Richard Dawkins possesses an astute intellect, and I am appreciative of his willingness to take a firm stance and offer a rigorous perspective. His insights have empowered me, as well as vast others, to scrutinise the boundaries of our understanding of reality.
However, as much as I respect the man, I don’t often agree with him, and it is probable that he would not hold my work in high regard. I can hear him responding to my work with Dream Analysis in his distinct condescending manner “Its silly”.
Nonetheless, I was elated to hear him express the sentiment “Some of the best ideas come in dreams,” a view with which I wholeheartedly concur. In fact, after encountering Dawkins’ remark, I’ve initiated a series of ‘Reels’ titled ‘Dream Discoveries’ that seek to substantiate his assertion. This series chronicles the paradigm-shifting discoveries that have emerged from nighttime dreams, spanning the realms of science, art, philosophy, and beyond.
“Some of the best ideas come in dreams,”
- Richard Dawkins
Ok, I’ve got to admit it, I’ve been a little bit cheeky here. Although Dawkins did say “Some of the best ideas, come in dreams.”, he said it in the context of dismissing Craig Hamilton Parker, a medium who claims to commune with the dead. I can’t imagine Dawkins would go out of his way to point out such an incredible statement in order to inspire excitement and to uplift the utility of the imagination, of course he said it in the context of dismissal, but he did say it, and why did he say it?: Because the evidence is overwhelming.
Watch the above video to see the exact moment he said it.
From August Kekulé‘s discovery of the benzene ring to Louis Agassiz‘s discovery of the laying-out of the Periodic Table. Major Scientific Discoveries seem to be inspired by dreams throughout history.
You can watch and learn about more examples by subscribing to my YouTube and watching my ever growing playlist: Dream Discoveries.
It’s almost as if, there is a deeper driving force encouraging, humanity to progress on into the future. Not a theory that Dawkins would have much time for… and of course, most scientific discoveries are made in laboratories, with dedicated hard working staff who don’t bother to pay attention to their dreams, however some scientists such as Paul Kalas are calling for their colleges to pay more attention to their dreams, in order to improve their work. More on him shortly.
When it comes to the scientific discoveries that have been made in dreams, some of the rationalists out-there have come up with a compelling argument as to why/how this happens, which goes something like this:
The dreams arose in individuals who were deeply pondering a particular issue while awake. It is conceivable that such dreams may manifest solely within the realm of concentrated scientific contemplation.
The above is a reworded theory by Edward Tabor. In my search for evidence that backs up Dawkins statement, I found his article which lists a few of the historic examples of scientific discoveries made in dreams. When we consider the examples in his list, it’s a perfectly reasonable theory that is backed up by Jung and Frued‘s work in understanding the unconscious.
There is a lot to be considered in this explanation, as to quote me from another page on this website:
“Waking life, affects dreaming life.”
- Harry Wheeler
This is to engage with the idea that we are able to control or manipulate our dreaming life, by making changes in our waking life, but not just that, problems that we face in our waking life are being worked out and processed by a deeper part of ourselves, unbeknownst to our conscious selfs, while we go about our daily lives.
Bringing awareness into dream states, enables our conscious self to interact with the unconscious parts of ourselves that have been working through all the data we have collected in our waking lives, consolidate it, and turn it into a useful solution by having a ‘Eureka moment’.
Interestingly within the myth around the origin of the ‘Eureka moment’ or the ‘Eureka effect’ as it is otherwise known, it has been posited that Archimedes, the ancient Greek polymath who had been tasked by the local king to determine whether a crown was of pure gold or not, fell asleep in a bath, the water that got displaced by his slouching, woke him, whilst simultaneously made him come to the understanding of volume displacement as a method of measuring the crowns gold.
So again, in this potential reading of Archimedes discovery, we see a man who has been tasked with a problem in waking life, tried and failed various solutions, and has been able to come to a successful conclusion via a dream state.
The problem with the reading of ‘Achimedes discovery’ I have just given, is there are various aspects to the story that are pure heresy. Stories get repeated in history because they hold value, but stories morph and change according to the zeitgeist of the time.
On my journey to collect these examples its come to light that we are living in the age of viral hearsay, catalysed by the internet. Some of these ‘Dream Discoveries’ floating around on the web have actually been made purely in wishful thinking and the imagination. I try my best to research these examples and go to the horses mouth.
As for trying to explain as to how they might happen, Edward Tabor’s explanation seems a fairly strong contender as to how we can explain this surprisingly common phenomena, until we come across Paul Kalas‘s dream discovery.
When Paul was young he had a dream that contained the sentence “Jumping from a hey cart to a sixteen wheeler”.
When he woke, this sentence rang in his ear, as it seemed so specific yet unfamiliar and obscure. A week or so later, he was at school, one of his fellow class mates had broken his leg, a young lady said to him, how did you get that? His classmate said: “Jumping from a hey cart to a sixteen wheeler”.
When Paul was young he had a dream that contained the sentence “Jumping from a hey cart to a sixteen wheeler”.
When he woke, this sentence rang in his ear, as it seemed so specific yet unfamiliar and obscure. A week or so later, he was at school, one of his fellow class mates had broken his leg, a young lady said to him, how did you get that? His classmate said: “Jumping from a hey cart to a sixteen wheeler”.
Ten years later Paul Kalas finds himself working for NASA. Specifically he’s working on the Hubble Space Telescope and comes across an unprecedented discovery. What looks like an exploded star that has an oval shaped debris-field with the centre of the explosion, seemingly off-centre. When Kalas had the dream ten years prior, no-one on earth was pondering the possibility of such an anomaly, as it goes against our understanding of physics.
Kalas is in the history books for discovering Fomalhaut b which NASA describes as “rare and possibly unique”. Exactly what Fomalhaut b is, remains a mystery, whether it really is an exploded star, or multiple other anomalies, that create this striking image, that is often referred to as the Eye of Sauron, is irrelevant to how and what ‘dream mechanics’ might be at play here.
The fact is, Edward Tabor‘s logical explanation that scientists are processing vast amounts of data in their waking days, and their unconscious consolidates this data and passes on useful information via their dreams does not work in this instance.
As when Kalas first had the dream, he was not processing vast amounts of space-data, he wasn’t even working for NASA, and on-top of that, the factors that make up Fomalhaut b as a potential phenomena, were not even a scientific possibility prior to Kalas having the dream, and indeed, until he discovered the anomaly via the Hubble Space Telescope.
Fomalhaut b remains unique to this day, despite us humans now having access to the vastly superior James Webb Telescope, we have not found a similar situation out there.
The likelihood of Kalas ‘randomly’ dreaming about his historic discovery of this space anomoly, ten years prior is ridiculous. In fact “Its silly” but that is what Dawkins would have you believe.
So how do we explain Kalas’s dream discovery? Time to walk well and truly away from Dawkins world of rational logic and reason. I would personally would put it down to the path of the Soul. What is the Soul? I cannot be sure, I’m still working it out, and I suspect that humans will be trying to work it out for millennia after I have left this world, because unlike Dawkins, I don’t think everything can be explained by science. I think our brains are far too small to understand everything.
From working with my and other peoples dreams for the past few years, it has become clear to me, that if processed correctly, our dreams lay-out the blueprint of our soul-path. In Buddhism they talk about dhamma-path, prehaps ones soul-path is not exactly the same as the implied rigorous practice of ‘purity of mind’ that dhamma upholds, but the experience is much the same – Soul Satisfaction.
Discover a world of sub-conscious possibilities
Although there is a wealth of documented evidence that dreams have aided scientific discoveries throughout history the truth is, most dreams we have, don’t contain scientific breakthroughs but insights to our deeper stories.