Representative Image.
Credit: Special Arrangement
My mother used to complain of itching in her leg which had been amputated a few days before. I used to pacify her to no avail.
Much later on, reading VS Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee's Phantoms in the brain, I learnt that the particular spot in the brain, which relates to the leg in question, doesn't accept the loss and goes about proving its presence by an itching sensation or even pain. This may disappear after a while, and in extreme cases, doctors have operated and removed that particular spot in the brain, only to find in a short while the control has moved to yet another location in the brain and the patient continues to imagine the presence of the otherwise amputated leg.
The underlying message is that there are brain cells still available and unutilised. The great mathematician Ramanujan made very many conjectures in number theory. While he proved some of these in his lifetime, many were proved after his time, and none were proved wrong yet. This is beyond comprehension and he said he owes it to Goddess Namagiri who wrote these in his dreams.
Many great scientists and artists have had this experience of figuring out solutions or creations in their dreams or immediately after waking up from deep sleep. We are aware of the subconscious mind and its activity in dreams while in sleep.
The physicist Niels Bohr had the idea of the atomic model in a dream in which he saw the sun surrounded by all the planets of the solar system, and which appeared tied together with little strings. The melody of the renowned Yesterday apparently came to Paul McCartney in a dream, he recalls in The Beatles Anthology.
It's likely that the great Ramanujan had extraordinary brain activity while in sleep and created conjectures and very elaborate proofs for the same. In the conscious state, the elegant conjectures came up full, while the long proofs were hidden in the vast brain cells to come to the conscious mind over a period of time one by one. But he died young and didn't give himself enough time to prove it all. But what a great adventure it offered the posterity to go in to the grandeur of his mind and the beauty of math.
No, we have understood neither the brain, nor Ramanujan in full. He took the easy option given his background and called it Goddess Namagiri. Why not?