Mostly human being in society learn what has already been invented or discovered: language, mathematics, stories, science. Inventors of technology and theories are a small proportion of society. They are rare.
Perhaps it must be that way? Society’s infrastructure cannot work without those who become adept at managing what already exists.
For a person to become inventive they must be apprenticed or mentored or study a great deal: in other words, learn how to depart from the state of nature as an animal being into which they are born.
Most of a society’s energy must be devoted to maintaining what there already is. Society uses energy to maintain families, cities and governments. A small surplus of the energy supply is available for contemplation and innovation. If it were otherwise, if more energy were devoted to speculation and novelty a society would not survive.
Perhaps then it is an emergent attribute of human societies that inventiveness both diminishes the amount of energy available for current survival and at the same time increases the chances for a posterity?
Which makes me wonder: is inventiveness rare because it must be?
There is not enough resources - material, spiritual and time resources to be unstoppable in inventions. And psychologically many people wanting to adapt to already existing and sufficient way and order, which have proved as rewarding.
But if You are pushed into the corner, Your creativity and the speed for actions increases substiantially. However, this is not a normal, everyday situation. And it is counted by sociologists, that only a certain small percentage of people are really creative by character and abilities (but I can not point to exact page of this research - remembering I read some time ago somewhere ...). These are some thoughts, but there are much more of them in relevant literature.
This is really a very interesting question. Humanity and humans are indeed governed by two opposite tendencies: the tendency to live and survive and the tendency, generally speaking, to improvement. To improve one's own life, at any level, one has to stop somewhat some of the daily routine, in order to dedicate some of one's resources to reflect on the ways to do it, to try some of them (with the possibility of failure) and to draw conclusions. Everything that gets out of the routine requires more energy. In the kitchen, we have a tendency to cook the same dishes which are memorized, for which we have reflexes... A new recipe requires research, is likely to fail in the first times, is difficult to remember. Unless the new recipe becomes a habit in the house, it is likely to be forgotten. Now, what applies on a simple new recipe in a person's life, applies much more on innovations in a large sense. Successful innovations tend to become habits, thus to enter into people's routines. The society cannot dedicate all its energy to innovation, this is obvious. There is a similarity in this to the optimal sharing of one's own revenue between immediate consumption and savings. This sharing cannot be the same among societies (the rate of members charged of innovation) and among people (the time dedicated by a person to innovation). It depends on the cost of innovation relative to the expected benefit, on the level of resources, on the attitude towards risk... Each one of these elements may differ from person to person and from society to society.
Rim Lahmandi-Ayed
Your reply makes good points.
All of your observations seem sound.
If I may, along the same lines, I would observe that there is a time and energy cost to appraise proposed innovations.
Suppose that out of 100 innovations three will assist society sustainably. Then time and energy spent appraising 97 of the 100 ideas seems to lead to a dead end. Eliminating what does not work also has a benefit, but obtaining a null result in those circumstances feels like a wasted effort. The substantial risk that effort spent appraising an innovative technology or theory will feel wasted is another hurdle impeding invention. It discourages efforts to appraise the new idea.
As an example, suppose a journal article proposes a new principle of physics. The effort to understand the ideas and go through the mathematics may lead to a conclusion that the ideas are wrong. Many articles therefore contain wrong ideas that are not identified for years or longer because of these disincentives to carefully read the articles.
And on the other hand, some articles summarily discounted by reviewers contain important new insights, but again there are disincentives to carefully appraise those proposed new insights.
Inventiveness is not only consistent with human nature but required for human societies to survive. In this era of global warming which brings more food production, we tend to forget the T. Malthus warning that population increases beyond the numbers that food production can support. Nature in human history has frequently imposed this condition by having a cold period after a warm period. Usually civilizations then collapse. But some take the limited resources and invent uses for materials previously unused. For example, oil is used to provide energy. Before now (not very long ago) oil was a waste thing. The energy it produces can warm us which reduces the food requirement. So, inventiveness is REQUIRED if humanity is to survive the cycles of nature.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Mathematics
- Statistics
- Statistical Software
- R