Laughter, Discovery and Archimedes

October 8,2013

While reading The Act of Creation I came across an insight that made me connect this book with The Way of Discovery. Chapter 2 of The Act of Creation explains what causes us to laugh. The explanation that Koestler gives is that we have two planes or situations that are incompatible, and when these two meet it creates a moment of tension, and the only way to release this tension is by laughing.

So my insight was that our way of discovery is also like our laughter mechanism. Just as we have two plains and then we have a moment of tension that creates laughter we also have a moment of tension in discovery. This tension that we have is like the moment of a discovery or an insight, it is when we unite two planes or two ideas and we find a new one. So this moment of tension of laughter and discovery is, in other words, like our aha-moments.

This relates to Polanyi’s third picture which says “subsidiary awareness functions to guide us to the integration of a coherent pattern”. What Polanyi tries to explain in this picture is that we link to term or things, that which we are focally aware of and that of which we are subsidiarity aware of. So these are like the two planes that we have when we discover. In the example that Gelwick gives he mentions that Archimedes was aware of the crown problem when he entered the water and the water rose, and at that moment he found the connection between both. To put in in Gelwick’s words: “One day Archimedes climbed into his bath, and as the water rose through the displacement of his body, he is reputed to have exclaimed, ‘Eureka!’ Focally aware of the problem of weighing the king’s crown after days of worrying over it, and also subsidiarily aware of the rise of the rise of the water, he linked the two terms into a principle that bears his name.” “Archimedes’’ discovery exemplifies that scientific discovery proceeds through tacit knowing. The intuitive flash springs from our subsidiary awareness which has served to orient us toward new understanding.”

I relate this to the release of tension and to the planes which cause laughter and discovery because I see that the problem of weighing the crown was on one plane and the awareness of the water rising was in another plane, and when both of these planes met, it was that moment when he said “Eureka!” and made the connection between both planes, the scientific discovery. And as I had mentioned before, this relates to the laughter mechanism that we all have.

I really enjoyed thinking about all of this, and discovering this (I will boldly say this because it hadn’t occurred to me before). It was as if I had my own moment when I had Gelwick in one plane and Koestler in another and they both magically united and made me realize this connection. Now I know that I won’t be able to look at my aha-moments, my insights and my laughter in the same way as I used to.