synapse, Synthesis, and Intuition

As we grow and develop our brains are hard at work perfecting their performance as our bodies’ central control boards.  Because we constantly learn, we constantly build synapses that help our brain communicate with itself so we can remember more and more information, create automatic responses, develop relationships, and control our emotions.  We grow wiser, and in return for our hard work in teaching our brains, our brains teach us a thing or two.

One reason I trust in the credibility of Charles Darwin is that he consistently seems to be a very insightful person.  He is, in my mind, the kind of person to absorb every detail of a moment with all of his senses in order to get the most accurate perspective that he can, to gain every piece of insight he can, to reach a fair and logical conclusion.  Like he said in a letter to Joseph Hooker dated January 11, 1844, “I look at a strong tendency to generalize as an entire evil.” To me, this indicates his trust in the natural value of perception and patience in organizing ideas as one holds off on jumping to conclusions.
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What I like about being naturally insightful are the traits I see in myself that I consider complementary to insight: creativity, intuition, logic, and a mind that is constantly engineering for advancement.  Darwin wrote to Hooker, “Would you kindly observe one little fact for me, whether any species of plant (…) have hooked seeds, such hooks as if observed here would be thought with justness to be adapted to catch into wool of animals”.  He was not in the Galapagos or New Zealand, but he was still gaining as much information as he could from those he trusted to give him an account of the worlds they observed.   He had the insight to explore worlds he could not see by asking questions he could answer in the world he did see.  He used information from these accounts to figure out the gaps in his understanding of the world around him.  Darwin expanded his view beyond his own workplace, and I really respect this because it shows that he appreciated a broad, well-rounded view of the world like I do.

I think Darwin would have relied heavily on the broad view he would gain by talking to people of all kinds of professions, from teachers to astronomers to botanists.  I feel that when one links disciplines and learns across subjects, professions, or locations on Earth we are able to synthesize so much more than we would if we restricted ourselves to our area of most interest.  With the conjunction of disciplines we fill in gaps, allowing us to improve our insight.  With this synthesis, we can distinguish ourselves as great thinkers much like Darwin and Einstein have before us.  When we learn across disciplines, we build a network in our brains for logical connections and intuition.  We become engineers of multidisciplines that are unique to us as we live and learn in our passions.