Writers, philosophers, inventors, and artists have all spoken of sudden insights and epiphanies as being creative muses responsible for their greatest works and masterpieces. Isaac Newton, after all, is said to have conceptualized his ideas on gravity when an apple fell from a tree and hit his head. Whether composing a symphony or solving a crossword puzzle, we are constantly generating novel ideas. These insights are often chalked up to bursts of creative genius, but scientists are determined to understand the biochemical mechanisms that produce these seemingly unprompted epiphanies.

 

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A very interesting and important article in the NYTimes magazine this Sunday: "The Medical Detectives: What's Wrong with Summer Stiers?" Focusing on one patient enrolled in a new National Institutes of Health "Undiagnosed Diseases Program" the article raises hopes and tugs heart strings, ending with Stiers recognition that "she couldn't offer any real information about her disease until she was dead and donated her body to science" but

"She even dares to hope ... that the scientists might learn something that will point them to a way to ease her own psychic and physical pain."

Notes for a discussion in the Cafe Scientifique at Bryn Mawr College on 23 February 2009

moderated by Paul Grobstein and Anne Dalke

 

Background (partial):

• Dayton, Ohio, 1925 (Inherit the Wind, 1955, 1960)
• Dover, Pennsylvania, 2004
• Kansas, 2005
• Texas, -2009

For discussion: