Is it possible to have an original thought?

Many of our thoughts are reactions to a singular external stimuli e.g. You see a flower and you might think "pink" or "beautiful." You see the ocean and might think "vast" or "moving."
Some thoughts are more complex and are reactions to memories of external stimuli and combined with other memories e.g. "Imagine an ocean made up entirely of undulating flowers."
But what about an original thought? A thought that's not a reaction to any external event or object. Is it possible to form a thought from nothing?

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Faust76 · 46-50, M

There's some issues that seem to get confused. "Original thought" is possible, and encouraged by scientific method through observing nature. But it's not the same thing as "thought from nothing". In the extreme, a cosmic ray could hit your synapse, causing an errant thought that's original and ... from any mortal human point of view, "from nothing". But it's still causal, brought on by inevitable progression of classic physics.

Your question seems to be a re-wording of the question of free will. If it is not, then of course, by observing nature and our surroundings, like the proverbial Newton observing an apple falling from tree, we can obtain insight that may not have occurred to another mortal mind before. To say nothing of various kinds of insanity, though the usefulness of those thoughts could be debatable ;)

Magnolia · 31-35, F

A few people have mentioned the free will thing and I actually hadn't thought of that when asking the question but it seems to relate. I woke up this morning and thought "paradox" so I looked up some paradoxes and it lead me to asking the question 😅. That example you gave with the cosmic ray is intriguing!
thanks for your answer