https://phys.org/news/2015-12-tablet-screen-brought-aid-carr...
> It was the Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer and the German physicist Otto Lehmann who discovered liquid crystals in 1888 when they were experimenting with the natural substances found in carrots
Carrots have also inspired art, I don't need to find an example of that.
That said, if you view that premise as it being a given that X has inspired something just because lots of people do it, then it is indeed preposterous.
However, if you view it as "a critical mass of people have done mind-altering substances and thus it's almost a certainty that discoveries have been made under and due to their influence", then it makes a lot more sense. It's a fundamentally different argument and you can't generalize it to any non-mind-altering substance. The point is that the mind is altered by the substance, causing different modes of thought. I think you were just confused about the way the other commenter laid out their premise, because it's a purely statistical argument with the qualifier that we're talking about substances that measurably alter thought processes.
This much is obvious. But that sneaky “and due to” which I cut out does not belong. You’re putting a completely unfounded assumption next to a simple statistical argument and presenting them as equivalent.
