Quote:
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Originally Posted by BigJohn
Edison, at his winter Lab, would sit in a rocking chair and hold some weights in each hand as he rocked back and forth in his chair.
When the weights would fell from his hands, some of the answers would come to him.
Is this an example of concentration, example of quieting the mind or is it something else?
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My recollection of this story is that Edison would actually fall asleep in his chair holding these weights (were they ball bearings?). When he fell asleep, his hands would relax and drop the weights, and the noise as they hit the floor would wake him up. In that brief moment of hypnagogic dreaming answers would come to him.
Which suggests that he was opening himself to subconscious thinking in the dream state to discover answers. Rather like August Kekule discovering the ring structure of benzene after much pondering by dreaming of a snake eating its tail.
And Elias Howe who invented the sewing machine. He struggled to come up with a needle which would work until he had a dream of being chased by cannibals with holes in the tips of their spears. He then woke up and realised that the needle in a sewing machine needed the hole at the tip.
Peace
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