There is a modern superstition (perhaps encouraged, even propagated?) that people today are smarter than they used-to-be. Your post and ajb's comment put this in perspective. The ignorance is profound though - such as: "because I know how to chat on a smartphone, now is clearly better and I am clearly smarter than my parents or anyone who lived before!" for a lowest-common-denominator type scenario.
17 March 2014 at 01:17
Nicholas Fulford said...
After the discovery it seems obvious, but it sure wasn't for the longest time before that.
One of the more interesting things to observe is how independent arrival at a discovery can come about at virtually the same time, (as though it were ripe fruit ready to fall from the tree, and one fruit happened to fall first.) There are lots of examples, but to name an obvious one think about the development of the infinitesimal calulus by both Newton and Leibniz.
New creative expression likely arises when certain conditions are present that simultaneously push some of the outstanding thinkers over the threshold into a new way of thinking and seeing. This takes nothing away from those thinkers, though it seems bound to have happened when viewed after the fact.
17 March 2014 at 03:03
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Creativity is, in practice, culturally invisible - although its impact may be seismic.
This is best seen in technologies - where the effects are most apparent and where the archaeological and historical record is of most value.
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The great mass of truly creative breakthroughs in history are unattributed - the men who made them are forgotten, their names were not attached to their creative acts. This enables credit to be reassigned to 'the folk' or 'culture' - but all actually known-about breakthroughs seem to be attributable to one, or at most two, men.
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Creative breakthroughs are extremely difficult and rare - as is shown by the centuries, perhaps even millennia, of stasis which are then suddenly broken by simple breakthroughs - bow and arrow, arch, stirrup, new shapes of plough.
As soon as the breakthrough has been made into an artifact, then it is obvious - many people can understand it, many people can make it, and almost everybody can use it.
Why give special credit to someone just for discovering something obvious?
So, once the creative breakthrough has been made, by one unattributed man perhaps, its effects can rapidly spread, even across the whole world - human life may be transformed by a single anonymous breakthrough.
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Anonymous creative breakthroughs are a sufficient basis for mass cultural change. The mis-match between the obscurity of the individual creator and the vast consequences of that breakthrough really cannot be exaggerated.
Yet many or most cultures show no evidence of any creative breakthroughs at all - presumably because they utterly lacked creative people. These cultures had sufficient ability to manufacture, train and use technologies of a certain type - and to pass on that knowledge between generations in a stereotypical fashion - but no more.
That is the norm for human history. That is the situation for most people who have ever lived.
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So, creative breakthroughs are almost always deniable. As soon as the breakthrough has been made, within minutes perhaps, the extraordinarily rare and special nature of its occurrence is deniable.
Indeed, creativity is deniable largely because it is so rare - few can appreciate that which they cannot do. Alternative explanations are almost-always preferred - creativity is almost always explained-away - especially by the perennial and utterly false cry: 'but it was obvious!'
"Genuine creativity might as well be invisible - it is always deniable"
3 Comments -
Yes. All that 17th century physics was *easy* compared to today - can't you see in retrospect how obvious it was?
15 March 2014 at 14:03
There is a modern superstition (perhaps encouraged, even propagated?) that people today are smarter than they used-to-be. Your post and ajb's comment put this in perspective. The ignorance is profound though - such as: "because I know how to chat on a smartphone, now is clearly better and I am clearly smarter than my parents or anyone who lived before!" for a lowest-common-denominator type scenario.
17 March 2014 at 01:17
After the discovery it seems obvious, but it sure wasn't for the longest time before that.
One of the more interesting things to observe is how independent arrival at a discovery can come about at virtually the same time, (as though it were ripe fruit ready to fall from the tree, and one fruit happened to fall first.) There are lots of examples, but to name an obvious one think about the development of the infinitesimal calulus by both Newton and Leibniz.
New creative expression likely arises when certain conditions are present that simultaneously push some of the outstanding thinkers over the threshold into a new way of thinking and seeing. This takes nothing away from those thinkers, though it seems bound to have happened when viewed after the fact.
17 March 2014 at 03:03