Are All New Ideas Evolutionary?

My creativity seems to be generally cyclic. I’ll be highly creative for a time, and then have a lull for a while. Usually during this lull, at some point I start consuming new media, be it TV shows, movies, games, books, conversations with people, whatever. Once I start consuming this new media I get inspired by a whole set of new ideas that spark the next highly creative period.

So I got to thinking the other day that what we’re capable of creating is limited by the influences around us. And further, what we can accomplish in our lives is limited by the sum of human knowledge during our lifetime. Archimedes was a super genius Greek mathematician, but he had no chance of figuring out the General Theory of Relativity (E=mc2) that Einstein came up with, simply because physics was in its infancy at that time. Meanwhile I would conjecture that in the 1900's some other physicist would definitely have derived the General Theory of Relativity within 10 years of Einstein had he say – been more interested in going to the bar every night. I make this claim based on the fact that Einstein’s figured out his famous theory while working as a patent clerk. He was a genius – but for him to come up with the theory, the field of physics must have already been pretty close to that breakthrough when he was born.

As another example - The Beatles weren’t ready to write Norwegian Wood in the early 1960’s, because even though they were one of the most talented bands ever, their knowledge of the music scene just wasn’t there in 1960. They had to do a lot of drugs and go to India first.

A lot of times, I think artists and other people get too paranoid about being heavily influenced by outside ideas that they fear anything they create will just be an evolution of different current ideas. But really, that’s people can do. Ideas that seem revolutionary, like the Einstein example, are more about a really talented person living at a time where humanity’s current knowledge sits on the cusp of a development that, though it may not be a huge conceptual jump, it turns out to have huge implications.

That is, Aristotle didn’t live in ancient Newfoundland, he lived in ancient Greece, a place brimming full of philosophers. He was a product of the people and writings that influenced him more than he was an independently revolutionary thinker. Aristotle just did philosophy better than his contemporaries in subtle new ways that suddenly made sense to everyone, and so we remember him.

Imagine what you would be capable of if you grew up on a deserted island with plenty of food, but no interaction with society for your whole life. If you were lucky, you’d come up with something resembling a language. Maybe. That’s about the best you could hope for.

Based on that, it seems that allowing yourself to be selectively influenced by good and new ideas, and keeping up with current developments is more than an acceptable part of creative development – it is an essential ingredient.

I guess what that all means is that original creativity is an addition to the known sum of human knowledge. And that no ideas exist in a vacuum. Or rather that ideas that do exist in a vacuum are starting from scratch, and are therefore extraordinarily unlikely to create something new and significant.