Thursday, November 20, 2008



I was intrigued on November 13th 2008 at the National Humanities Center’s conference: “Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity” where Dr Oliver Sacks spoke. Dr Sacks, the keynote speaker, told the story of Mendeleev who, after years of study of the chemical elements, in a vivid dream conceived all at once of the periodic table of the elements and scribbled it on the back of an envelope. Following this was a description of Poincare and how he was going on a geologic trip, and the moment his foot hit the step to get on the bus, out of nowhere he realized that the equations he was manipulating in order to solve a problem in algebra were actually identical in form to those which characterize the non-Euclidean geometry [of Lobachevski]. It was not a problem he had been working on. It was a sudden realization that arrived fully formed. Then at the seaside while thinking of something else the sudden idea came to him that the arithmetic transformations of indeterminate ternary quadratic forms were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. Dr. Sacks then recounted another such revelation experienced by Berlioz in a dream where a new symphony unfolded. In this case, however, he was unable to act upon it, because he had to do other work upon awakening to pay the bills to support his family. By the time he got back to the subject of his dream he had forgotten too much, and the new symphony was lost, perhaps forever.

As I listened to these stories, as relayed via Oliver Sacks, who in my view was giving them new meaning and new context, I too had an epiphany or sudden revelation – for lack of a better word - relating to a familiar phenomenon that I had been amusing myself with for at least a year. I came away thinking that my phenomenon-related revelation was somehow connected to the phenomenon described by Dr. Sacks and perhaps might shed insight upon it. Yet, these two phenomena appeared totally different to me, and were it not for this sudden insight or rather the euphoria that I experienced I never would have connected them. Immediately afterward I described my new insight to some friends who also were present at Dr. Sacks talk. They liked it. The following day, I described it to Dr. Sacks after his scheduled morning talk. I believe he liked it too. I will provide more detail here and leave it to the reader to judge whether there is any deep insight into human thought in my connecting these two phenomena. Let me first say that as a graduate student I performed research in neurophysiology. Although I left the field, I have found myself revisiting it time after time. I have always been fascinated with how the brain works and the many unanswered questions, such as: “What is consciousness?” and “What is thought?”

For about a year I have been acutely aware of a phenomenon that I shall call “the small world phenomenon”. This awareness has been reinforced by how often friends would tell me they met someone on a cruise or on an airplane or by chance, say in a foreign country, and it turned out that the person they met: was a distant relative; or was married to a distant relative; or lived on the same block when they were children; or went to the same school; or was in the same class, etc., followed by: “It’s a small world’. When I hear this, I often think of what would have happened if they failed to meet the person because the timing was not exactly correct or if they missed meeting the person by seconds. I visualize one person turning down a corridor just as another – his or her long lost relative – emerges, and they fail to see each other and fail to meet. I call this a “near miss”. I also find it amusing that none of these coincidences would be manifest (would resolve) if they met the person but failed to speak to the “stranger” (lack of communication or perhaps lack of connectivity). If there were no communication, the nature of their hidden relationship would then not be revealed. I amuse myself further by thinking of the coincidences associated with the “small world phenomenon” as the tip of the iceberg, that is: the portion that is visible. The near misses of such encounters are not visible, and in effect are not perceived, yet there are probably so very many more of them: the portion of the iceberg that is under water and not seen. [Thinking of the “entire” iceberg may make the world seem conceptually “even smaller”.] Now, while listening to Sacks discuss the sudden deep insights of Mendeleev, Poincare, and Berlioz, the iceberg and the small world phenomenon flew into my mind. It was not merely a distracting thought but one that I felt to be of deep significance, as though I had solved a problem I had been wrestling with. But what was it? How did the iceberg relate to what Dr. Oliver Sacks was describing?

A few moments later I knew the answer. It was that the unconscious mind is always working, but it is like the submerged portion of the iceberg. There are an inordinate number of near misses and failures relative to the achievement of appropriate connectivity. When something connects and resolves, it is sent to the conscious mind, and a new thought occurs. Since our thoughts and memories are apparently “graded”, perhaps with emotional content. Unlike the bytes of a digital computer, they have associated with them varying degrees of “significance”. For a thought that resolves a long-standing problem that one has been arduously working on or a thought that uncovers a personal relationship that one was not aware of, the grading associated with the new thought is that much stronger. A thought with a “high grading” of significance transmitted from the unconscious to the conscience mind may well be strong enough to be remembered from a dream. I call this a natural consequence of the iceberg theory. Given the spatial and temporal nature of simultaneous or near simultaneous elements comprising action potentials, synaptic processing, neuropeptide interactions, and who knows what else in the human nervous system, there may very well be an enormous preponderance of “near misses”. The iceberg theory in the physical world seems reasonable as a deeper model of “the small world phenomenon”. Similarly, an analogous iceberg theory of human conscious and unconscious processes might explain the phenomenon described by Dr. Oliver Sacks: the sudden solution of a long standing problem; or the development of a unifying thought; or the birth of deep seeded creative insight of a purely abstract nature; or the creation of a unique musical composition.

Bruce Oberhardt, Ph.D

ICEBERG Theory.111308

No comments: