How daily life gifts us epiphanies
Published: 31 Oct. 2024, 19:26
LEE WOO-YOUNG
The author is an HCMC Distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.
It’s not just a lot of knowledge that awakens us from the dark. Sometimes, it is a random moment in everyday life that suddenly touches us. Archimedes discovered the principle of buoyancy from a spark of ordinary life while watching water flowing out of the bathtub. Descartes saw a fly crawling on the ceiling and came up with the coordinate system. As such, we can be awakened by a single thing.
German mathematician Johann Dirichlet (1805-1859) was working on a number theory problem for years. One day, he had a chance to visit Rome and went to see the Sistine Chapel. While listening to a hymn, the “pigeonhole principle” — “If n items are put into m containers, with n 〉 m, then at least one container must contain more than one item” — suddenly came into his mind. The principle opened the secret door, and the problem was solved. A piece of music woke him up.
Meanwhile, Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) spent years on a problem of expanding the number system. One day, he took a stroll with his wife along the Royal Canal near Dublin and was crossing the Broom Bridge. As he was looking at the sunset, a spark came into his mind that he could give up something to solve the problem. “Let’s give up the commutative law for multiplication.” Then the darkness was cleared. Finally, the quaternion number system extending complex numbers appeared in the world. The scenery awakened him.
A few years ago, I was getting frustrated after obsessing over an unsolved problem for a long time. A friend sent me a book. It wasn’t something that interested me much at first. I was mindlessly flipping through and suddenly noticed a phrase. “Dispersion is a series of disguises.” It woke me up, and after a while, the problem was solved. A single phrase inspired my imagination.
One line of writing, one scene or one landscape can awaken and renew our lives. That’s why we read books, go on a trip, watch movies and listen to music in our spare time.
The author is an HCMC Distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.
It’s not just a lot of knowledge that awakens us from the dark. Sometimes, it is a random moment in everyday life that suddenly touches us. Archimedes discovered the principle of buoyancy from a spark of ordinary life while watching water flowing out of the bathtub. Descartes saw a fly crawling on the ceiling and came up with the coordinate system. As such, we can be awakened by a single thing.
German mathematician Johann Dirichlet (1805-1859) was working on a number theory problem for years. One day, he had a chance to visit Rome and went to see the Sistine Chapel. While listening to a hymn, the “pigeonhole principle” — “If n items are put into m containers, with n 〉 m, then at least one container must contain more than one item” — suddenly came into his mind. The principle opened the secret door, and the problem was solved. A piece of music woke him up.
Meanwhile, Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) spent years on a problem of expanding the number system. One day, he took a stroll with his wife along the Royal Canal near Dublin and was crossing the Broom Bridge. As he was looking at the sunset, a spark came into his mind that he could give up something to solve the problem. “Let’s give up the commutative law for multiplication.” Then the darkness was cleared. Finally, the quaternion number system extending complex numbers appeared in the world. The scenery awakened him.
A few years ago, I was getting frustrated after obsessing over an unsolved problem for a long time. A friend sent me a book. It wasn’t something that interested me much at first. I was mindlessly flipping through and suddenly noticed a phrase. “Dispersion is a series of disguises.” It woke me up, and after a while, the problem was solved. A single phrase inspired my imagination.
One line of writing, one scene or one landscape can awaken and renew our lives. That’s why we read books, go on a trip, watch movies and listen to music in our spare time.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)