Einmal drüber schlafen

Andrew Wiles, der Mathematiker, der 30 Jahre lang über die Lösung des Fermatschen Problems gegrübelt hat, hat diesen Ausspruch etwas länger, wenn auch nicht weniger wahr, formuliert:

“ … when you’ve reached a real impasse, or when there’s a real problem that you want to overcome, then the routine kind of mathematical thinking is of no use to you. Leading up to that kind of new idea there has to be a long period of tremendous focus on the problem without any distraction. You have to really think about nothing but that problem – just concentrate on it. Then you stop. Afterwards there seems to be a kind of period of relaxation during which the subconscious appears to take over, and it’s during that time the some new insight comes.”