14. Getting to “Aha!”: The Magic Moment

Dr. John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, defined the “Aha!” Moment in a Wall Street Journal article as “any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light .... It could be the solution to a problem; it could be getting a joke; or suddenly recognizing a face.”F14.1

The “Aha!” Moment

According to William Safire, the master etymologist of the New York Times, the first person to express the moment was Chaucer in a fox hunt in his Canterbury Tales.F14.2 Archimedes undoubtedly experienced it when he noticed the displacement of water in his bath, as did Sir Isaac Newton when he saw an apple fall from a tree, and Alexander Graham Bell when he called to his ...

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