial details of the best-studied cases. ... 

Hadamard Psychology of Invention, 1-20) summarized the results of questionnaires and polls on this subject, all of which support the frequency and wide distribution of eureka experiences. 

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