Famous People Sleeping
Did Da Vinci, Jefferson, Fuller, etc. actually sleep polyphasically?
It's one of the favorite 'facts' that's used to promote polyphasic sleep, Uberman in particular. It's almost always thrown in with the short blurb description. I've seen it referenced both for Uberman sleep specifically (like the wikipedia entry or everything2 entry), as well as the 90-minute cycle varieties of sleep (like here).
Everyone loves to do it when discussing polyphasic sleep. Heck, I've even been guilty of name dropping. It makes this whole polysleep thing seem a little less crazy.
The question is, where'd it come from? I've never seen a single reference or citation to say where this information comes from. Sounds to me like an urban legend...
But it might not be. Does anyone have any information on this? I'm willing to throw a large shadow of doubt on this if we can't dig up any reliable sources on the information. That's not saying that it is a myth, just that we cannot quote it as fact (and people should stop doing so).
-sean
It's one of the favorite 'facts' that's used to promote polyphasic sleep, Uberman in particular. It's almost always thrown in with the short blurb description. I've seen it referenced both for Uberman sleep specifically (like the wikipedia entry or everything2 entry), as well as the 90-minute cycle varieties of sleep (like here).
Everyone loves to do it when discussing polyphasic sleep. Heck, I've even been guilty of name dropping. It makes this whole polysleep thing seem a little less crazy.
The question is, where'd it come from? I've never seen a single reference or citation to say where this information comes from. Sounds to me like an urban legend...
But it might not be. Does anyone have any information on this? I'm willing to throw a large shadow of doubt on this if we can't dig up any reliable sources on the information. That's not saying that it is a myth, just that we cannot quote it as fact (and people should stop doing so).
-sean
posted by Sean @ 12/02/2005 12:19:00 PM
4 Comments:
Thomas Jefferson wrote that he "never went to bed without an hour, or a half-hour's previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep." according to a Jefferson biography I found via Google Book Search.
Reading for an hour would, of course, be difficult to do if you had to sleep every four hours or so.
Da Vinci's sleep is never mentioned on any websites specifically about Da Vinci AFAICT, making me highly skeptical of it as any other unusual habits are explained in detail. But I didn't find anything authoritative saying he did not (proving a negative is hard).
most of this is urban myth
Edison was an enemy of sleep (like most of polyphasic wannabe sleepers). Probably he hated sleep for the same reason: thief of time. He (wrongly) believed that there is little biological need for sleep and hoped that with his electric lighting people will evolve towards sleeping less (and less they sleep indeed, although not by virtue of evolution - just via a sheer wish to partake in the rat race). Edison is rumoured to have slept 2-4 hours per day. More likely, he would run active for hours and then catnap at the point of exhaustion (definitely not on any fixed polyphasic schedule as invented at kuro5shin? or whatnot under the name of Uberman).
Summary: Edison indeed hated sleep, wanted to minimize sleep, slept very little, catnapped "secretly" (as if ashemed of being "lazy"), demanded minimum sleep from others (running them to exhaustion) but ... definitely not using any timer nor alarm clock on a regular basis.
As for others, we know the power of memetic science, those things propagate like crazy, esp. in the Internet era, when we really want to believe in 'em.
Churchill was a powerful catnapper and could run his ministers through the night. Kennedy was a napper (perhaps due to his Addison's). Truman was a napper (almost shot as a result). But ... no reliable knowledge of da Vinci. Worse, Einstein loved to take those healthy 9 hours. I would rather emulate Albert than Thomas Alva. At least for the sake of peaceful and happy personality, if not for genius invention :)
sleep well
einstein and other scientists such as newton and hawking used to skip a couple days of sleep while thinking about a "big" physics problem. it might have been better had they slept. newton was somewhat of a hermit, mercilessly working to publish works, getting as little sleep as possible.
-duffjr
duffjr,
Welcome, and thanks for the comment. Do you know where you discovered that information? I'd very much like to verify the source.
More people to check up on, I guess. :)
-sean
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