25th October
Bronisław Czarnocha, Hostos Community College (City University of New York), USA
Title of the talk:
The Assessment of the Depth of Knowledge reached during an Aha! Moment Insight
Abstract:
The presentation will discuss the structure of an Aha! Moment (Eureka experience) as the manifestation of human creativity in the domain of mathematics. The concept of bisociativity as the mechanism of Aha! Moment was introduced by A. Koestler (1964) who saw it as the spontaneous leap of insight which connects previously unconnected two matrices of thought or two different reference system. The analysis of the structure is accomplished with the help of the mechanism of thinking called the Triad of Piaget and Garcia (1989). We will discuss the Triad to be followed by the examples of Aha! Moments collected in Czarnocha and Baker (2021). Depending on the degree of connectedness we will identify mild, normal and strong Aha! Moments. In particular, we will discuss the structure of Einstein’s “best thought of his life” that underlined the formulation of the theory of relativity.
Koestler, A. (1964). The act of creation. Macmillan.