The creative brain, the neuroscience of genius

One of the most famous texts dealing with imaginative inspiration was written by the nineteenth-century German organic chemist Friedrich Kekulé. Kekulé devoted most of his life to studying the nature of the carbon bond and the structure of benzene. What often happens in the creative process is that issues remain unresolved, but Kekulet solves them in his dreams while he is asleep. He says: "I was sitting working on my book, but the work was in a state of stagnation, and my thoughts were elsewhere. I leaned on the chair facing the fire and fell asleep and fell asleep." While I was dreaming, I saw atoms jumping in front of my eyes. It was a recurring dream for the second time, but this time the smaller groups were standing shyly in the back and my mind''s eye, which had become sharper as a result of the repeated visions, could now distinguish larger groups of multiple formations. Sometimes the rows fit together more closely in twists and turns in a snake-like movement, but look, what was it? One of the snakes caught its tail, and a funny shape appeared before me. I woke up in a flash, and I spent the rest of the night working on the hypothesis "Instead of thinking of chemical bonds as straight lines, Kekulé realized that bonds could be created in a way that resembles a snake chasing its tail. Thus, benzene was a circle, or what we call today the benzene ring.