Those Eureka Moments at the Kitchen Counter by Jane Tolbert

My friends and I use the terms “eureka” experience or “epiphany” to refer to those moments of lucidity that come about—not in a think tank, but at my kitchen counter. Conversations over coffee or wine usually result in enlightenment. Is it the caffeine or the alcohol or just the “time out” from the daily routine?

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article that provided scientific evidence in support of the eureka experience, something we kitchen-counter aficionados have known without the benefit of empirical data. In other words, those gray cells work harder when our mind is “wandering,” writes Robert Lee Hotz in his June 19, 2009, article, “A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight.” Moments of insight often follow daydreaming.

Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) popularized the concept of the “gestalt switch”—the bird-rabbit phenomenon--whereby we see the familiar in a “new” light. The drawing of the bird "becomes" the rabbit in the same way the data that seemed to support a geocentric world view could actually support a heliocentric world as well.

The eureka experience often refers to scientific insight because Archimedes used this expression when he found the solution to a problem, jumped from his bath, and ran through the streets to proclaim the news. In his eureka moment, he forgot his towel. Writers, dancers, musicians, poets and artists have these experiences as well. Whether an individual is working on a literary plot, a musical partition, choreographed or improvisational dancing, an oil painting or a filmscript—a mental block looms large. The harder the creator works to solve the problem by a plodding, analytical method, the more elusive the solution becomes. The artist in us all needs time to daydream. How else will we have the likes of Q’s laboratory in James Bond or an interpretation of Argentine tango music by the Mandrágora orchestra?

With innovation on the decline, at least in the sciences, according to one article in the New Scientist, more research and development companies should opt for settings propitious to the eureka experience. They should shift from the business paradigm of managed days of meetings and time clocks. . . to one of kitchen counters to enable the mind to wander, dream and achieve that moment of insight.

For my friends and me (and sometimes a dog who goes by the name of Bear or a greyhound called Fay), the Kitchen Counter has become a metaphor for a break in the routine and a chance to dream. No rules of parliamentary procedure guide these informal meetings. The only criterion is that of a positive state of mind. We leave with the feeling that solutions are at hand. I experience the same insight after walking around Lake Alice, dancing a tango with my favorite tanguero, or paddling in the Florida springs. Probably Archimedes felt the same way when he sprang from his bath.