So I'm wondering, how difficult is it to come up with a novel thought. I was reading Copernicus last week and noticed that even though he has been credited with moving our major frame of reference from an earth centered to a heliocentric universe, that thought was not novel with him, there were others that had that thought this (and wrote it down) as many as 1500-2000 years earlier. And Copernicus made reference to them. Where did those thoughts arise originally? How do new thoughts arise? Who or what was the origin of those thoughts or ideas? Is a person capable of generating a novel thought? I am wondering if I have ever had a thought that was not the compilation of other things that I had previously experienced. I can not think of a thought that I have had that I can't trace the genesis to some previous experience. I have synthesized thoughts from other parts and sources, but I am not sure that I have had a novel thought. At least in the last 10-15 minutes that I have been thinkng about this I can not recall a thought that I could claim as completely novel to me. I have had the experience of discovery of new facts, but in these instances, the discovery was the result of bringing bits and pieces of existing knowledge and experience together in ways not previously accomplished.
I doubt that anyone will ever read this blog. I am a little nervous putting this out so that it is possible that someone could read it, but I am interested in a conversation with someone about it and thought that writing it down would at least give me a reference point to assist me in remembering the things that I have thought about. I have all kinds of scraps and bits of files around in different formats on different storage media where I have put random thoughts at sometime. I have always been a little worried about committing these types of things to writing for a few different reasons. One is it exposes my ignorance. Second it makes me in some way responsible for the things that I have said. However, it is my belief that I have the absolute truth only about a very few items. All other things that I have opinions about are tentative. So, I feel that writing them down like this exposes me in a way that I would prefer not to be exposed. Even though I admit that I could be wrong, I don't like to be wrong. It is very likely that most of the items that I have incorporated into my corpus of knowledge are not completly accurate, or perhaps, more correctly, are not yet fully developed. Some of them may just be flat out wrong. I would like to be able to discover this myself, without someone else pointing it out to me. But here I go.
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2 comments:
Scott,
My mind works in a way that makes it real hard to sit down and concentrate on one thought for very long. I seem to anaylze it, within my experience and knowledge, make a judgement and then move on. Does putting together different thoughts in a form never before presented constitute a new or novel thought. I would venture to say, yes or are you suggesting that everything has been considered before and there is not any more 'light or truth' to be gained? Just thinking, Wayne
Very similar logic to Napolean Hill's thoughts in "Think and Grow Rich" on the existence of "brain waves"...
Is the "synthesis of thoughts" or invention of a new way putting together former knowledge not novel in its own right? What of scientific "discovery"?
-Darek
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