Not only problem solvers can get the eureka feeling. Artists can have it, too, when they get a brilliant artistic idea. Writers can also have it. Everybody can have the eureka feeling in the right circumstances.
The story goes that Archimedes (287-212 BC), a Greek mathematician and scientist, was asked to determine the volume of a certain object with an irregular shape, namely a golden crown. At that moment Archimedes didn’t know the answer, but, (and now I quote the Wikipedia) “while taking a bath [Archimedes noticed] that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the golden crown's volume. … Archimedes then took to the streets naked so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying ‘Eureka!’ ”, which is Greek for “I have found it”. (Greek: ηὕρηκα). Since then, this happy feeling of excitement to have made an important discovery, having got an important idea and the like is called the “eureka feeling”. If
Archimedes would have been an Englishman or an American, maybe we would have called it the “I-got-it feeling” or the “I-have-it feeling”.
The Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis tells us in his book Inspiration , chapter 7, that Wolfgang Goethe called the eureka feeling a “brilliant experience of the mind”. According to him, so Dijksterhuis, it had three characteristics: 1) It gives us a sense of god equality; 2) the eureka experience comes suddenly; 3) the eureka experience gives us “an idea of the eternal harmony of our existence”. A recent scientific article ascribed four characteristics to the eureka feeling, so Dijksterhuis: 1) The experience comes suddenly; 2) it causes a positive affect; 3) the person having the experience is convinced that the idea is correct; 4) the idea enters our conscious mind in an easy, smooth way.
The feeling involves also that the new idea is too good not to be true. Moreover, it is often very simple. However, this can make that after some time you start to think: The idea is so simple, so is it really new? Has anyone else not thought the same before and used the idea? This can make that you tend to keep the idea for yourself, for some time or for always.
More about it in my next blog, but how do we get an idea; especially an idea that can give us an eureka feeling? No, new ideas don’t come from nowhere. It’s not so that I, a philosopher and sociologist, suddenly can get a brilliant idea about, say, the origin of dark matter in the cosmos. Getting ideas is a matter of working hard. You must delve deep into your subject before you can get the kind of ideas that will give you a eureka feeling. You must study the ins and outs of your subject and be continuously busy with it. You must fill your unconscious mind with all knowledge you can find about your subject. And then, while you don’t know it, when your unconscious mind has time for it, it begins to process all you have put in it. Your unconscious mind is especially busy with it, when you are relaxing, so when it has some free time to pay attention to it; when it is not busy with your other daily sores, like your marital problems, the education of your children or how to become a better runner. And then suddenly, during a walk, when you take a shower or who knows when, at a moment that you are not consciously thinking about it, then suddenly it happens. Suddenly, it is “I got it!”. “It cannot be true”, you think. “Such a simple solution for such a complicated problem?” And then you become excited: “It’s true; I got it.” You become euphoric. When this happens, you have the eureka feeling.
Source:
Ap Dijksterhuis, Inspiratie. Hoe we tot grootse prestaties komen, chapter 7.
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