Dream Solutions (Insights Obtained From Dreaming)

[Anonymous]

To all:
The story goes that the chemist August Kekule, trying to puzzle out the atomic structure of benzene, fell asleep. In his dreams, he imagined six black colored imps, with forked tails, carrying white handkerchiefs. They chased each other around Kekule's laboratory. When he was about to order them out, they abruptly grabbed each other's tails with one hand, basically forming a ring, with the white handkerchiefs waving in their other hands. When he awoke, Kekule interpreted this to mean that, unlike any previous molecule, benzene consisted of six carbon atoms, arranged in a ring, with each atom also holding a single hydrogen atom!
The Indian mathematician, Srivinasa Ramanujan, frequently attributed many of the formulas he came up with to a goddess who, essentially, helped him solve his problems in his dreams.
In a number of cases, students at the college I attended said that answers to particularly difficult mathematics problems came to them in their dreams.
It is a good question how many people get solutions to problems while sleeping. A connection between the content of the "waking mind" and the "sleeping brain" has long been suggested. To explain the apparently seamless connection between the two, during the Eighties, sleep researchers said that, in fact, we may always be "dreaming", that the "sleeping brain" is actually working while we are awake, but that the "waking mind" overrides it, and so keeps us from becoming so aware of it. But content of the "waking world" may constantly be filtering into the "sleeping brain".
The extent to which this may occur, and, therefore, how much it may help us may be indicated by the fact that most of the cases I have ever heard of, where dreams helped people in their work, involved technical fields. Dreams helping people solve delicate emotional problems may be far fewer in number.
This does not include cases of supernatural dream intervention, in which someone may be, for example, granted "second sight" through dreaming, but, rather, cases in which pieces of a puzzle come together in previously unperceived ways, while sleeping. It could be interesting to see how many people can recount solutions coming to them in their dreams.



Julian Penrod

 

[Timble2]

Another dream creation story is about the 17-18C composer Guissepe Tartini, who dreamt that the Devil was playing him a violin sonata. On waking he siezed his own violin and attempted to recreate what he'd heard, he based a piece on it called 'The Devil's Sonata' or the 'Devil's Trill', but although he considered it a good piece he claimed that it was only a faint echo of the one he heard in his dream.


My own experiences are the exact opposite, I have a brilliant idea in a dream, scribble it down while half-asleep (I sometimes keep a dream diary so I have a notepad by the bed) and in the morning find that what I've written is complete nonsense.

The writer Dorothy Parker is supposed to have had this sort of experince. She dreamt that she had the solution to the world's problems, wrote it down while half awake and in the morning found that she'd written:

Hoggimous, higgimous,
Men are polygamous,
Higgimous, hoggimous,
Women monogamous.

Most of the stuff that I get isn't even that good.

 

[OneWingedBird]

Kekule was so famous for discovering the structure of benzene that he had a postage stamp dedicated to him, though in fairness is initial theory was flawed as he proposed the ring structure with alternating single and double bonds between the carbon atoms, rather than the version that is taught now, that the ring has a delocalised electron cloud.

Marie

 

[Anonymous]

In a nutshell what you are decribing is the Problem Solcing theory of the function of dreaming. Cartwright proposes that dreams are a meaningful way of considering worries or problems from conscious everyday life. Dreams may be use metaphors (but are not deliberately disguised as Freud thought) and may provide solutions for problems. Evidence for : Subjects given problems before sleep are more likely to solve them realistically if REM sleep is uninterrupted.
Against : There is little other evidence for the theory and most problems can be more quickly solved while awake.

 

[rynner2]

Perhaps it's just that the subconscious keeps on churning away...

I often find, when playing computer games like Free Cell or Solitaire, that if I get stuck it's worth going away, making a coffee or whatever, and when I come back I see moves that were 'invisible' before.

BTW, Paul McCartney said he got the song "Yesterday" in a dream - at first he thought it was something he'd just remembered from elsewhere, before he realised it was an 'original'.

 

[Bannik]

One time in highschool after I had answered a teacher's question, a smartass in the class said sarcasticly "you'd make a good ventriloquist." This is because I tended to not move my lips when I talked due to shyness. I just sat there in frozen silence with a blank look on my face, frantically trying to think of a comeback, but one never came to me.

That night I had a dream in which went through the whole scene again only this time I said in response "you would make a good dummy."

I woke up kicking myself.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

TWELVE FAMOUS DREAMS

Creativity and Famous Discoveries From Dreams

Throughout history, artists, inventors, writers and scientists have solved problems in their dreams. Brilliant Dreams has compiled a list of twelve famous discoveries and creativity in literature, science, music and even sports attributed to dreams.

Paul McCartney | Stephen King | Abraham Lincoln | Mary Shelley | Otto Loewi | Madame CJ Walker
Robert Louis Stephenson | Jack Nicklaus | Louis Agassiz | Elias Howe | Srinivasa Ramanujan | Friedrich Kekule

www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm

 

[Doctor_Occupant]

I just sat there in frozen silence with a blank look on my face, frantically trying to think of a comeback, but one never came to me.

That night I had a dream in which went through the whole scene again only this time I said in response "you would make a good dummy."

I woke up kicking myself.

I know that feeling. Oh, I know it well.

It's referred to as "L'esprit d'escalier" (the spirit of the staircase), where having left the situation one immediately thinks of the witty rejoinder which would have been oh so appropriate had it occurred five minutes ago.

People rarely admit to being visited by the spirit. They will often edit the spirit's presence out entirely when recounting the tale, complete with wit, later. Often in pubs.

But it does tie in with the idea above that your subconcious mind keeps grinding away at problems or situations after you have stopped giving them conscious brainspace.

 

[fluffle9]

BTW, Paul McCartney said he got the song "Yesterday" in a dream - at first he thought it was something he'd just remembered from elsewhere, before he realised it was an 'original'.

I dream songs sometimes. Sometimes I forget them, sometimes I get up and write them down, and last time it happened, I realised a few hours later that it was part of an Arctic Monkeys song.

 

[rynner2]

Dreams helping people solve delicate emotional problems may be far fewer in number.

Confucious he say:

Man who go to bed with sexy problem, wake up with sticky sloution.


Yes, mine's the anorak...

 

[JamesWhitehead]

When I was studying for my A Levels, a temporary teacher turned up to give us his thoughts on revision. The gist of it was that the brain is on a 48-hour cycle, so last-day swotting was not very effective. You needed two days to digest things. I doubt if that much impinged on my philosophy of attempting to cram two years' work into the span of a train-journey.

Fast Forward many years. As a late-comer to computing, I was suddenly heavily-involved in scripting database solutions and calling on brain-muscles which had not been properly exercised for decades.

I then found that the 48-hour cycle worked for me, anyway. I had to be able to understand the question and it had to be a real question. No good asking for the meaning of life or rot like that!

On many occasions, the solutions which had evaded my conscious mind arrived in dreams or presented themselves beautifully and fully-formed in the morning, about forty-eight hours after the problem had been properly formulated.

PS: Relying on this method is not likely to produce great software.

 

[rynner2]

More on Srinivasa Ramanujan:

Why is the number 1,729 hidden in Futurama episodes?
By Simon Singh, Science writer

The year 1913 marked the beginning of an extraordinary relationship between an impoverished Indian clerk and a Cambridge don. A century later, their remarkable friendship has left its mark in the strangest of places, namely in Futurama, the animated series from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

GH Hardy (1877-1947) and Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) were the archetypal odd couple. Hardy, whose parents were both teachers, grew up in a middle-class home in Surrey, England. At the age of two he was writing numbers that reached into the millions, so it was no surprise that he eventually read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined an elite secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles.

Ramanujan was born in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. At the age of two he survived a bout of smallpox, but his three younger siblings were less fortunate, each one dying in infancy. Although he was enrolled in a local school, Ramanujan's most valuable education was thanks to a library book, A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure Mathematics by GS Carr, which contained thousands of theorems. He investigated these theorems one by one, relying on a chalk and slate for calculations, using his roughened elbows as erasers.

Aged 21, he married Janakiammal, who was just 10 years old. Unable to afford college fees and needing to support his wife, Ramanujan got a job as a clerk. Nevertheless, he continued his interest in mathematics in his spare time, developing novel ideas and proving fresh theorems.

Curious about the value of his research, Ramanujan began to write to mathematicians in England in the hope that someone would mentor him, or at least give him feedback. Academics such as MJM Hill, HF Baker and EW Hobson largely ignored Ramanujan's pleas for help, but Hardy was mesmerised by the two packages he received in 1913, which contained a total of 120 theorems.

Hardy's reaction veered between "fraud" and so brilliant that it was "scarcely possible to believe". In the end, he concluded that the theorems "must be true, because, if they were not true, no-one would have the imagination to invent them".

The British professor made arrangements for the young Indian, still only 26, to visit Cambridge. Hardy took great pride in being the man who had rescued such raw talent and would later call it "the one romantic incident in my life".
The resulting partnership gave rise to discoveries in several areas of mathematics and Ramanujan's genius was recognised in 1918 when he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society.

The young Indian savant would later say that many of his theorems were whispered to him in his sleep by Namagiri, an avatar of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi: "While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing."

Ramanujan's career was brilliant, but ended prematurely when he began to suffer from tuberculosis. He returned to India in 1919 and died the following year, aged 32.
However, the life of Ramanujan continues to fascinate modern mathematicians, including Dr Ken Keeler, who swapped his job as a researcher to join the writing team behind the science fiction sitcom Futurama.

He is actually one of a number of mathematicians - and there are many of them - who write for The Simpsons and its sister series Futurama. They have retained their love for the subject and they continue to express their passion for numbers by smuggling mathematical references into both series.

For example, in order to pay homage to Ramanujan, Keeler has repeatedly inserted 1,729 into Futurama, because this particular number cropped up in a famous conversation between Hardy and Ramanujan.

According to Hardy, he visited Ramanujan in a nursing home in 1918: "I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. 'No,' he replied. 'It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.'" :shock:

Their exchange can be unpacked and expressed as follows:

1,729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³

It is rare that a number can be split into two cubes, and even rarer that it can be split into two cubes in two different ways, and 1,729 is the smallest number that exhibits this property.

It is in recognition of Ramanujan's comment that Bender, Futurama's cantankerous robot, has the serial number 1729.

The number also appears in an episode titled "The Farnsworth Parabox". The plot involves Fry, one Futurama's lead characters, hopping between multiple universes, and one of them is labelled "Universe 1729".
Moreover, the starship Nimbus has the hull registration number BP-1729.

This has certainly helped keep Ramanujan's memory alive, but it is probably not the sort of immortality that Hardy had in mind when he wrote: "Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. Immortality may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean."

Keeler is proud of his mathematical references in Futurama, and he is philosophical about the many years he spent as a mathematician before becoming a comedy writer: "Everything that happens to us has some effect on us, and I do suppose that the time I spent in grad school made me a better writer. I certainly don't regret it.

"For example, I chose Bender's serial number to be 1,729 and I think that reference alone completely justifies my doctorate. I don't know if my thesis advisor sees it that way though." 8)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24459279