The Sleepwalkers (252 page)

3.
Some Patterns of Discovery

In
the
first
place,
a
new
synthesis
never
results
from
a
mere
adding
together
of
two
fully
developed
branches
in
biological
or
mental
evolution.
Each
new
departure,
each
reintegration
of
what
has
become
separated,
involves
the
breaking
down
of
the
rigid,
ossified
patterns
of
behaviour
and
thought.
Copernicus
failed
to
do
so;
he
tried
to
mate
the
heliocentric
tradition
with
orthodox
Aristotelian
doctrine,
and
failed.
Newton
succeeded
because
orthodox
astronomy
had
already
been
broken
up
by
Kepler
and
orthodox
physics
by
Galileo;
reading
a
new
pattern
into
the
shambles,
he
united
them
in
a
new
conceptual
frame.
Similarly,
chemistry
and
physics
could
only
become
united
after
physics
had
renounced
the
dogma
of
the
indivisibility
and
impermeability
of
the
atom,
thus
destroying
its
own
classic
concept
of
matter,
and
chemistry
had
renounced
its
doctrine
of
ultimate
immutable
elements.
A
new
evolutionary
departure
is
only
possible
after
a
certain
amount
of
de-differentiation,
a
cracking
and
thawing
of
the
frozen
structures
resulting
from
isolated,
over-specialized
development.

Most
geniuses
responsible
for
the
major
mutations
in
the
history
of
thought
seem
to
have
certain
features
in
common;
on
the
one
hand
scepticism,
often
carried
to
the
point
of
iconoclasm,
in
their
attitude
towards
traditional
ideas,
axioms
and
dogmas,
towards
everything
that
is
taken
for
granted;
on
the
other
hand,
an
open-mindedness
that
verges
on
naïve
credulity
towards
new
concepts
which
seem
to
hold
out
some
promise
to
their
instinctive
gropings.
Out
of
this
combination
results
that
crucial
capacity
of
perceiving
a
familiar
object,
situation,
problem,
or
collection
of
data,
in
a
sudden
new
light
or
new
context:
of
seeing
a
branch
not
as
part
of
a
tree,
but
as
a
potential
weapon
or
tool;
of
associating
the
fall
of
an
apple
not
with
its
ripeness,
but
with
the
motion
of
the
moon.
The
discoverer
perceives
relational
patterns
or
functional
analogies
where
nobody
saw
them
before,
as
the
poet
perceives
the
image
of
a
camel
in
a
drifting
cloud.

This
act
of
wrenching
away
an
object
or
concept
from
its
habitual
associative
context
and
seeing
it
in
a
new
context
is,
as
I
have
tried
to
show,
an
essential
part
of
the
creative
process.
¹
It
is
an
act
both
of
destruction
and
of
creation,
for
it
demands
the
breaking
up
of
a
mental
habit,
the
melting
down,
with
the
blowlamp
of
Cartesian
doubt,
of
the
frozen
structure
of
accepted
theory,
to
enable
the
new
fusion
to
take
place.
This
perhaps
explains
the
strange
combination
of
scepticism
and
credulity
in
the
creative
genius.
²
Every
creative
act
–
in
science,
art
or
religion
–
involves
a
regression
to
a
more
primitive
level,
a
new
innocence
of
perception
liberated
from
the
cataract
of
accepted
beliefs.
It
is
a
process
of
reculer
pour
mieux
sauter
,
of
disintegration
preceding
the
new
synthesis,
comparable
to
the
dark
night
of
the
soul
through
which
the
mystic
must
pass.

Another
pre-condition
for
basic
discoveries
to
occur,
and
to
be
accepted,
is
what
one
might
call
the
"ripeness"
of
the
age.
It
is
an
elusive
quality,
for
the
"ripeness"
of
a
science
for
a
decisive
change
is
not
determined
by
the
situation
in
that
particular
science
alone,
but
by
the
general
climate
of
the
age.
It
was
the
philosophical
climate
of
Greece
after
the
Macedonian
conquest
that
nipped
in
the
bud
Aristarchus'
heliocentric
concept
of
the
universe;
and
astronomy
went
on
happily
with
its
impossible
epicycles,
because
that
was
the
type
of
science
that
the
medieval
climate
favoured.

Moreover,
it
worked
.
This
ossified
discipline,
split
off
from
reality,
was
capable
of
predicting
eclipses
and
conjunctions
with
considerable
precision,
and
of
providing
tables
which
were
by
and
large
adequate
to
the
demand.
On
the
other
hand,
the
seventeenth
century's
"ripeness"
for
Newton,
or
the
twentieth's
for
Einstein
and
Freud,
was
caused
by
a
general
mood
of
transition
and
awareness
of
crisis,
which
embraced
the
whole
human
spectrum
of
activities,
social
organization,
religious
beliefs,
art,
science,
fashions.