<p>What are the neural precursors that lead up to the epiphany? How can one, have more creative insights? How this affects our psyche? What's the psychology behind it? </p>

<p>The word "epiphany" has a deep, archetypal resonance for us, dating back to ancient Greece. It comes from the Greek "epiphaneia," meaning "appearance" or "manifestation," and referred to the revelations brought to us by the gods. Today "epiphany" carries a range of meanings, including "an intuitive grasp of reality," "an illuminating discovery, realization, disclosure, or insight," or simply "a revealing scene or moment." </p>

<p>An ephiphany may change your life and most likely the life of the people around you. It could be as simple as braking a mental model, which could open many new doors or neural pathways... For that matter, lets share an interesting examples: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Allegedly Albert Einstein was struck as a young child by being given a
  compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it
  move. Another, perhaps better, example from Einstein's life occurred
  in 1905 after he had spent an evening unsuccessfully trying to
  reconcile Newtonian physics and Maxwell's equations. While taking a
  trolley car to home, he looked behind him at the receding clocktower in
  Bern and realized that if the car sped up close to the speed of light,
  he would see the clock slow down; with this thought, he later
  remarked, "a storm broke loose in my mind," which would allow him to
  understand special relativity. Einstein had a second epiphany two
  years later in 1907 which he called "the happiest thought of my life"
  when he imagined an elevator falling, and realized that a passenger
  would not be able to tell the difference between the weightlessness of
  falling, and the weightlessness of space - a thought which allowed him
  to generalize his theory of relativity to include gravity as a
  curvature in spacetime.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>What is happening on the psychological level when one experience such "aha moment"?</p>

<hr>

<p>EDIT: What <strong>conceptual models of epiphany</strong> are out there? </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-04-13T22:47:03.733Z
What is happening at the psychological level is that you have an epiphany. Your question is circular. Are you asking if there are some models of it? What kind of models? [Computational?](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422778/).
got trolled too much this week
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-04-15T15:54:53.627Z
@Fizz yes, models would work... anything that can provide more strick concept and scientific info around the psychology behind epiphany.
Filip
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-06T02:45:56.143Z
Similar to: [How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/1/7001)
Arnon Weinberg
<cognitive-psychology><perception><learning><cognitive-modeling>
What is the psychology behind epiphany?
Filip
# What is the psychology behind epiphany?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-04-13)

What are the neural precursors that lead up to the epiphany? How can one, have more creative insights? How this affects our psyche? What's the psychology behind it?

The word "epiphany" has a deep, archetypal resonance for us, dating back to ancient Greece. It comes from the Greek "epiphaneia," meaning "appearance" or "manifestation," and referred to the revelations brought to us by the gods. Today "epiphany" carries a range of meanings, including "an intuitive grasp of reality," "an illuminating discovery, realization, disclosure, or insight," or simply "a revealing scene or moment."

An ephiphany may change your life and most likely the life of the people around you. It could be as simple as braking a mental model, which could open many new doors or neural pathways... For that matter, lets share an interesting examples:

> Allegedly Albert Einstein was struck as a young child by being given a
> compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it
> move. Another, perhaps better, example from Einstein's life occurred
> in 1905 after he had spent an evening unsuccessfully trying to
> reconcile Newtonian physics and Maxwell's equations. While taking a
> trolley car to home, he looked behind him at the receding clocktower in
> Bern and realized that if the car sped up close to the speed of light,
> he would see the clock slow down; with this thought, he later
> remarked, "a storm broke loose in my mind," which would allow him to
> understand special relativity. Einstein had a second epiphany two
> years later in 1907 which he called "the happiest thought of my life"
> when he imagined an elevator falling, and realized that a passenger
> would not be able to tell the difference between the weightlessness of
> falling, and the weightlessness of space - a thought which allowed him
> to generalize his theory of relativity to include gravity as a
> curvature in spacetime.

What is happening on the psychological level when one experience such "aha moment"?

---

EDIT: What **conceptual models of epiphany** are out there?

**Tags:** cognitive-psychology, perception, learning, cognitive-modeling

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: What is happening at the psychological level is that you have an epiphany. Your question is circular. Are you asking if there are some models of it? What kind of models? [Computational?](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422778/).  
> **username_0**: @Fizz yes, models would work... anything that can provide more strick concept and scientific info around the psychology behind epiphany.  
> **username_2**: Similar to: [How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/1/7001)  

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## 0 answers

