The Good Sense of Nonsense
Why nonsense is so important to children
Ayoung child looks at the rough texture of a wall and sees cartoon faces. In dreams, we nightly struggle to make sense of the day. . . . As a means to survival, the human brain has evolved into a pattern-seeking machine. In a report in the New York Times (October 5, 2009), Benedict Carey explains what triggers this hunt for patterns and coherence.
According to research by Drs. Travis Proulx (University of California Santa Barbara) and Steven J. Heine (University of British Columbia), when we encounter an anomaly, our anterior cingulate cortex lights up like a Christmas tree and primes the brain for pattern seeking. What is unusual is that an oddity encountered in one area may prompt recognition of a pattern in an entirely different arena. Say you encounter an upholstered chair in the middle of the woods. Face-to-face with that anomaly, you feel ill at ease and the mind snaps into action; suddenly, in another quarter altogether, you see the solution to a math problem you haven’t been able to figure out. “Disorientation begets creative thinking,”Carey observes.
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
This fact has been known by Zen masters for centuries when, to provoke new thinking in their students, they have demanded answers…
