Consciousness And The Imagination

There’s a traditional view that science might involve what we might call convergent thinking, thinking which proceeds logically step by step while artistic creativity involved divergent thinking, thinking which proceeds by leaps and bounds and intuition, but actually there are common elements to both these types of activity. Both science and more artistic forms of creativity involve conjuring with the hypothetical, with things which might be the case and they both phases of intuitive thinking, leaps in the dark. 

Just such a mix of hypothesizing and intuition helped to elucidate the double helix structure of DNA. Two spirals, each carrying it’s sequence of chemical components called A, T, G and C, intricately interwoven to develop the building bricks of life. The shape is quite famous now but it eluded scientists for ages until in the nineteen fifties research by Jim Watson, Francis Crick and the late Rosalind Franklin finally led to the revolutionary discovery of the structure. Crick and Watson looked back some time later on the leap of imagination involved.

The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off-campus; many of its courses (both undergraduate and postgraduate) can also be studied anywhere in the world.

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