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:: Discussion Forum
:: Big ideas in N-Psy and the creative process
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| Big ideas in N-Psy and the creative process |
Posted by Perry Sill on 10/06/2006 07:30
(700 words)
What are some of the simple, clear, attractive, powerful paradigms in N-Psy, though not necessarily yet proven? Would someone tell me what's on their mind in that regard?
I'm not up to date but there are a few in my mind. There's the part of D'Amasio's "somatic marker hypothesis" which suggests there's a specific area in the right prefrontal cortex we can associate with the system "unconscious". Another writer who escapes my mind right now (not Eccles?!) suggested a similar area in the left prefrontal cortex associated with the system "I" or the conscious mind. I think of Regina Pally's suggestion in a book article that a block in information transfer from the right to the left brain may be associated with the defense mechanism rationalization.
It seems to me there is too much of the approach of the journal "Neuropsychologia" in N-Psy, with a focus on specific detailed experiments rather than work on our guiding paradigms. Isn't it those paradigms which move us forward more than anything else?
A few weeks ago I watched a wonderful program about Einstein on PBS called "How I See the World" (1995) narrated by William Hurt. For me Einstein's example is an inspiration to anyone working on generating new ideas in a scientific discipline. Here are some snippets I found particularly relevant to this topic:
William Hurt (Narrator): He worked more like an artist than a scientist, arriving at a theory not so much by experimental deduction but confidently, by intuition.
Linus Pauling (Einstein colleague): The significance of Einstein's work is that [...] it was characterized by an astonishing amount of originality. New ideas are what are important about Einstein's theories.
William Hurt (Narrator): It would be 15 years before science would be able to verify his audacious vision. He waited confidently, calling the effort to provide proof "the detail work".
Abraham Pais (Einstein Colleague): Einstein had the faith that, to think that he was right, now why do you have such a faith, because it is simple, it is beautiful, and those are the criteria that were more important to him, as in fact to I think most scientists, more important than any other criteria one can think of.
Linus Pauling (Einstein colleague): I don't think that he was the first scientist to have had the feeling, the belief, that if you can set up a theory that is really beautiful in its simplicity and generality, then there is a good chance that this theory will turn out to be correct, this I think was the guiding principle for Einstein.
Abraham Pais (Einstein Colleague): One of his most important characteristics is that he was unafraid of time. You know, you work on a movie, I work on a physics problem, and where you've been busy for a year and you have not gotten anywhere, you say, well, you know, maybe it was not such a hot idea. Not Einstein, if he had an idea, that was the way he would be, that was the way he would follow, and he couldn't care how long it took.
I recently finished reading a wonderful book I'd recommend to anyone working on ideas in N-Psy -- "Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and their Discoveries" by Stanley Finger (2000). It presents short scientific biographies of some two dozen scientists throughout history who made important discoveries about the brain. Another book I'd recommend which is surely familiar to many N-Psy forum members is "The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry" by Henri Ellenberger. He investigates the nature of what he calls the "creative illness" in several early investigators of the unconscious mind. As I recall he suggests certain common traits in those who had suffered a creative illness and then successfully published their ideas, including at first a sense of intense isolation, self-doubt, a belief their new idea would be of great benefit to mankind, a kind of euphoria when it was published, and finally a sense of inner peace. He suggested Freud suffered from such a creative illness from approximately 1895 to 1900.
Perry Sill
brainskew@hotmail.com
Cincinnati, Ohio
October 6, 2006
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