Comment by bloomingkales
2 days ago
The structure of DNA was seen in a vision in James Watson's dream. Some say it's subconscious problem solving and I think most down to earth people agree with that, but some less down to earth people will absolutely attribute it to god (I'm in the latter). If we were to entertain a silly proposition, something in the universe could just move our story along, all of a sudden. These paradigm shifts just seem to appear.
> The structure of DNA was seen in a vision in James Watson's dream
I believe this is apocryphal. Watson likely said this because he stole Rosalind Franklin's research.
I disagree. What he stole was the pictures she took. He really did come up with the structure.
Mind you he was helped by a nice coincidence. Franklin knew all 230 space symmetry groups, and so had to sort through them. Watson only really knew one - his PhD thesis was on a protein with the same group as DNA.
I can only think of that example because it’s the only one I know of where the scientist admitted to something divine.
This is probably something I need to research more, because the questions scientists are dealing with are too deep to ignore the one big question, and I wonder who struggled with it.
Not divine specifically but I like the Wikipedia List of Dreams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_based_on_dreams#...
Kekulé?
Newton and Kepler attributed lots to god. Kary Mullis to LSD supposedly.
Ramanujan is another great example of divine inspiration.
Subconscious problem solving is definitely a thing as far as I'm concerned.
It's happened several times that I struggled with a bug for hours, then suddenly came up with a key insight during the commute home (or while taking a shower or whatnot), while not actively thinking about the problem. I can't explain this any other way than some kind of subconscious "brainstorming" taking place.
As a side note, this doesn't mean the hours of conciously struggling with the problem were a waste. I bet that this period of focus on the problem is what allows for the later insights to happen. Whether it's data gathering that alows the insights to happen, or even just giving importance to the problem by focusing on it. Most likely it's both.
Subconscious synthesis of seemingly unrelated strands of thought is the basis of assessing an event's meaning, for me. A day or two will pass after the event, and I notice the meaning evolves even without new information and without conscious thinking about the event.
For me, the subconscious is the wellspring of sudden insights.
an alternate hypothesis is that all thinking is unconscious with consciousness being the sum of many unconscious processes. So, while it's true as you say "that some kind of subconscious "brainstorming" taking place", that would just true all the time, and you only notice it when your conscious thoughts are of something else.
(n.b. historically speaking in the literature, "subconscious" was the word used to describe Jung's "woo-woo" ideas about a collective subconscious shared across populations, and unconscious was the word used for ideas about a single brain a la Freud which is what we are talking about here)
For me, the functionally useful bit of these ideas are that pushing pushing pushing your mind on one problem is not an effective use of resources. Alternating pushing with not pushing often finds good solutions faster.