Inspiration, as a wonderful flower of human thinking, has been confined to people's understanding of the psychological world for thousands of years.
Its definition has been locked in the unknown threshold, which seems to be only the patent of geniuses and the occasional gift from God, completely out of touch with ordinary people. With the development of modern science, especially psychology and brain science, the mystery of inspiration is being uncovered layer by layer, and a new breakthrough in the study of inspiration theory is brewing. At this time, this paper puts forward the concept of "generalized inspiration" and discusses its essence, characteristics and research significance, aiming at providing people with a brand-new vision to examine inspiration and thinking and promoting the deepening of understanding the mystery of human thinking.
First, the "generalized inspiration theory" was put forward.
(A) of the "narrow sense of inspiration" theory from the query
The emergence of the concept of "aura" in western ancient Greece and the application of words such as "spirit", "god" and "witch" in ancient China are all based on.
In recent years, the discussion of inspiration phenomenon has never stopped. British scholar H Osborne once wrote an article about inspiration.
There are three stages in the emergence and evolution of western ideas: first, the apocalypse theory in the primitive religious sense; Second, the combination of inspiration and the concept of genius; Third, the combination of inspiration and subconscious psychology. In China, people's understanding of inspiration has generally gone through a similar process. From "God gives apocalypse" and "interaction between gods and witches" to "response", "prosperity", "divine thinking", "inspiration" and "inspirational thinking"; The evolution of its terminology shows the development track of inspiration connotation.
Track. In 1980s, Qian Xuesen advocated the research of thinking science and put forward "thinking in images", "logical thinking" and "thinking science".
Trigonometry of inspirational thinking ",at that time, thousands of articles, with modern psychology and physiology as weapons, were on the spirit.
I did a lot of exploration. Indeed, people's understanding of inspiration has deepened, but there is no fundamental breakthrough in the study of inspiration, which is manifested in the following aspects: popular inspiration research still thinks that inspiration is a rare thing, which comes suddenly and goes quickly, and seeks inspiration from many sources and only visits occasionally. In short, inspiration is still not around us, only in one.
A mysterious place. The mystery of the object leads to the loss of the premise of scientific reliability, and the resulting theory naturally takes on a mysterious color; Metaphysical theory is bound to be divorced from social practice. This is the reason why the "inspiration fever" cooled down again after entering the 1990s. Therefore, we call the mysterious and rare "inspiration" and the corresponding theory "narrow inspiration" and theory. So, what are the reasons for the rarity and mystery of inspiration? Let's start with the characteristics of inspiration recognized by the theory of "narrow inspiration": "Creativity" is generally pushed as the primary feature of inspiration. And "creativity" is an active standard, which is only a vague qualitative and difficult to grasp quantitatively. Inspiration, like all thinking achievements, is relative in creativity, which varies from person to person and from situation to situation. Mayakovski, a Russian poet, was inspired in his sleep to show that lonely people love their wives-"Like a disabled soldier in the war loves his only leg", and a sentence made by a primary school student in his Chinese homework-"The big crane on the dock in the distance is like a giraffe". How to measure creativity? Einstein came up with the question "What would it be like to pursue light with light" when he was in middle school at the age of 1895; In order to answer this question, that is, to establish a special theory of relativity, he conducted a study of 10 years; So, how to measure the creativity of the emergence of problems and the progressive development of thinking during the period of 10? Obviously, "creativity" is not a unique feature of inspiration. Throughout the ages, people have used gorgeous words to describe the "suddenness" of inspiration, and the narrow sense of inspiration also believes that inspiration forms in the subconscious like fission and suddenly appears in the consciousness. The reason why this kind of "suddenness" can make people realize themselves lies in the difference between the creative content of inspiration and the existing ideology in their minds when inspiration comes into being; Because of this difference, inspiration surprises the subject, which makes the subject feel the "suddenness" of inspiration. What needs to be questioned is: what is the difference between the subject's existing consciousness and the current inspiration?
As we all know, James's theory of stream of consciousness holds that "in every personality consciousness, the state is always changing there." "What I value is that my mentality is gone forever, and I can't be the same as before." "The essence of consciousness is changing at any time and will never stop absolutely." 1 means that the flow of human consciousness is unrepeatable. According to this reasoning, since there is no repetition between the consciousness of this moment and that of another moment, there must be differences between them; In this way, the subsequent consciousness is "sudden" in a sense. In other words, the "suddenness" caused by the difference in consciousness is not unique to inspiration.
"Chance" is also often considered as a feature of inspiration. But "contingency" is always dominated by the law of causality and becomes the expression of inevitability. Engels once said: "what is judged to be inevitable is composed of pure contingency;" The so-called accidental thing is a form that must be hidden inside. "1 In scientific experiments, with the changes of various methods and the replacement of the same substance, it is accidental for experimenters to have such or such ideas in their minds. In artistic creation, the occurrence of this association and the composition of other imaginations are more accidental for artists. When Edison studied the filament of electric lamp, he tried more than 6000 different materials to find the most suitable tungsten filament. Obviously, choosing any one of more than 6,000 materials was accidental to Edison's thinking at that time. Tolstoy once lamented that there are thousands of possibilities in every step of creation, and how difficult it is to choose the most suitable one. But it is undoubtedly accidental that writers always choose one of millions of possibilities in a short time. Therefore, at a certain moment of thinking, the appearance of the result of a moment of thinking is almost universal. When we think about the creativity, suddenness and contingency of inspiration recognized by the narrow sense inspiration theory, the theoretical building of narrow sense inspiration will inevitably collapse. Because we have talked about "inspiration" for thousands of years, it can no longer be distinguished from the general immediate thinking results.
(B) "generalized inspiration" theory.
After the "narrow sense inspiration" is questioned, its theoretical crisis will force us to face two choices in inspiration research: one is to turn a deaf ear to the crisis and continue to limit the research object to the mysterious "inspiration" that cannot be defined. In this regard, Qian Xuesen once pointed out: "At present, we can only collect information, but the description of inspiration is sometimes gaudy and embellished, so when collecting information, we must pay attention to it and be true." Obviously, Qian Xuesen, as a rigorous scientist, has already
It is noted that the research object of narrow inspiration theory is unreliable. Secondly, since "inspiration" and the result of instant thinking can't be clearly distinguished, it is necessary for us to combine "inspiration" with thinking, thus opening up a research road of generalized "inspiration" (or the result of instant thinking). I
Scientists choose the latter, namely "generalized inspiration" phenomenon and theory.
Qian Xuesen once pointed out: "There are three kinds of thinking: abstract (logical) thinking, image (intuitive) thinking and inspiration (epiphany) thinking. This is only from the perspective of the law of thinking. There are three kinds. But, first, no.
In addition to further research in the future, it is found that this division is not appropriate, or there are other types of thinking with different laws. Second, although there are three kinds of thinking, in fact, every thinking process of human beings is not a simple thinking at work, but often two or even three kinds of thinking are intertwined at work. ..... So the division of the three kinds of thinking is for the needs of scientific research, not for the specific thinking process of people. 1 In fact, the division of the three kinds of thinking really lacks a scientific and unified standard, that is, abstract thinking and image thinking are distinguished from the abstraction or image of the content object processed by thinking, while inspirational thinking is viewed from the perspective of thinking results. Therefore, the study of inspiration thinking can be regarded as a new perspective of human thinking research compatible with abstract thinking and image thinking.
The process of human thinking is endless, so how should we cut in? Lenin extracted a passage from Hegel in Notes on Philosophy: "Thinking always causes difficulties, because thinking separates all the links that link the reality of an object from each other." And add "Yes!" in the margin. "If we don't cut off the uninterrupted things, simplify and coarsen the living things, divide them and make them rigid, then we can't imagine, express, measure and describe the movement." Thinking should separate and cut off the uninterrupted objects. Thinking itself is constantly linked, so it also needs to be separated and cut off to describe and investigate. In this way, our "generalized inspiration" divides the flowing thinking into links, and the result of a certain thinking link is "generalized inspiration". The theory of "generalized inspiration" is formed by discussing the essence and characteristics of "generalized inspiration", inferring its laws and methods, and observing and visiting the mysteries of human thinking. In a sense, the discussion of "generalized inspiration theory" is the study of "inspired thinking" advocated by Qian Xuesen, which links "inspiration" with "thinking".
Second, the essence of generalized inspiration i.
In the study of China's inspiration, Liu Kuilin's paper A New Exploration of Inspiration and Tao Bohua and Zhu Yayan's Introduction to Inspiration represent the latest achievements. Liu Kuilin believes: "Inspiration also has a process, but it is not within the scope of consciousness, but outside the scope of consciousness, in the subconscious; When the subconscious instills inspiration, in addition to the subconscious inference, there is often the function of consciousness to accommodate and cooperate. When the incubation matures, sudden communication emerges from the conscious mind and becomes inspirational thinking. " Qian Xuesen once clearly agreed with him. Liu Kuilin's "consciousness" and "subconscious" only give a more accurate description of the state of consciousness activity at the moment of "inspiration" in terms of the overall situation of the human brain's reflection on the objective world. At the same time, his research object has always been focused on the mysterious "inspiration" phenomenon a priori; Therefore, it can not be compared with the conscious activities in general thinking, and the connection between the essence of "inspiration" and general thinking can not be established. Therefore, on the premise of agreeing with Liu Kuilin's generalization of the essence of "inspiration", we also extend this generalization to "generalized inspiration"-the current thinking achievement. Therefore, we need to make a new understanding of consciousness (explicit consciousness) and subconsciousness, and then reveal the essence of "generalized inspiration": subconsciousness is separated from consciousness, starting from Freud, the originator of psychoanalytic psychology. He once said: "The subconscious system can be compared to a large anterior chamber, and all kinds of mental excitement are crowded together like many individuals;" Adjacent to the anterior chamber is a smaller room, just like a reception room, where consciousness stays. " The ratio of his Reception Room 1 vividly describes the microscopic picture of consciousness transformation in thinking activities. However, Freud, as a psychiatrist, could not deeply study the mystery of conscious activity. He only pays attention to whether the part of the subconscious that causes mental disorder can be recalled and "received" and vented. Therefore, to explore the mystery of conscious activity in thinking, we have to return to the metaphor of "reception room". There is a psychological term called "field of consciousness" in this "reception room", which Ci Hai interprets as: "the range that objective things can perceive in a short time. What can be clearly realized at any moment is limited to the part of concentration, and the rest are vaguely realized, but by paying attention in turn, a more complete and conscious picture can be formed of the surrounding things. "German psychologist Herbart once said: People can only be conscious of an object or pay attention to a limited range." If an idea wants to enter the real state from the state of complete inhibition, it must cross a boundary, which is the threshold of consciousness. In other words, the "field of consciousness" is above the threshold line of consciousness, and it is the place or "reception room" where external information and internal subconscious briefly bathe in the light of consciousness.
Taking "the field of consciousness" as the logical starting point, the following results will inevitably be deduced: 1. Conscience: a consciousness that exists instantly but constantly changes. Researchers in thinking science generally believe that conscious consciousness, that is, consciousness that can be controlled by the subject, is called "conscious consciousness" only because it is convenient to describe the transformation of consciousness in thinking. When we introduce the concept of "consciousness domain" and the theory of stream of consciousness, we will naturally have such a new understanding of "conscious consciousness": the reason why consciousness feels flowing and constantly changing is because of the needs of the subject, and it keeps coming in and out of the "consciousness domain"; The "point" in the stream of consciousness intercepted and illuminated by the "field of consciousness" is determined by the limited scope it can only pay attention to at the moment, and it is a "conscious consciousness" in a strict sense. 2. Subconscious: The sum of the potential (nominal) consciousness and potential (verbal) consciousness processing activities of knowledge memory in the human brain. Inferring from the fact that the "consciousness field" has extremely limited "consciousness perception" at a certain moment, we come to an unacceptable conclusion: at a certain moment, the consciousness reflected by the subject to the objective world is almost in a potential state, that is, the subconscious, except for a very limited point in the consciousness field. Here, there is no doubt that we have made a major revision and transformation of Freud's "subconscious"-a consciousness that is difficult to recall in the depths of human psychology, and also revised and supplemented the psychological activities identified as "subconscious" by psychology. In the history of scientific development, the concept connotation often changes with the deepening of people's understanding American philosopher Vatov once said, "Scientists often replace our older concepts with newer ones, or fundamentally correct them."
Old ideas, so common sense is scientifically transformed. "
1 Lenin also pointed out: "Subjectively applying flexibility = eclecticism and sophistry. The flexibility of objective application, that is, the flexibility of reflecting the comprehensiveness and unity of material processes, is dialectics and the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world. " Therefore, when we understand the mystery of thinking, it is inevitable to modify and transform the "subconscious" and use it objectively and flexibly. In fact, Marx once made it very clear to the hidden consciousness: "The way of existence of consciousness and the way of existence of something for consciousness is knowledge. Knowledge is the only action of consciousness. Therefore, as long as consciousness knows something, it becomes the object of consciousness. Knowledge is the only and objective relationship of consciousness. " We know that at a certain moment, most knowledge is only stored in the subject's mind as a memory, and is not illuminated by the "consciousness field"; Therefore, we can completely understand that the way of consciousness is that knowledge and memory are hidden, that is, the nominal subconscious. Nominal subconsciousness can be regarded as psychological "memory" in a sense, but "memory", as a memory and representation of experienced things, always sticks to the experienced things themselves and lacks initiative. For psychologists, "subconsciousness" is not only stored knowledge, but also a potential conscious activity that is not perceived by the subject, that is, speech subconsciousness, also known as "unconsciousness" and "subconsciousness". Che Wenbo, a psychologist in China, made it very clear: "Unconsciousness is unconscious cognition, or cognition under the threshold of consciousness." Combined with the functional characteristics of "consciousness domain", this subconscious activity under the consciousness threshold can be described as: ... The conscious mind in the consciousness domain continuously flows out into the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind also brings in all kinds of new information that the subject is paying attention to, thinking about or consciously processing; When they become subconscious, on the one hand, they are hidden as knowledge information, on the other hand, they are processed and combined in the subconscious world, which leads to the active cognitive activities of the subconscious. Because the nominal subconscious and the verbal subconscious activities are often complementary, and both of them have the characteristics of * * * that are not perceived by the subject, the sum of them constitutes a complete subconscious.
It should be pointed out that the revised and transformed "subconscious" here is always restricted by "consciousness"
Function, that is, accepting the overall control of the subject, is essentially a part of people's micro-consciousness activities. Therefore, it is mysterious and non-mysterious.
3. Generalized inspiration: Consciousness and subconsciousness work together, which consists of relevant knowledge and information, and a certain link of thinking instantly shows results in the field of consciousness. Consciousness is always flowing, and consciousness and subconscious are constantly changing; Because what we are looking for is the "consciousness" of a certain link in the result of thinking, that is, the psychological mystery produced by "generalized inspiration", it is necessary for us to establish a model for the transformation between consciousness and subconscious, that is, consciousness in the consciousness domain is transformed into subconscious with information with rational characteristics such as the subject's concern, the object he wants to know, and the semi-finished products processed by thinking; When this vivid information is combined with relevant knowledge information in subconscious activities, it will increase its connotation and produce variation; The mutated new information will be needed by the subject, from the subconscious to the conscious domain and become consciousness. The consciousness at this time is different from that before, which is what we call "generalized inspiration". In this way, ... consciousness-subconscious-consciousness (generalized inspiration)-subconscious-consciousness (generalized inspiration) ... constitutes the basic mode of the transformation between consciousness and subconscious, that is, the generation of "generalized inspiration", which is also the basic description of the complete consciousness activity in human thinking. This basic model can only be established if the consciousness in the conscious domain is transformed into the subconscious without reservation, or if the subject's consciousness is built on a closed system. In practical thinking, these two conditions may not be satisfied, so there are still two variants-variant one: the condition is that the consciousness domain has the function of retaining the existing conscious consciousness and combining other related knowledge and information. When Sima He, a famous American information processing psychologist, gave a lecture in Beijing, he gave an example of a person consciously combining information when calculating a vertical addition problem. He said: 4+7+3+8+2=24, we read 4 first, keep 4 in short-term memory, and then read 7; Add 4 and 7 to get11; And keep 1 1.
In short-term memory, read 3 again ... In this problem-solving process, only one number remains in your mind at each step and is combined with another number 1. The number kept by this short-term memory is the conscious mind kept in the field of consciousness. In this way, consciousness flows through the field of consciousness, unlike water flowing through the gate, but is selectively preserved, waiting for the subconscious mind to present it and make a new combination with relevant information. If what remains in the field of consciousness is an unsolved problem and the solution is suddenly lost from the subconscious, it will become what people often call "epiphany"; If the information combination in this field of consciousness is continuous and gradual, then a certain step of "epiphany" or "thinking progress" is called "thinking progress step by step", and it is combined into a new conscious mind to become an instant thinking achievement of a certain link. Its essence is the same, so we still call it "generalized inspiration". Variant 2: Its condition is that the subject's consciousness is an open system. As an open system, consciousness should reflect objective things, including the initial understanding of the physical world and the re-understanding of the objective civilized information created by human beings. Explained by the theory of British philosopher Popper, that is, "World 2"-the subjective world-interacts with "World1"-the physical world and "World 3"-the objective knowledge world, thus promoting the growth of knowledge. Described from the flow and transformation of micro-consciousness, the reflection of consciousness on objective things means that when the conscious domain receives the objective information transmitted by the senses, it immediately mobilizes the relevant knowledge information in the subconscious to combine, so as to realize the perception, judgment and reasoning of this thing in the conscious domain and form a new conscious mind.
Because the objective information transmitted by the senses can be divided into "world 1" and "world 3", the formed conscious mind has different cognitive effects, and the reflection of consciousness on things has complex manifestations: first, the information transmitted by the senses to the conscious field is the living objective physical world information, and the subject calls relevant knowledge information to combine with it to form feelings, perceptions and representations, which is called "perceptual knowledge" in epistemology. Perceptual knowledge does not belong to the category of thinking, and the generalized inspiration we explore is the result of instantaneous thinking and belongs to the study of thinking; Therefore, perceptual knowledge is not regarded as generalized inspiration; This also avoids the danger of generalized inspiration generalization. Secondly, of course, what the senses transmit to the field of consciousness is objective world information, but when the subject calls knowledge information and its combination, it suddenly crosses the stage of perceptual knowledge, gains insight into the nature of things and forms rational knowledge, which is called "intuition" in epistemology. "Intuition" is indeed irrational, but the result of intuition is often needed by subjective rationality. So "intuition" naturally belongs to the broad sense of inspiration. Thirdly, the senses transmit objective knowledge information to the conscious domain, so it is a rational cognition or thinking to call and combine the relevant knowledge information in the subconscious. The way to carry out it is mainly judgment and reasoning in logical thinking and association and imagination in image thinking. But all kinds of ways have such a * * * nature, which is information combination. For example, judgment is the combination of the characteristics of things and their generic knowledge, reasoning is the combination of major premise and minor premise, and association and imagination are the combination of similar and similar images. Lenin once said: "After repeated hundreds of millions of times, human practice has been fixed in human consciousness in a logical way. It is (and only) because of hundreds of millions of repetitions that these formulas have the nature of preconceived consolidation and axiom. " 1 is the formation of "logical type", which simplifies people's actual thinking into combining and understanding various things with "logical type" and makes this combination understanding logical.
On the other hand, because the combination of information is always random and accidental, modern psychologists tend to understand this point: "More and more evidence shows that people's reasoning and thinking are largely illogical." In this way, the truth of thinking becomes a combination of logical, logical and illogical knowledge and information. There is no doubt that the result of instantaneous thinking formed by their combination is a "generalized inspiration" with both inevitability and contingency.