The Science of Walking and The Art of Problem-Solving

By Larry Verstraete

My wife, Jo, and I are ardent hikers. She more than me, actually. Jo outpaces me on every trail, faithfully charts her steps with her Garmin, and competes with others online. I’m a bit slower, usually a quarter, perhaps a half kilometre behind. I track my steps, too, as well as heart rate and total distance, but I’m more interested in how far I’ve gone.

Recent studies tout the benefits of walking. Moderate walking reduces the odds of heart disease, stroke, insulin dependence and diabetes. It improves mood and sleep, reduces stress and anxiety, boosts energy and increases focus. Walking also changes the brain in remarkable ways.

A study conducted at the University of British Columbia found that regular brisk walking increases the size of the hippocampus, the brain region that monitors verbal memory and learning. Stanford researchers, meanwhile, discovered that creativity jumped 60% when subjects walked. Other studies showed that walking for 40 minutes three times a week Increased performance on cognitive tests and reduced declines in brain function as we age. It didn’t matter what kind of walking – whether on a mountain trail or on a treadmill – the benefits were the same.

Many problem solvers incorporate walking into their regimen. Aside from the physical benefits, walking is a way to wipe the slate clean, kick-start creativity, and channel fresh ideas. William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Henry Thoreau were among the many creative types who embraced walking.

“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move,” Thoreau wrote, “my thoughts begin to flow.”

When I walk, my mind drifts which might explain why I sometimes lose sight of Jo and have taken a wrong turn more than once. While that’s not a good thing, the drifting part can be – at least to a writer like me. While plodding a respectful distance behind Jo, I’ve solved problems and come up with some of my best ideas.

Turns out, I am growing my brain too.  Who knew?

Photos by Larry Verstraete. Brain image from Pixabay.

Struck by Lightning: Creative Insight in Chemistry

Chemical Heritage Foundation
[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Struck by Lightning: Creative Insight in Chemistry
                   by Judy Wearing

Imagine your garden variety chemistry scientist at work. Did you conjure up a picture similar to mine? A man, in a white lab coat with several golden-brown stains on the front, or a ripped pocket. He’s well worn, and slightly careless with his appearance because he’s got better things to do with his time, i.e., make lots of precise measurements of mysterious powders and liquids, which he swirls in large beakers, very carefully because if anything splashes he’ll carry the scars of the resulting flesh wounds forever. He bends over a lot, paying close attention to his mixtures and balances, and hence has a hunched back. He is rather antisocial, or at least socially-stinted as he does not use words much in everyday life; his writing centres around equations and long names of compounds with unaesthetic suffixes like ene and ic. He is considerably less romantic than my imaginary physicist, and far more esoteric than my biologist. He is the first to leave the pub, never buys the beer, and is unlikely to believe in fairies.

I don’t know any chemists, and I cannot conjure a single scrap of remembrance of any of the half dozen undergraduate chemistry profs who tried to teach me their discipline, such was the impression they made. I am quite sure that my imagined, biased, and uninformed stereotype is false. In fact, I am ashamed that I possess it in the first place – it is wrong, and I know better, for lots of reasons, one of which is that I’ve spent a good chunk of time with scientists of many stripes. They are generally nice people of both sexes with active social lives and a range of talents and abilities. I’d be more embarrassed to admit such a stereotype if I was not convinced it is so common to possess it, and that many will recognize or appreciate aspects of the image portrayed.

This stereotype, like many others through which we unwittingly perceive the world and the people in

Friedrich August Kekule

it, affect our perception of creativity. Take the story of August Kekulé, arguably Europe’s most prominent chemist in the latter decades of the 19th century. It was Kekulé who theorized the concept of chemical structure – envisioning how atoms are arranged in molecules without any means of actually observing them. This insight was a leap forward that enabled organic chemistry to blossom. Kekulé described the moment of his best-known scientific breakthrough, the ring structure of benzene, as a daydream:

"I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis…Let us learn to dream, gentlemen."

Kekulé was not under the influence of drugs, hallucinogenic or otherwise. And his description of the

process of creative thinking is not so strange, though it does not fit with the stereotypical methodical, plodding scientist. For example, the mention of lightning figures in the descriptions of other chemists asked in a questionnaire in 1931, by two men named Platt and Baker, how they make scientific progress. “I decided to abandon the work and all thoughts relative to it, and then, on the following day, when occupied in work of an entirely different type, an idea came to my mind as suddenly as a flash of lightning and it was the solution.” Another chemist wrote, “One day all of a sudden the whole became as clear and comprehensible as if it were illuminated with a flash of light...” The mathematician Gauss described the moment when he solved a troublesome problem whose solution had eluded him for years, “like a sudden flash of lightning the riddle happened to be solved.”

These rational, scientific men are all evoking some external and sudden force to describe their creative insights. To avoid a new stereotype of chemists who stand out in the rain waiting to be struck by lightning in order to achieve scientific fame, here is how other scientists have described a moment of clarity:

“…as if from the clear sky above me – an idea popped into my head as emphatically as if a voice had shouted it.”

“in all directions…happy ideas came unexpectedly without effort like an inspiration.” Von Helmholtz, physicist

“Again and again the imaginary plan on which one attempts to build up order breaks down and then we must try another. This imaginative vision and faith in the ultimate success are indispensable. The pure rationalist has no place here.” Max Planck, physicist.

The experiences of these men and women are not reserved for the particularly fanciful or brilliant. In Platt and Baker survey of chemists, 33 % stated they received frequent assistance from intuition, while 50% occasionally experienced these insights. If you, like me, have a stereotype of the rational scientist, you will be mildly surprised by the more fanciful workings of their minds. These anecdotes suggest three conclusions:

1. creativity is important for all sorts of mental processes, across disciplines - both science and art; 
2. a person who is an excellent analytic thinker can also be an excellent creative thinker; and, 
3. at least some common aspects of creativity happen in our brain without us being conscious of it, which gives the sensation of a vanilla shock. Or, being struck by lightning.

Creativity

            She reached up, touching the cold ceiling above her head, relishing the grain of stone beneath her fingertips. The lamp flickered. Shadows raced across the cave walls, spirits running through time. She hoped there was enough fat in the lamp. It would be difficult to find their way out, and she was afraid of what might press close in the darkness.

He was coming toward her. She was silent. It was easy to be, here; the walls were always talking. He stood beside her, holding a half clam shell filled with red, thin like new blood. He held it close to her hand, up near the rock. He put the end of a bone of a dove into the red, and blew, through the hollow.  His breath mingled with the fluid. It bubbled and whistled. The spirits whistled in reply. 

She felt the red against her hand’s flesh, cool and soothing, not hot like the blood of a kill, the blood of death. Her hand was steeped in it, her knuckles smooth under the coating. The light of the lamp flared and for a moment, her skin glowed. The red pulsed through her, inside her, and outside her. She peeled her fingers away from the rock with sadness, breaking the union between the past and the present. On the pale rock she’d left an imprint, a pale hand, five rays. A part of her to remain with the spirit shadows, a manifestation of her moment.

All of us share this imaginary CroMagnon woman’s compulsion to create, though we cannot understand the significance of her hand print, made deep in a cave some 40,000 years ago. We can say, however, that just like her hand print, what we create also leaves an imprint of ourselves on the physical world. At its core, creativity is about self-expression. Creativity is also, at its core, a manipulation of the world around us. Not only do we make our inner self external when we create, but we also interact with the external in a personal way. Creation is an act of giving and also an act of receiving.

I create because it is a way to give that is comfortable; it does not require thanks, and it has no strings attached. It is safe. When someone judges my hand print, they are judging not just my gift but my desire to give it. 

I create because the parts of me made external become a part of my world, a friendly part, that I can interact with, and receive from. I have forged connections with my surroundings, I am not so isolated. When someone judges my hand print, they are putting a value on the parts of me made external. They are changing the dynamic of my interaction with them.

Judging a creative product is important. To give requires a receiver. And understanding what we have expressed of ourselves is aided by understanding what others have perceived. However, it is never a task to be taken lightly. Even the simplest of creations may be imbued with meaning for the creator, and that meaning is not always accessible to others, like hand prints on a cave wall.