HW5: Dream-founded Breakthroughs and Discoveries

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Dreams play a critical role in helping people face the challenges of surviving and coping in a world filled with complexities. They even lead to some scientific discoveries in the history. These dream-triggered discoveries and innovations only illuminate the role of symbolism in the creative thoughts. These dream-related histories include the following real-life scenarios:

 

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Otto Loewi, a Nobel Prize winner, dreamed of an experiment that will prove the theory of chemical transmission of the nervous impulse. This dream only dawned on him 17 years after he failed to prove his hypothesis. During Loewi’s time, the common held belief is that there is an electrical transmission of the nervous impulse, in contrast to his newly held idea, until he experienced the following incident:

"The night before Easter Sunday of that year I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6 o'clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at 3 o'clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a single experiment on a frog's heart according to the nocturnal design." (www.brilliandreams.com/famous-dreams.html)

It took Loewi more than a decade to prove his idea. He had undergone a series of tests and experiments in order to satisfy his critics but only a single dream became the key to his labor. The turning point in his life is not when he dreamed about it but when he opened his mind to the message of his dream, that is, when he jotted down a few notes right after waking up. Then, he decided to perform an experiment based on the dream-given design, and that decision contributed to the history of science.

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Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz did not only experience a single dream-driven breakthrough, he had dreamed two discoveries in the scientific history. In 1858, Kekulé discovered the tetravalent nature of carbon. Kekule dreamed about the atoms gamboling, the two smaller atoms united to form a pair; the larger one embraced the two smaller ones, the other larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller, while 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 ends of the chain . . . but I spent part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the Structural Theory," (www.brilliandreams.com/famous-dreams.html) Kekule said in his speech at the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (German Chemical Society). In 1865, Kekule had another dream which directed him to one more discovery: the structure of Benzene. According to the “Serendipity, Accidental Discoveries inScience" by Royston M. Roberts, in Kekule’s dream, the atoms were again gamboling before his eyes but the difference is that he distinguished long rows twining and twisting in a snake-like motion. Then, eventually, one of the snake-like structures took hold of its own tail, and the form whirled ridiculously before his eyes. By the time Kekulé woke up, he started to work on this dreamed hypothesis. In the end, he concluded that the chemical called Benzene has a linear structure. This discovery was not readily accepted during his time because the prevalent hypothesis regarding the benzene molecule is that it has a circular structure, not a linear one like what Kekulé had concluded. Still, this conclusion was accepted by the scientific community.

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Another superb work of dreams is Elias Howe’s design of the first sewing machine. The story of Elias Howe's invention in 1845 of the sewing machine is a struggle. He had a hard time coming up with a machine that is capable of spinning and weaving as fast and as efficient as possible. He cannot figure out on which part of the needle should the hole be located until he fell asleep at his workbench. According to an article from www.jeremytaylor.com, in Howe's dream, he was being haunted by cannibals in an African jungle. Despite his efforts to flee from these tribesmen, the natives still captured him. As he is managing to escape through heaving himself upward from the pot where he was supposed to be boiled alive, the natives poke him back down to the pot again with the use of their pointed spears. As he woke up, Howe realized that the sharp spears have holes on their points. This realization brought him to the idea that in order to make an effective sewing machine, he has to place a hole at the point of the needle and move the thread through this hole.

             Scientists and the sovereign scientific culture point that the sole source of one’s creative ideas is one’s critical thinking or analytical skills, and discourages the belief that some creative ideas resulted from mystic sources such as dreams. Although this is the dominating conviction among the patrons of science, still, the scientific method theoretically teaches students that any idea is acceptable as a hypothesis regardless of its source and claims that what makes an idea a scientific thought is through experimentation. This only proves that what makes an idea significant is not the source (dream) but the verifications, proofs and applications provided by the person (dreamer) afterwards.