Origin of Creative Prophecies

OK. I'll admit it - I check Daily Mail once a day. I blame my wife for hooking me to the site - it's mostly useless drivel but a good way to pass time in the train or when I am bored - although I am getting increasingly tired of repetitive news.

A few days back among a bunch of Kim Kardashian news articles, there was an interesting article about Srinivasa Ramanujan - the mathematical genius. Apparently Ramanujan, in his deathbed, wrote a bunch of formulas and sent them to his mentor G. H. Hardy saying that they were important and were revealed to him by Goddess Namagiri, who he worshiped and believed to be his source of genius. A century and change later, it has apparently been found that those formulas that were cryptic at that time, could now hold the key to understanding portions of how black holes function. Interestingly, black holes were not even discovered during Ramanujan's time (1920s)!

 
In many of the news sites, the comments are sometimes more interesting than the article. Most of it is irrelevant trolling, but it also gives some window into the general public's psyche.

Not surprisingly, there were many comments initially dismissing Ramanujan's notion that the formulas were revealed to him by the Goddess. Alternate explanations were Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, etc. - anything other than spiritual intervention.

Now, if you haven't read the famous biography of Ramaujan - "The man who knew Infinity", I strongly urge you to do so - it's a fascinating read.

 

In the biography, the author reaffirms Ramanujan's spiritual beliefs and some insight into how his 'genius' originated. The comments reminded me of a notion by Elizabeth Gilbert that I had mentioned in my earlier post "Will we ever be alone with our thoughts again". In her talk, she mentions the notion of ideas passing through as waves and that inspiration is essentially who happens to be at the right time and right place to catch the wave.

Maybe in Ramanujan's case, he happened to catch the 'wave' that contained the mock theta functions. Maybe what differentiates genius and mediocrity is the level of luck - geniuses are more lucky and tend to catch more waves, while others are not so much! Then the question becomes "who creates the wave in the first place?" and that's a nice little space for the spiritualists to play in!

Of course, the alternate explanation is also rooted in chance or probability - may be Ramanujan's brain happened to wire itself in such a way as to figure out the formulas. Spiritualists can argue that the wiring was done by the Goddess and atheists can argue that it was mere probability and that he happened to luck out.

So, we can go either way - believe that it is all probability - a quantum fluctuation if you will - and that nothing has anything to do with God, or we can believe that there is a 'hidden hand' that creates waves or rewires brains to surface 'genius' every once in a while. Whichever may be the truth, I think the latter assumption is worth pursuing because a) if it is pure probability, it doesn't make a difference what you believe in and b) if there is a hidden hand, maybe the belief will make you more tuned to catching the waves than others who may not realize it passing through!