/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21289245]

What literature can i read to better understand instincts and its interplay with reason? Or literature that describes why we act or why we should act?

[Anonymous No.21289300]

Interesting topic. I read Courage to Create by Rollo May and it has a chapter or two on 'insight'. A man called Poincare had written in depth about it, and his insight on insight is shared and explored. It was very enlightening to see the process of understanding something laid out step by step. Emotions and feelings, it turns out, are very important to understanding anything, and a lot of work in understanding is done unconsciously, only to emerge at some surprising time in a surprising way.

This isn't precisely your topic, but it seems related as it is essentially the exploration of the unconscious and its interplay with the conscious in the exploration of problems. Part of understanding, as per that book, is bringing a problem to mind consciously at intervals, and then taking breaks. In the breaks the problem is worked on under the surface. Later on, when doing something seemingly unrelated, a sudden pattern might emerge and bring to mind the problem, suddenly solved and whole, as though by magic.