“If you give the mind time and space, it will do its own work on the problem, over time,” he said. “And it will usually come up with interesting possibilities to work with.” Gradually, those possibilities began to surface in Phillips’s mind. At the What If stage the imagination begins to go to work, whether we’re conscious of it or not. The mind, if preoccupied with a problem or question long enough, will tend to come up with possibilities that might eventually lead to answers, but at this stage are still speculations, untested hypotheses, and early epiphanies.
