David Eagleman Quote
In 1862, the Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell developed a set of fundamental equations that unified electricity and magnetism. On his deathbed, he coughed up a strange sort of confession, declaring that something within him discovered the famous equations, not he. He admitted he had no idea how ideas actually came to him—they simply came to him. William Blake related a similar experience, reporting of his long narrative poem Milton: I have written this poem from immediate dictation twelve or sometimes twenty lines at a time without premeditation and even against my will. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed to have written his novella The Sorrows of Young Werther with practically no conscious input, as though he were holding a pen that moved on its own.
In 1862, the Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell developed a set of fundamental equations that unified electricity and magnetism. On his deathbed, he coughed up a strange sort of confession, declaring that something within him discovered the famous equations, not he. He admitted he had no idea how ideas actually came to him—they simply came to him. William Blake related a similar experience, reporting of his long narrative poem Milton: I have written this poem from immediate dictation twelve or sometimes twenty lines at a time without premeditation and even against my will. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed to have written his novella The Sorrows of Young Werther with practically no conscious input, as though he were holding a pen that moved on its own.
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About David Eagleman
He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Times-bestselling author published in 32 languages. He is the writer and presenter of the international television series The Brain with David Eagleman and the host of the podcast Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman. His podcast has been ranked as the number-one science podcast on Apple several times and in 2024 was nominated for the best science podcast of the year at the iHeart Podcast Awards at SXSW.