Metaphor is at the core of nearly all scientific breakthroughs and acts of genius. Celebrated scientists like Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, and Albert Einstein relied on metaphor to help them make new discoveries. Clearly, fundamental change depends upon our ability to engage with metaphor. In other words, metaphor is an act of genius.
richard feynman
Metaphor connects us with the Divine.
Metaphor connects our human brain with spiritual dimensions. When we shift from perceiving and knowing with our linear, analytical mind to a spatial, artistic way of knowing based in metaphor, we’re able to access a field of divine intelligence. This was documented in neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, My Stroke of Insight. But because our [ Read more … ]
Science Needs the Help of Artists
“…the surreal nature of physics is precisely why it needs the help of artists. Science has progressed beyond our ability to understand it, at least in any literal sense…It’s a brute fact of psychology that the human mind cannot comprehend the double-digit dimensions of string theory or the possibility of parallel universes. Our mind evolved [ Read more … ]
Unraveling Genius
I’ve been thinking about this topic for awhile now, but have held myself back from writing about it because genius has such elevated connotations. We confer that term to people (usually men) after they have accomplished a large body of work, and typically after they’re dead (Einstein, Da Vinci, Picasso….) But what if genius was [ Read more … ]