The Eureka Moment - 3

“Eureka! Eureka! I got it!”We have all heard this expression for the very first time in relation to Archimedes and his bathtub experiment. Well it wasn't an experiment per say, Archimedes had just gone for a bath and the solution to a problem which had been revolving in his mind had struck him, and he had been so overjoyed (justifiably so) at finally making sense of it that he had run out of his bathroom and into the streets naked! Such is the euphoria of the ‘Eureka’ moment!

 Since then there has been a lot of speculation about the ‘Eureka’ moment.The ‘Eureka’ moment or ‘aha’ moment as it is also known is said to be a product of insight and ideas blending perfectly to give you the outcome that you have sought unknowingly for a long time.Two important things about the ‘aha’ moment are ;the Eureka moment is instant and it always elicits a positive effect i.e. the person experiencing it is convinced of its truth. The Eureka moment happens only when you are at an impasse. When you have tried all possible ways to solve a problem and you are stuck, that’s when the moment strikes!

As Carl Honore says ,“Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you’re juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5 pm deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high stress meeting. They come when you’re walking the dog, soaking in the bath or swinging in a hammock”. Yes, the Eureka moment hits when your mind isn’t focused on the problem, what psychologists call as the period of incubation. So some people purposefully keep aside time for relaxation or juggle their tasks, so that though their conscious mind is focused on one task, the others are incubating in their subconscious. It has also been found that many eureka moments have been triggered in a dream. It is believed that the structure of benzene came to Kekulé in a dream. 

Dreams are nothing but our unconscious thought processes. When a lot of information on a particular topic is present in your brain, when you sleep your subconscious tries to link them and make sense out of it. What does this indicate? That Eureka moments don’t just happen out of magic. For that the person needs to have prior knowledge and relevant information of his subject. It is a condition as if the solution is dancing on the recesses of your mind but you still can’t reach it, which brings us to our next point: Think outside the box. Many a times our brain follows the same line of thought ‘n’ number of times and to find a way out you have to try a different approach, a distinct outlook and voila! We get the key to our riddles. This is also the reason why it is advised to take a break, so that during this period the previous thought ways are erased and we can handle. According to the Alternate Uses test by Sophie Ellwood, it has been proved that when stuck on one job, if you take a break concerning other work; the chances that you will return with a 'eureka' are high.

Having said and done all that there is to this, it is still not possible to device a formula for the eureka moment. As Roger Penrose puts it in a very simple yet complex way, 

"Eureka moments

tend to be little things, a little

realisation and then a little

realisation built on that."

Manisha Patro