Minds that materialism cannot explain

Physicist Dean Radin writes: No one who studies the lives and works of Mozart, da Vinci, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Einstein, or Ramanujan can doubt that genius is real, if rare. Of the estimated 100 billion humans who have ever lived, every now and then someone comes along whose talent is so prodigious that it literally reshapes the course of civilization. The challenge presented by genius is to imagine how the mind, viewed solely as an aspect of brain processing, could generate world-changing mathematical theorems, breakthrough scientific ideas, hypercreative inventions, masterwork books and musical compositions, etc., apparently arising out of the blue, often unbidden, and fully formed (Schwartz, 2010b; Heilman, 2016). If such ideas arose once in a person’s lifetime, perhaps we might dismiss them as a fluke. But true genius is a persistent fount of paradigm-shattering creativity, and that is not easily accommodated by current views of the mind as identical to the operations of a brain that is strictly limited to ideas it has already absorbed (Lingg & Frank, 1973; Pandey, 2001)." 

"Autistic savants have little to no social skills and very low IQs, and yet they display supernormal capacities of memory, musical talent, artistic talent, or lightning fast mathematical or calendar calculations (Dossey, 2012; Cowan & Frith, 2009; Welling, 1994). The Academy Award-winning 1988 movie Rain Man was based partially on the life of savant Kim Peek, who among other things could correctly and instantly recall every word of the estimated 12,000 books he had read. Psychiatrist Darold Treffert, discussing autistic savants, wrote that 'Kim Peek possesses one of the most extraordinary memories ever recorded. Until we can explain his abilities, we cannot pretend to understand human cognition.'  

"Treffert described the case of Leslie Lemke, who 'is blind, severely cognitively impaired and has cerebral palsy. Yet he played back Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 flawlessly after hearing it for the first time at age 14.' (Treffert, 2010, p. 288) If one were to test normally healthy pianists who had not previously heard this concerto, it is safe to say that precisely none of them would be able to do this.

"Treffert also described the even stranger phenomenon of what he termed 'acquired savants,' in which, as the result of an accident, a normal person suddenly gains savant skills. As an example, he offered the following case: ‘A 54-year-old surgeon gets struck by lightning, which he survives. After several weeks of mild memory impairment, he develops an obsessive interest in classical music, which was not present pre-incident. He learns to play the piano but has a recurrent, intrusive, unrelenting tune in his head, which he subsequently transcribes into a major sonata; he now performs professionally. His medical skills remain unaffected’ (Treffert, 2010, p. 330)."

"One theory about autistic savants has been proposed by Allan Snyder (Gobet et al., 2014). He proposes that the brain is essentially a filter that actively reduces the 'blooming, buzzing, confusion' of the external world into a few understandable concepts and objects based on one’s prior experience (James, 1890, p. 462)."

Dean Radin, “Reductive Materialism Explains Everything, Except for Two Small Clouds,” Beauregard, Mario; Dyer, Natalie; Woollacott, Marjorie, editors. Expanding Science: Visions of a Postmaterialist Paradigm, (p. 327-341). AAPS. Kindle Edition. 

Cowan, R. & Frith, C. (2009). Do calendrical savants use calculation to answer date questions? A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 364 (1522), 1417-1424.

Delorme, A. Beischel, J., Michel, L., Boccuzzi, M., Radin, D., & Mills, P. J. (2013). “Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased.” Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 834.

Dossey, L. (2012). Fractals and the mind. Explore (NY) 8 (4), 213-217.

Gobet, F., Snyder, A., Bossomaier, T. &. Harre, M. (2014).  Designing a “better” brain: insights from experts and savants. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 470.

Heilman, K. M. (2016). Jews, creativity and the genius of disobedience. J Relig Health,  55, pages 341–349.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York City: Henry Holt and Company.

Lingg, A. M. & Frank, H.  (1973). Mozart, genius of harmony. Port Washington, N.Y: Kennikat Press.

Pandey, S. N. (2001). Millennium perspectives on A.K. Ramanujan. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors.

Schwartz, S. (2010). Nonlocality and exceptional experiences: a study of genius, religious epiphany, and the psychic. Explore, 6, 227-236.

Treffert, D. A. (2010). Islands of genius: The bountiful mind of the autistic, acquired, and sudden savant. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Welling, H. (1994). Prime number identification in idiots savants: Can they calculate them? J Autism Dev Disord, 24 (2), 199-207.