Blame it on the Brain
I gave my car for a bit of denting and painting and was coming back by auto rickshaw. And suddenly a realization hit. You might have heard about how the Greek mathematician and physicist Archimedes discovered how to measure the volume of an irregularly shaped object by observing that a body immersed in a fluid displaces a volume of fluid equal to its own volume. While taking a bath, he noticed the water level rise, leading him to exclaim "Eureka!" Neurophysiology now has evidence that revelations and realizations happen when you move from focused thinking to diffuse thinking. There is the story of Thomas Edison. He would be working on a problem and then would go to sleep with a metal ball in his hand. Suddenly the ball would fall from his hand, and he would wake up—but he would wake up with the solution in his mind. Moving from focused to diffuse thinking in sleep, and revelation emerging in sleep! That is what happened to me - in the quietness of the auto, I...