Katherine Ramsland - SNAP: Seizing Your Aha! Moments

Published 2012 by Prometheus Books

SNAP: Seizing Your Aha! Moments. Copyright 2012 by Katherine Ramsland. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Trademarks: In an effort to acknowledge trademarked names of products mentioned in this work, we have placed or after the product name in the first instance of its use in each chapter. Subsequent mentions of the name within a given chapter appear without the symbol.

Jacket design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

Inquiries should be addressed to
Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 142282119
VOICE: 7166910133
FAX: 7166910137
WWW.PROMETHEUSBOOKS.COM

16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ramsland, Katherine M., 1953

SNAP : seizing your aha! moments / by Katherine Ramsland.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9781616144647 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 9781616144654 (ebook)
1. Inspiration. 2. Creative thinking. I. Title.

BF410.R36 2012
153.3dc23

2011041552

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

S ome years ago, when I was working as a newspaper science reporter in California, my editor assigned me to do a story on Nobel Prize-winning scientists at the University of California. Frankly, I hated the idea and thought it was little more than an extension of the university's own excellent public relations. But, in fact, after I spent several days visiting with Nobel laureatesresearchers who had advanced the science of lasers, discovered new elements, deciphered the intricate chemistry by which living cells make and store energyI changed my mind.

Spending time with these scientists made me appreciate that they were not super humans. They did not radiate genius as they moved across the room. They were just peoplevery smart people, truewith a strong sense of purpose and a great deal of curiosity about the world around them. And they had all achieved this momenta flash of insight, a moment of pure claritythat had enabled them to solve a problem and make a discovery that others had missed.

I came to think of genius not as life on a higher plane but as a kind of lightning strike, that instant when the night is brighter, the air sizzles and glows, and the surrounding territory is illuminated. So it was with real pleasure that I read Katherine Ramsland's wonderful book Snap! More than that, I recognized it. I'd been waiting for someone to really explore and explain my sense of aha! moments. And I'd been waiting for someone to do it well.

Candidly, I've been a fan of Katherine's work for a number of years now. I met her when I was working on The Poisoner's Handbook , which is about two pioneering forensic scientists working during the wild and dangerous days of Prohibition-era New York. My story focuses on poison killersto me the coldest and most dangerous of all murderers because they are plotters and planners. Katherine's books on serial killers and other murderers helped me figure out how to describe and explain some of the genuinely deranged characters in my story.

When I received Snap! I thought, Of course! Of course someone who had so much insight into the human mindwho had worked as a therapist, who had a graduate degree in clinical psychologywould not only be able to explain the troubled mind but also to explore what's best and smartest about the way we think.

Most of us have encountered the idea of an aha! moment before. Many of us have heard the story of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes leaping out of his bath and shouting Eureka! as he realized the solution to a stubborn problem. And this book does credit to the history of such ideas, from the insights of the ancients to the sudden dazzle of recognition by James Watson and Francis Crick regarding the helical structure of DNA in the mid-twentieth century, and on to discoveries of our own century.

But what really makes these moments of brilliance so interestingand so importantis that they aren't the exclusive property of the Nobel laureates I interviewed those years ago, nor do they occur only in the famous cases I just cited. They are, rather, an entirely human attributeall of us, in fact, have these snap moments, and for every person they open up different possibilities.

All very encouraging, you might say. But Ramsland asks another question: Is it possible to improve this potential? What if we sharpen up our memory? What if we concentrate on staying in the moment, practice the art of mindfulness? Will we become more adept at recognizing those flashes of insight? And not only does she ask those questions; she researches the answers, sifts through the science, and offers some very practical ideas about how we might make this work.

And here's why I particularly like her approach in this case. You may very well reach the end of her story and think to yourself: Aha! I feel smarter than I did before I read this book!

Deborah Blum
Madison, Wisconsin

T he person to whom I'm most indebted for this book and my writing career is my agent, John Silbersack, because he urged me to do something unique, and he fully supported this project. He also gave me several terrific ideas for it.

Second, I thank my editor, Linda Greenspan Regan, for being so enthused about it.

I'm grateful to several people who assisted me in getting certain facts right, including Karen Walton, Rodger Berg, Zack Lysek, Lisa Getzler-Linn, Kevin Sullivan, Sir Alec Jeffreys, Alice Flaherty, and Ruth Osborne. Joel Katz, Dean Koontz, Rick Arlow, Zach Bloom, George Keeler, John Knific, Tom Carhart, Tim Marks, Patrick Clasen, and Josh Berman supplied some great personal stories, and I want to thank Deborah Blum for writing a terrific foreword. I also appreciate those who read the manuscript: Dean Koontz, John Timpane, and Shelley Carson.

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.

Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

A BRAIN ITCH

T he quote above refers to one of the world's most groundbreaking flash revelations: the structure of the DNA molecule. In 1953, Francis Crick, a British scientist, was working with James Watson, an American, at the University of Cambridge in England. Although biologists knew by the 1940s what comprised DNA, they did not yet know much about its appearance. As Watson and Crick tried to envision it, Watson read chemist Linus Pauling's unpublished paper about DNA. He believed that Linus was incorrect about its structure but that Watson failed to figure out a feasible alternative. A few days later, he saw an X-ray of the DNA crystal. The paired helix structure seemed eminently clear. Watson told Crick, and they commenced work on a model. Although they stalled a few times, they talked with colleagues who offered suggestions that helped spark several more revelatory insights. Things fell into place until they had a six-foot model that resembled a twisting ladder. This, they knew, was the appearance of that elusive molecule, DNA. In 1962, they received the Nobel Prize.