Boolean Algebra
It is logical that creative answers would come only when the question is equally creative. Kepler and Copernicus were interested in hearing the "music of the planets", while Einstein wanted to know "how the universe would look if one travels on a beam of light".
Of course, the answer does not always satisfy the question being asked, as the discovery of Boolean algebra shows. Boole made his breakthrough while trying to develop a mathematics of thought. He was a strange character, deeply engrossed in mysticism and occult. This inclination made him subscribe to the view that man receives information not only through his senses, but "also from some source, invisible and undefinable". His aim was " to unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and ourselves is attained or matured."
It was while musing on such metaphysical problems, that one day, while crossing a field, the "Mystic Law"
"x + (not x) = 1"
flashed in his mind. And that was the beginning of the Boolean Algebra. This, of course, was in the 1830s, more than a century before, Boolean algebra found a utility in computers.
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