Since several days, the word serendipity has suddenly entered my mind. Initially, I was puzzled as I did not see a blog article in that word at all. The word serendipity is mostly known as the title of a 2001 romantic comedy (IMDb). After a day or so, my mind came up with a clue: serendipity of the mind. Actually, that clue made sense.
Since late 2017, I much better understand my writing process after viewing a 2009 TED Talk by writer Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius (TED transcript, my 2017 blog). The way how ideas come to me is indeed elusive. It’s like my head is an antenna for picking up ideas, flowing in the air, and looking for recipients. The word serendipity came to me in that way.
The serendipity of the mind stands for “the occurrence of an unplanned fortunate discovery” within your own mind. Hence, it’s not a surprise at all that “serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery” (Wiki). Note LO: italic markings in Wikiquote are mine.
Human reinventions (eg, book print, fire for cooking, the wheel) are an interesting example that ideas are bound to return over time, once they have been lost. Hence, it seems that ideas come from an unknown dimension, next to known dimensions like time and space.
That unknown dimension might also account for the input to the 4 levels of human consciousness, my 2017 blog. In particular, unexplainable phenomena like clairvoyance, dreaming, fantasy, imagination, instinct, intuition, precognition, telepathy and so on.
My words may seem a little far-fetched. However, what is the difference with radio, TV and WiFi signals? To less intelligent life-forms, these signals would come from an unknown dimension and feel like magic in the air.
Even higher life-forms, like us, still debate the known dimensions of time (eg, direction and reversal, linearity, cosmic now) and space (eg, flat earthers). Everything that is beyond human comprehension, is called supernatural.
Another unknown dimension is the human faith in a Supreme Being. I do mean faith, not Religion. Atheist scientists are adamant that there is no God because humans cannot prove its existence. I wonder if they would claim the same about human consciousness, “the greatest mystery in science“.
“Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance.”
The above quote is by William A. Dembski (b. 1960), an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian, and is taken from chapter 14 of the 2003 book “God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science” by Neil Manson (editor).
[Feel Like] Magic In The Air (2014) by Magic System feat. Ahmed Chawki
artists, artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2, Wiki-3
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
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