Nothing comes from nothing
A question that humans have considered for many years: where exactly do ideas come from?
My knowledge of the Big Bang and the beginning of the universe is sketchy, to say the least.
In my head, it played out like this:
There was nothing.
There was a giant explosion.
The universe started, well, kind of GROWING.
Turns out this is not the case. I read a post by a theoretical physicist a while back where he explains that scientists believe there were several different fields in existence before the Big Bang. As he says:
"Deep down the universe is just a bunch of rippling quantum fields. When people say that in the Big Bang matter emerged from nothing, all they mean is that energy moved from the gravitational field to fields like the electron and quark, giving rise to particles."
As well as totally blowing my mind, it made me think of ideas and how we come up with them.
It can sometimes feel that ideas come from nowhere. They appear at the most random times, often days or even weeks after we start thinking about the creative challenge.
But of course, all ideas come from somewhere. If you had the time and the inclination, you could retroactively unpack your thinking to identify the elements that helped you end up with your final idea.
Some people argue these flashes of inspiration are the result of our subconscious mind taking over. That somewhere, deep in the unknown recesses of our mind, our thoughts bubble away, casually interacting like the protons and neutrons of the early universe. Professor Nick Chater, author of the excellent The Mind Is Flat, argues otherwise.
Chater’s studies show that the benefits of taking a break are all about changing our perspective and seeing things differently. It is precisely the act of NOT thinking about a creative problem that makes the solution seem to appear out of nowhere.
We tend to follow the same patterns and routes when we actively think about ideas. These same routes become restrictive, like cognitive cul-de-sacs, leading us to the same answers. Taking a break and freshening our perspective allows us to see problems differently, and suddenly, a fresh idea presents itself.
Sometimes, it’s a fully formed idea; sometimes, it’s a seed that needs careful nurturing (Chater calls these ‘flashes of suspicion’). Either way, it’s about the variety of combinations that are available to us. The more combinations, the more options, the more extensive breadth of thinking we have, the more likely we are to hit upon on that killer idea.
So, the critical thing for people in comms is ensuring we create the right environment for our ideas. That we're lining up the quantum fields in our minds to encourage the energy to move around and start creating different combinations and fusing disparate thoughts and concepts to create something new.
Because, like at the beginning of the universe, great things can happen when the perfect materials combine in the right way.