Today, we try to quiet a conversation. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
The questioner asked me, "You
said we have to be receptive to the passing idea --
the idea we catch out of the corner of our eye.
Well, how do I get into a mental state where I can
do that?"
That really is the 64-dollar question, isn't it! I
said, "We need to turn off the endless conversation
running in our heads." Easily said, but that's also
difficult. How many times have we all sat down to
work on a nagging problem by formulating it in
words or equations -- and then wound up running in
circles?
The great nineteenth-century psychologist William James used to argue with
his Harvard colleagues over whether thought was
possible without words. He knew perfectly well it
was, but many of his colleagues did not. For them,
thinking had to be verbal.
We do have to work systematically when we're
wrestling with something that yields to process --
like a calculation. But that's death when we look
for a new idea. New ideas always enter from the
corner of our eye. If they didn't, they wouldn't be
new.
Through the ages we've found many means for turning
off our own mental noise. The Buddhists ask us to
block out the racket by focusing upon a minimal
contemplation object. Various Christians use
repetitive rosaries, walking a Labyrinth, or
singing plainchant. Hindus often chant the name of
a god or gods, over and over. But they all
provide a subdued focus that overrides our mental
chatter.
When the Romantic poets looked for a creative
mental state, they found it in the brief period of
reverie that we enter between waking and sleeping.
For sleep will not arrive until all our formulating
has been stilled. A very creative colleague tells
me that he does some of his best work before sleep,
simply because he's separated from his pencil and
paper.
I too can say, categorically, that I don't deduce
new ideas. And I'll bet you know the same thing
from your own experience. I can trace all my really
fresh ideas to such moments -- a concert where the
music was good enough to put me at ease, yet not
quite interesting enough to awaken my analytical
interest.
States of tedium can often be useful. Driving a
car, for example, takes just enough focus to break
up any serious analytical attack on a problem. I
put the question to another creative friend at
lunch. He said that a tedious seminar often
provides him with a fine spur to his best thinking.
But that friend also stressed the importance of
pencil and paper. It should be completely obvious
that formal work is crucial. Process is like the
steppingstones across a stream. Solidity has to be
there, but we cannot get across without making
unaided leaps.
An interesting corollary question might be, "Who
among us doesn't wish for a week of uninterrupted
thought!" I have a sinking feeling that, if I ever
find that state of grace, I'll end up spending the
time sharpening pencils and getting ready
to think.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2003 by John H.
Lienhard.
