Hemingway said when asked about his method in writing: ” Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.”
First time I read that interview I had to do a double take, and then another because to my surprise I knew it…… Not being a writer or artist, I too had experienced that precise feeling of some achievement of mine being clearly above my usual best. Like the pole vaulter who looks incredulously at the bar he cleared effortlessly despite expectation of the opposite.
I am sure that Ernest Hemingway and I and the pole vaulter are not the only people who now and then surprise themselves with an achievement beyond the expected.
There is a myth that humans only use ten percent of the brain’s potential. One of the people credited with “the 10 percent myth” is William James, the psychologist (brother to Henry, the writer). He is quoted saying that our brain is merely idling at 10 percent of its true capacity. He did so in a paper from 1907. Hemingway, nine years old at the time was most certainly not aware of Dr. James’ paper.
The theory that humans use only 10 percent of their brain’s capacity is still alive and well despite being considered folklore by Science because imaging studies have debunked it as myth. With the aid of sophisticated brain imaging intellectual activity has been shown quantitatively involving the brain in a pan-global pattern and not just focally. Interesting basic science but hardly proof of what we are capable of. A little like trying to describe the taste of an apple by measuring the sugar content.
Accounting for the interplay of skill, intellect and inspiration (not considering the plethora of other components that fuel any performance) is beyond the scope of 3D multicolor mapping by functional PET scan, MRI and other signals that light up a monitor in a laboratory. Maybe those imaging studies are only 10 percent of the explanation of the 10% Myth (to paraphrase Bernard Sanders)!
