Chapter IX: The Spark and the Flame
This chapter is about other phenomena that may go together with the Eureka act. These include false inspirations, premature linkages, snowblindness, and the dawn of language.
False Inspirations
“A false inspiration is a kind of inspired blunder which presents itself in the guise of an original synthesis, and carries the same subjective conviction.” (page 212)
“Imagination is at once the source of all hope and inspiration but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair.” (page 213)
- Beveridge
On verifiability…”Thus verifiability is a matter of degrees, and neither the artist, nor the scientist who tries to break new ground, can hope ever to achieve absolute certainty.” (page 214)
Premature Linkages
“Thus the premature integration of matrices which are not yet sufficiently consolidated has in some cases a wholesome effect, by stimulating more mature attempts in the same direction; while in other cases it acts as a deterrent and carries the stigma of superstition or “un-scientific thinking.””
Snowblindness
“It’s the remarkable form of blindness which often prevents the original thinker from perceiving the meaning and significance of his own discovery.” (page 216)
“The history of human thought is full of triumphant eureka’s; but only rarely do we hear of the anti-climaxes, the missed opportunities, which leave no trace.” (page 217)
Examples
- Copernicus (ellipse)
- Kepler (universal gravity)
- Galileo (comets)
- Professor Brucke (observing the illuminated retina - ophthalmoscope)
- Freud (neuron theory)
The Dawn of Language
This refers to a kind of diluted Eureka process, where a child is learning that all the things have names. This is a gradual process of discovery that happens through time.
Empirical induction: “some things have names ergo I assume that all things have names.”
False Inspirations
“A false inspiration is a kind of inspired blunder which presents itself in the guise of an original synthesis, and carries the same subjective conviction.” (page 212)
“Imagination is at once the source of all hope and inspiration but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair.” (page 213)
- Beveridge
On verifiability…”Thus verifiability is a matter of degrees, and neither the artist, nor the scientist who tries to break new ground, can hope ever to achieve absolute certainty.” (page 214)
Premature Linkages
“Thus the premature integration of matrices which are not yet sufficiently consolidated has in some cases a wholesome effect, by stimulating more mature attempts in the same direction; while in other cases it acts as a deterrent and carries the stigma of superstition or “un-scientific thinking.””
Snowblindness
“It’s the remarkable form of blindness which often prevents the original thinker from perceiving the meaning and significance of his own discovery.” (page 216)
“The history of human thought is full of triumphant eureka’s; but only rarely do we hear of the anti-climaxes, the missed opportunities, which leave no trace.” (page 217)
Examples
- Copernicus (ellipse)
- Kepler (universal gravity)
- Galileo (comets)
- Professor Brucke (observing the illuminated retina - ophthalmoscope)
- Freud (neuron theory)
The Dawn of Language
This refers to a kind of diluted Eureka process, where a child is learning that all the things have names. This is a gradual process of discovery that happens through time.
Empirical induction: “some things have names ergo I assume that all things have names.”
Chapter X: The Evolution of Ideas
In this chapter, Köestler explores the evolution of ideas. He starts the chapter by mentioning George Sarton’s theory that progress con only be stated in the field of science. Köestler explicitly says he is opposed to this view and later explains why. His main topics in this chapter are separations and reintegrations of matrices, a history of twenty-six centuries of science, the concept of a state of creative anarchy (there’s no defined gradual or continuous progress of science), the importance of connecting matrices*, the thinking cap (change in perspective of data with new theoretical frames), the pathology of thought (transmission of collective matrices of science from one generation to the next), the limits of confirmation (Popper and the fact that you can only non-disconfirm a theory, but cannot prove it), the fashions in science** (a “new look” because of a fashionable hat but not of a thinking cap), and finally about the boundaries of science (the limits of finding the truth through science).
*”The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed unlike.” (page 230)
- Jacob Bronowski
**”Controversy is the yeast which keeps science in lively fermentation.” (page 246)
Summary
The Cycle of Discoveries
“The history of science shows recurrent cycles of differentiation and specialization followed by reintegration’s on a higher level; from unity to variety to more generalized patterns of unity-in-variety. The process also has certain analogies with biological evolution – such as wastefulness, sudden mutations, the struggle for survival between competing theories.” (page 252)
“The various phases in the historic cycle correspond to the characteristic stages of individual discovery: the periods of creative anarchy to the period of incubation; the emergence of the new synthesis to the bisociative act… Each revolutionary historic advance has a creative and a destructive aspect… Lastly, the process of verification and elaboration…until it gets blocked and the cycle starts again.” (page 253)
“Thus the progress of science is neither continuous, nor cumulative in the strict sense.” (page 253)
“No experimental test can provide the scientist eith absolute certainty; and the difference in the “verifiability” between various types of scientific and artistic statements is a matter of degree.” (page 253-254)
*”The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed unlike.” (page 230)
- Jacob Bronowski
**”Controversy is the yeast which keeps science in lively fermentation.” (page 246)
Summary
The Cycle of Discoveries
“The history of science shows recurrent cycles of differentiation and specialization followed by reintegration’s on a higher level; from unity to variety to more generalized patterns of unity-in-variety. The process also has certain analogies with biological evolution – such as wastefulness, sudden mutations, the struggle for survival between competing theories.” (page 252)
“The various phases in the historic cycle correspond to the characteristic stages of individual discovery: the periods of creative anarchy to the period of incubation; the emergence of the new synthesis to the bisociative act… Each revolutionary historic advance has a creative and a destructive aspect… Lastly, the process of verification and elaboration…until it gets blocked and the cycle starts again.” (page 253)
“Thus the progress of science is neither continuous, nor cumulative in the strict sense.” (page 253)
“No experimental test can provide the scientist eith absolute certainty; and the difference in the “verifiability” between various types of scientific and artistic statements is a matter of degree.” (page 253-254)
Chapter XI: Science and Emotion
Three Character-Types
We have talked about The Jester, The Scientist, and The Artist, but now we would focus on another three character-types of The Scientist. These types are:
1. The Benevolent Magician
· These names are legends, admired and worshipped by the public which had only the vaguest notion of their achievements.
· In common with the Artist, both are unselfishly devoted to lofty tasks.
· He is next to the imaginative Artist.
· He symbolizes the self-transcending element in the s
· Examples: Pythagoras, Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Franklin, Pasteur, Einstein, Freud.
2. The Mad Professor
· Practices black instead of white magic for the sake of his own aggrandizement and power.
· Either a sadist or obsessed with power; the Promethean quest for omnipotence and immortality.
· He is next to the malicious satirists.
· An archetypal symbol of self-assertive element in the scientist’s aspirations.
· Examples: Empedokles, Agrippa, the Anatomists, Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, Frankenstein.
3. The Laboratory Worker
· Dry, dull, diligent, pedantic, uninspired, scholarly bookworm.
· At his worst, he incarnates the pathological aspects in the development of science: rigidity, orthodoxy, snowblindness, divorce from reality.
· They are the industrious laborers of the theories of the great discoveries.
Thus, we have five figures in total, from left to right:
- The malicious Jester
- The Mad Professor (delusions of grandeur)
- The uninspired Pedant
- The Benevolent Magician
- The Artist
Magic and Sublimation
Sublimation
“The sublimation of the self-transcending emotions has transformed “magic” into “science”; but there is no hard-and-fast boundary between the two. Unconscious, pre-rational, “magical” thinking enters both into the creative act and into the beliefs or superstitions of the scientists.” (page 261)
Magic
· Setting aside for a time the laws that govern the universe. A departure of the rule-governed world.
· Miracle: interruption from the natural order.
· Second Aspect: mysterious, wanting to know the unknown.
The scholar is religious in the sense of having faith in something, knowing that there is something true, a longing for understanding, that in his work he creates a magic connection, and in participating in something bigger than himself.
We have the capacity for this longing, but we are distracted by the self-assertive emotions, the short-term effects. A longing is painful and you won’t stop until you satisfy that. It’s something that it’s at our core. It’s a need more than a desire.
“Meet everyone as a work in progress, faith that there will be another step in their learning and that you help contribute in that process.”
“Respond to nature’s invitation.”
The Boredom of Science
This section explains the reasons why science has become bore. The one specific factor that lead to this, says Köestler, “It is the academic cant that a self-respecting scientist must be a bore, that the more dehydrated the style of his writing, and the more technical the jargon he uses, the more respect he will command.” (page 265)
Köestler says that the works on science can be at the same time literary works and the purpose is to engage and facilitate the learning of the consumers or students or readers.
“To derive pleasure from the art of discovery, as from the other arts, the consumer – in this case the student – must be made to re-live, to some extent, the creative process. In other words, he must be induced, with proper aid and guidance, to make some of the fundamental discoveries of science by himself, to experience in his own mind some of those flashes of insight which have lightened its path.” (page 266)
“The traditional method of confronting the student not with the problem but with the finished solution, means depriving him of all excitement, to shut off the creative impulse, to reduce the adventures of mankind to a dusty heap of theorems.
Art is a form of communication which aims at eliciting a re-creative echo. Education should be regarded as an art, and use the appropriate techniques of art to call forth that echo…Our textbook and methods of teaching reflect a static, pre-evolutionary concept of the world. For man cannot inherit the past; he has to re-create it.” (page 266)
We have talked about The Jester, The Scientist, and The Artist, but now we would focus on another three character-types of The Scientist. These types are:
1. The Benevolent Magician
· These names are legends, admired and worshipped by the public which had only the vaguest notion of their achievements.
· In common with the Artist, both are unselfishly devoted to lofty tasks.
· He is next to the imaginative Artist.
· He symbolizes the self-transcending element in the s
· Examples: Pythagoras, Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Franklin, Pasteur, Einstein, Freud.
2. The Mad Professor
· Practices black instead of white magic for the sake of his own aggrandizement and power.
· Either a sadist or obsessed with power; the Promethean quest for omnipotence and immortality.
· He is next to the malicious satirists.
· An archetypal symbol of self-assertive element in the scientist’s aspirations.
· Examples: Empedokles, Agrippa, the Anatomists, Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, Frankenstein.
3. The Laboratory Worker
· Dry, dull, diligent, pedantic, uninspired, scholarly bookworm.
· At his worst, he incarnates the pathological aspects in the development of science: rigidity, orthodoxy, snowblindness, divorce from reality.
· They are the industrious laborers of the theories of the great discoveries.
Thus, we have five figures in total, from left to right:
- The malicious Jester
- The Mad Professor (delusions of grandeur)
- The uninspired Pedant
- The Benevolent Magician
- The Artist
Magic and Sublimation
Sublimation
“The sublimation of the self-transcending emotions has transformed “magic” into “science”; but there is no hard-and-fast boundary between the two. Unconscious, pre-rational, “magical” thinking enters both into the creative act and into the beliefs or superstitions of the scientists.” (page 261)
Magic
· Setting aside for a time the laws that govern the universe. A departure of the rule-governed world.
· Miracle: interruption from the natural order.
· Second Aspect: mysterious, wanting to know the unknown.
The scholar is religious in the sense of having faith in something, knowing that there is something true, a longing for understanding, that in his work he creates a magic connection, and in participating in something bigger than himself.
We have the capacity for this longing, but we are distracted by the self-assertive emotions, the short-term effects. A longing is painful and you won’t stop until you satisfy that. It’s something that it’s at our core. It’s a need more than a desire.
“Meet everyone as a work in progress, faith that there will be another step in their learning and that you help contribute in that process.”
“Respond to nature’s invitation.”
The Boredom of Science
This section explains the reasons why science has become bore. The one specific factor that lead to this, says Köestler, “It is the academic cant that a self-respecting scientist must be a bore, that the more dehydrated the style of his writing, and the more technical the jargon he uses, the more respect he will command.” (page 265)
Köestler says that the works on science can be at the same time literary works and the purpose is to engage and facilitate the learning of the consumers or students or readers.
“To derive pleasure from the art of discovery, as from the other arts, the consumer – in this case the student – must be made to re-live, to some extent, the creative process. In other words, he must be induced, with proper aid and guidance, to make some of the fundamental discoveries of science by himself, to experience in his own mind some of those flashes of insight which have lightened its path.” (page 266)
“The traditional method of confronting the student not with the problem but with the finished solution, means depriving him of all excitement, to shut off the creative impulse, to reduce the adventures of mankind to a dusty heap of theorems.
Art is a form of communication which aims at eliciting a re-creative echo. Education should be regarded as an art, and use the appropriate techniques of art to call forth that echo…Our textbook and methods of teaching reflect a static, pre-evolutionary concept of the world. For man cannot inherit the past; he has to re-create it.” (page 266)