Incubation refers to time spent away from the problem. Corresponding theories (Feldman, Hadamard) suggest that the incubation period causes an individual to enter "mental overdrive" during which the subconscious takes over and continues to search for solutions using existing ideas and knowledge. (Perkins 2001) According to psychologists this explains why, when an individual finally arrives at a solution, it appears as if it has come from out of the blue.
"The experience of sudden insight is so extraordinary that it is natural to turn to extraordinary explanations, including inspiration. The idea of inspiration echoes the common experience that insights arrive out of nowhere, bolts from the blue. Inspiration is the ultimate mental overdrive." (Perkins 2001, p.180).
This helps to explain how novel ideas come to fruition and why they might appear as if they have arrived from nowhere, but is inspiration not a little more than just the conceiving of an idea? The nature of inspiration has much more to do with the actual desire and motivation to solve a problem or create than the mere act of having solved a problem or created. For all their hypotheses, psychologists are actually reluctant to use the word inspiration. Instead, they opt for the word insight as a means of describing the birth of new ideas, which is not nearly the same phenomenon as inspiration. Psychological interpretations ignore what would seem to be the most important stage of the inspiration process: the event of being inspired in the first place. Indeed, the Macquarie dictionary describes inspiration as:.
"An inspiring or animating action or influence: I cannot write without inspiration." (1990, p.482).
My point here then is that cognitive theories - pragmatic as they may seem - do not account for the experience of inspiration in its entirety. Ideas probably do not arrive from the nowhere, (or the gods for that matter) that is not the debate.