33. Flash of
inspiration
Posted by T. T. and
P. R. in November 2019
It has been told many times that Isaac Newton discovered
gravity when he saw a falling apple. Whether or not this is true, it might lead
to a belief that only a genius can have such a ‘flash of inspiration’. On the
contrary, ordinary people may suddenly come up with new ideas, which could be
similar to a flash of inspiration from a genius, even though the resulting idea
is usually not more than a piece of imagination.
If a flash of inspiration is a common feature of ordinary
people, it may not be the nature just of specially gifted people but, instead,
an intrinsic nature of any individual human. More than that, it may be possible
to assume that animals other than humans can also have such a flash of
inspiration as an intrinsic nature.
At this moment, a flash of inspiration suddenly came to me
that this reasoning might apply not only in animals having a highly evolved
brain, but animals having a primitive brain may also have a nature similar to
the ‘flash of inspiration’. This idea was not a result of inductive thinking
but was the fruit of imagination unexpectedly emerging in my poor brain!
Such an imagined idea that the flash of inspiration can
exist in primitive brains may provide hope that it may also exist at least in
mentally disabled persons due to congenital brain defects, developmental
disorders, brain damage, and dementia, even though difficulties arise in
communication by language. This could mean that all natural brains work in a
similar way to a genius brain but
perhaps only at a very basic level.
At present, scientific understanding of the mind is still
rudimentary, but it will develop significantly in the hundreds of years ahead,
so that people living in the remote future will be able to have a perfect
understanding of how the mind works. Then, they could be convinced that the
basic nature of the mind, such as the ‘flash of inspiration’ must exist in all
minds among all species having a mind. Thus, all of our ancestors and
descendants may have the mind in common at the very basic nature.
We can imagine future people who are looking back at us from
a distance, and they are eagerly wishing for signs of a ‘flash of inspiration’
from us, by which the existence of human future can be secured. And at the same
time, they earnestly hope for our joyous imagination, that we can surely
contribute to the distant future people. If such a scenario becomes a reality,
the outcome must be far above the discovery of gravity.
