Something New

My brother and I recently had a conversation about innovation and invention; in particular, we sought to identify how to think in a way that might facilitate the genesis of a truly new idea, if such a way of thinking even exists.  The problem is that when most people think of how new ideas come to be, they envision the end result as some instantaneous, intuitive leap, but the reality is that new ideas don’t come about so spontaneously.  They are not, as Terry Pratchett described them, derived from “inspiron” particles sleeting through the universe until they happen to collide with a brain at the right angle and receptive temperature.  Anyone can think of a new idea, and it requires no special circumstances, but new ideas are incremental, iterations upon a concept rather than startling leaps in understanding, no matter how their appear from the outside.  The greatest revolutions in human understanding have come not from intuitive leaps by random geniuses, but by deeply knowledgeable thinkers synthesizing information and taking the next logical step.

This is not to diminish the brilliance of those who add to human understanding.  Newton developing his theory of gravity took the next logical step from the work of people like Kepler, catalyzed, perhaps, by the apocryphal apple, but that doesn’t make his contribution any less significant, the step any less important, or the contribution any less distinctive.  Reading Relativity, for as revolutionary as that titular theory is, Einstein manages to make it seem only a logical progression from commonly understood principles.  That is evidence of his true genius, testament to his mastery of his subject, and speaks to the genuine nature of innovation.  Viewed with hindsight, all of the best discoveries and epiphanies should seem inevitable.

Our unique ability to imagine and to reason in the abstract provides us with a capacity that is easy to take for granted.  Reading In the Valley of Horses prompted me to examine it more closely, and the role of serendipity.  The discovery of penicillin could be described as serendipity, but it took a human, with the right background understanding and knowledge, to isolate the proper strain, realize what occurred, how it could be adapted, replicate it, draw conclusions, and apply the idea in a completely different way.  That cannot be considered a mere accident that caused such a medicinal revolution any more than the aforementioned apocryphal apple can be considered the true creator of Newtonian gravitational theory.

When I’m deciding what understanding and technology to give a particular culture I’m creating for a story, I try to think through what is reasonable.  The problem I encounter, and which got away from me, to some extent, in the later Blood Magic episodes, is that many things that are eminently obvious to us in hindsight are not self-evident in the moment, and require particular conditions to be revealed and applied for the first time.  Something as simple as putting a round object upon an axle to form a wheel and thence a wheelbarrow is an enormous innovation.  The devices which we call simple machines are only simple once someone first thinks of them (I read recently a proposal to add to the list of simple machines (levers, inclined planes, and the like) devices like switches and other fundamental electrical components that underlie out modern technology, which could be quite interesting).

This pertains also to why the acquisition of knowledge, and memorization, remain relevant in an age of massive databases and search engines.  It is not enough for knowledge to be extent.  You must yourself know it, be sufficiently familiar with it to recall and apply it, to begin employing it to some new and innovative end.  All of the information necessary for the next revolution might already exist – the right brain just hasn’t brought it together yet.  Innovation is taking something you know a lot about, combining it with something you know a little about, and adding some contextual catalyst.  That’s why the polymath, the proverbial renaissance man, appears to us so remarkable inventive, and I don’t think that has changed as much as some experts like to claim in this hyper-specialized age.

Sometimes, I think I’m really smart, and come up with some game changing, revolutionary idea…only to do an hour of research and discover that someone else already thought of that idea.  Then, I start to wonder if I will ever have a truly original idea.  Yet, was that idea any less original for me?  The thought process involved remains valid, and if I keep using it, and continue growing my own knowledge base, then one day I might get there first.  It won’t be some dramatic epiphany, but rather a kind of satisfying realization, like a puzzle piece clicking into place whose position, in retrospect, is inevitable.  That’s how innovation really happens.