{"id":4099,"date":"2012-01-21T05:33:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T10:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4099"},"modified":"2012-01-21T05:41:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T10:41:05","slug":"daydreams-of-science-the-benzene-ouroboros-and-the-clapham-omnibus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/01\/daydreams-of-science-the-benzene-ouroboros-and-the-clapham-omnibus.html","title":{"rendered":"Daydreams of science: the benzene Ouroboros and the Clapham omnibus"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Kekul\u00e9's Ouroboros<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the most famous, and most controversial, dreams in the history of science is the vision of Ouroboros – the snake consuming its own tail – that revealed the shape of the benzene ring to German chemist Friedrich August Kekul\u00e9 (1829-1896). Was it a sleep dream, a daydream or something else?<\/p>\n

I went back to Kekul\u00e9\u2019s own account, in his writeup of the extempore speech he gave at the 1890 Benzolfest<\/em> many years after his visions, and compared rival translations of his remarks in German. Something that struck me immediately was that his perception of the \u201cdance\u201d of chemical elements was not a one-off affair. He described a similar experience seven years earlier that gave rise to his theory of chemical structures. He made it clear that in years between the two visions he had developed a practice <\/em>of seeing or thinking in visual imagery.<\/p>\n

In his mid-20s, when he was living near Clapham Common in London, Kekul\u00e9 spent a long summer evening sharing his ideas with a friend and fellow chemist who lived in Islington, on the other side of the city. Riding home on the last bus, Kekul\u00e9 drifted into a reverie (Traumerei<\/em>) in which he saw atoms \u201cgamboling\u201d and dancing and forming combinations. He understood, when he analyzed their motions, that he had been given clear insights into chemical structures. Up to this time, he had been unable to grasp the nature of their motion. \u201cNow, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced the two smaller ones\u2026while the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them but only at the end of the chain.\u201d He stayed up late that night \u00a0sketching these \u201cdream forms\u201d. This was the origin of his theory of carbon bonding in chemical structures.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 We see three conditions for creativity at work in this incident: (a) immersion in a subject, (b) sharing a developing idea with the right friend, and (c) drifting or relaxing into a flow state, from which the \u201cEureka\u201d moment arises spontaneously..<\/p>\n

Seven years later, a dream or reverie during an evening nap showed Kekul\u00e9 the chemical structure of the benzene ring. He was now a professor in Ghent in Belgium. Dozing by the fire in his darkened study, he again saw atoms \u201cgamboling before my eyes.\u201d Now his inner sight \u201crendered more acute by repeated visions of the kind, could\u00a0 distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation: long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion.\u201d Then he was startled to see one of the \u201csnakes\u201d seize hold of its own tail, and whirl \u201cmockingly\u201d before him. He was jolted out of his languorous state, \u201cas if by a lightning bolt.\u201d The image of the whirling snake gave the chemist the clue to the structure of the benzene ring. He spent most of the night that followed working this up until he had shaped his theory.<\/p>\n

Kekul\u00e9 had become practiced <\/em>in receiving and developing helpful images in this way. When he described the roots of his scientific creativity in the Benzolfest in his honor in 1890, Kekul\u00e9 told his audience, \u201cLet us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the truth.\u201d He added the salutary caution, \u201cBut let us beware of publishing our dreams till they have been tested by the waking understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The images that came to Kekul\u00e9 would have been meaningless, in terms of chemistry, to someone who did not have a scientific mind that had long been working on the problems whose solutions they revealed. The imagery might have sent an artist off to paint, or sent someone with an interest in myth off to study the symbol of the Ouroboros in the ancient world and in alchemy.<\/p>\n

When Kekul\u00e9 urged his audience to \u201cdream\u201d, he was surely not talking exclusively, or primarily, about what happens in sleep. He was talking about developing the ability to enter a state of relaxed attention in which ideas take form and interact as images.<\/p>\n

It is always exciting to know the specific ways in which a creative mind enters that imaginal space. I kept thinking about the revelation on the bus to Clapham, and how some of us, lulled by the motion of other moving vehicles, have been gifted with similar \u201caha\u201d moments when an idea hidden in a collection of diffuse elements suddenly leaps into clarity and form.<\/p>\n

As I thought about how Kekul\u00e9 got his ideas, something occurred to me that I had not seen in any of the scholarly articles I had read, let alone the standard accounts in books on dreams and creativity. \u00a0In the 1850s, people did not travel in motorized buses. The public conveyance that carried Kekul\u00e9 home to Clapham, was a horse-drawn omnibus.The clatter of the hooves and the jangle of the harness and the rocking motion of the box carriage provided the soundtrack and the rhythm for Kekul\u00e9\u2019s breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t it likely that other creative minds of his period had also been helped by the rhythms of a contemporary mode of transportation? I vaguely remembered something I had read in a beautiful essay by the French mathematician Jules-Henri Poincar\u00e9 on his own creative process, and hunted up a copy of his paper, \u201cMathematical Creation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Poincar\u00e9 described that when he came to a stuck point in his efforts to formulate a new mathematical construct, he decided to give himself a break and traveled to Coutances to join friends on a geological hike. Inspiration struck as he started to boarding a horse-drawn omnibus. \u201cAt the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it.\u201d When he went home to Caen, Poincar\u00e9\u00a0 wrote up his theory of \u201cFuchsian functions\u201d directly from this moment of insight. Though in the mathematician\u2019s account, the Eureka moment came as he boarded the omnibus, rather than during the journey, we may wonder whether his breakthrough had been assisted by previous rides with the carthorses of creativity.<\/p>\n

~<\/p>\n

For more on liminal states of consciousness as the “solution state” for many scientists, please read The Secret History of Dreaming<\/em> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most famous, and most controversial, dreams in the history of science is the vision of Ouroboros – the snake consuming its own tail – that revealed the shape of the benzene ring to German chemist Friedrich August Kekul\u00e9 (1829-1896). Was it a sleep dream, a daydream or something else? I went back…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,20,3],"tags":[957,961,955,959,330,958,960,956,656,331],"class_list":["post-4099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-history-of-dreaming","category-imagination","tag-benzene-ring","tag-creative-breakthroughs","tag-friedrich-august-kekule","tag-fuchsian-functions","tag-hypnagogia","tag-jules-henri-poincare","tag-mathematical-creation","tag-reverie","tag-science-dreams","tag-solution-state"],"yoast_head":"\nDaydreams of science: the benzene Ouroboros and the Clapham omnibus - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/01\/daydreams-of-science-the-benzene-ouroboros-and-the-clapham-omnibus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Daydreams of science: the benzene Ouroboros and the Clapham omnibus - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the most famous, and most controversial, dreams in the history of science is the vision of Ouroboros – the snake consuming its own tail – that revealed the shape of the benzene ring to German chemist Friedrich August Kekul\u00e9 (1829-1896). 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4103,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions\/4103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}