The biggest discoveries are instinctual? Not quite sure what you mean here. And I disagree, religion, or even instinct, is not necessary to practice good science. Mater of fact, I think it would hinder good science because you have a presupposition of what the outcome should be or how something should fit in with your beliefs. Sort of like thinking the Earth is the center of the Universe then coming up with models to show how it works.
Speaking motorcycles, a couple of incidences come to mind with your story. First incident; we (wife, Mom {who was visiting} and I) were traveling on a winding road up a canyon from Cochem (a day of tourist sight seeing
). We were tooling along at a normal click when we were passed by a bike leaning hard in the turns. I thought not much of it... seen it plenty of times in Germany. Around the next turn we saw his bike mangled in the guard rail. He was on his hands and knees obviously dazed. I was first on the scene and got out to help him to the side of the road. As he was sitting on the guard rail what struck me was his gloves (he was wearing full leathers) were chewed down to the skin and his knuckles were bleeding. Aside from being dazed from the fall I think his knuckles were the worst of his injuries. To be sure, his leathers weren't going to catch top dollar at a yard sale anymore, but he got off easy.
Story two, second hand; My brother was supposed to come up from Ramstein to visit (I was stationed at Spangdahlem). He should have been at our house around 4 or so. He showed up near midnight and he wasn't "normal." His story; he was driving along at his normal Autobahn speed of around 120 mph (he had a little Honda CRX) when a bike, guy and girl as passenger, passed him at an impressive speed. I think he said he was second on the scene. Same story for the bike, mangled in the guard rail. Different story for the riders. Both killed, he said the driver was nearly decapitated. It was drizzling at the time, which I'm sure was the cause (besides speed).
I relate these stories not to say speed kills. I've done my share of time at 240 kph (though it's been on 4 wheels). What I've got to ask is why didn't they see it coming?
I do know what you're saying though, there are times you know something is going to happen and it does. But, there are also times you know something is going to happen and it doesn't. And to complicate matters, most of the time you have no idea something is going to happen and it does anyway.
The mind is a complicated thing with an enormous amount of uncorrelated data you've collected over however many years. All with different degrees of connective potential. I'm not even going to guess what the probabilities are that one could be riding down a familiar road with a known dangerous curve and imagine a tire in the road, and then actually have a tire in the road. I can say it doesn't have to be considered a miraculous occurrence, just highly unlikely. There are hundreds?, thousands?, probably millions (and more) of highly unlikely things happening every day. Sort of a contradiction isn't it. It's an almost certainty that everyone will have something highly unlikely happen to them.
And this is probably my last post in this thread. It just takes up too much of my time. Sorry.