Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Originality
Yes, I'm afriad you're going to have to continue.
Calculus: What, no one did MATH prior to Newton (or Liebniz(sp))? Where would Calculus be without the 0? Without geometry? (0 might be original; I don't know enough about the history of math. But even the 0 required the idea of other numbers)
Relativity: Built on existing physics and math, plus experimental evidence.
Quantum mechanics: Ditto.
The problerm with using science as an example of originality is that science is based, first and foremost, on actually doing experiments and testing things. No one just sat down and 'made up' quantum theory out of the blue -- quantum theory was create to explain observed phenomenon that had no other (apparent) explanation, and it was then used to make succesful predictions. Newton didn't "Create" the three laws of motion; he derived them from the world. Discovery<>creation, and science is primarily about discovery.
Dyson Sphere: Solar satellites have been imagined for a long time. Imagining building a whole lot of them is just a logical extension. Dyson's vision was that no one before him ever took the logic to its ultimate conclusion before.
Asimov's Laws: Combine common codes of human behavior (Don't harm others, obey the law, take care of yourself -- in that order) with the idea that you should lack the free will to defy them. As Asimov's later works made frighteningly clear, he considered the destruction of the individual consciousness to be a good thing.
Forward: The creatures in Dragon's Egg were little sluglike things, IIRC. Yes, they lived on a Neutron Star, but they were psychologically quite humanish -- otherwise, the book would be incomprehensible. High-gravity lifeforms aren't new, either (Hal Clement did it, for one), though making life on a neutron star believable took some serious talent. Never read the other book.
Douglas Adams: The IID has its roots in Stanislew Lem's "Demon of the Second Kind", and both have their roots in the Million Monkeys. The Bistromath, I'm not sure of. However, the fact I don't KNOW of an antecedent doesn't mean there WASN'T one. If Adams were alive, we could ask him "How did you get that idea?", and I'm willing to bet he'd have an answer besides "It appeared unbidden in my consciousness, like Athena emerging from the head of Zeus"
Carrot Top: I have yet to see evidence he IS an effective spokesman. I have yet to see evidence he deserves to live.
I am not trying to call every scientist, creator, artist, etc a hack or a thief. That's not the point. The point is that true, total "originality" is a meaningless chimera: Everything is a variant, combination, mutation, or other alteration of something else, going back to direct experience.
Umbran said:Oh, I admit wholeheartedly that a great many ideas are reformulations of the old. I simply reject the idea (which must have started as new sometime) that there are absolutely no new ones left.
Aisde from the fact that originality does not actually require a lack of antecedants, nor does it preculde "Like X, but with Y", I shall meet your task...
As Eysia mentions, there's lots of new ideas in non-newtonian physics. But, there were some new things in newtonian physics, too. Specifically, calculus (whether or not you believe Newton first constructed it) was built from whole cloth, and has no antecedent.
Einsteinian relativity, including specifically it's grounding principle - that light travels at a speed constant in all frames when nothing else in the universe does so.
Much of of Quantum Mechanics has no antecedent, and the Copenhagen interpretation thereof was certainly unheard of.
The life forms of Robert L Forward's books The Dragon's Egg and Rocheworld include new concepts.
The original Dyson sphere (not the "hollow world about a star", but instead the idea that a species would so fully surround it's star with satellites as to absorb all visible light from the star).
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
Douglas Adams' "Infinite Improbability Drive" and "Bistromathics".
That the man commonly known as "Carrot Top" could be an effective spokesman for anything.
Do you need me to continue?
Yes, I'm afriad you're going to have to continue.
Calculus: What, no one did MATH prior to Newton (or Liebniz(sp))? Where would Calculus be without the 0? Without geometry? (0 might be original; I don't know enough about the history of math. But even the 0 required the idea of other numbers)
Relativity: Built on existing physics and math, plus experimental evidence.
Quantum mechanics: Ditto.
The problerm with using science as an example of originality is that science is based, first and foremost, on actually doing experiments and testing things. No one just sat down and 'made up' quantum theory out of the blue -- quantum theory was create to explain observed phenomenon that had no other (apparent) explanation, and it was then used to make succesful predictions. Newton didn't "Create" the three laws of motion; he derived them from the world. Discovery<>creation, and science is primarily about discovery.
Dyson Sphere: Solar satellites have been imagined for a long time. Imagining building a whole lot of them is just a logical extension. Dyson's vision was that no one before him ever took the logic to its ultimate conclusion before.
Asimov's Laws: Combine common codes of human behavior (Don't harm others, obey the law, take care of yourself -- in that order) with the idea that you should lack the free will to defy them. As Asimov's later works made frighteningly clear, he considered the destruction of the individual consciousness to be a good thing.
Forward: The creatures in Dragon's Egg were little sluglike things, IIRC. Yes, they lived on a Neutron Star, but they were psychologically quite humanish -- otherwise, the book would be incomprehensible. High-gravity lifeforms aren't new, either (Hal Clement did it, for one), though making life on a neutron star believable took some serious talent. Never read the other book.
Douglas Adams: The IID has its roots in Stanislew Lem's "Demon of the Second Kind", and both have their roots in the Million Monkeys. The Bistromath, I'm not sure of. However, the fact I don't KNOW of an antecedent doesn't mean there WASN'T one. If Adams were alive, we could ask him "How did you get that idea?", and I'm willing to bet he'd have an answer besides "It appeared unbidden in my consciousness, like Athena emerging from the head of Zeus"
Carrot Top: I have yet to see evidence he IS an effective spokesman. I have yet to see evidence he deserves to live.
I am not trying to call every scientist, creator, artist, etc a hack or a thief. That's not the point. The point is that true, total "originality" is a meaningless chimera: Everything is a variant, combination, mutation, or other alteration of something else, going back to direct experience.
