Preface
Introduction
STORIES:
Discoveries about Creativity
Laws Of Planetary Motion
Electricity From Clouds
Band-Aid
Pneumatic Tyres
Gummed Paper
The Trap Of Paradigm
Invention Of Sewing Machine
Just-In-Time System
Transmission of Nerve Impulses
Printing Press
Dangers Of Locomotives
Flashlight
Lawn Mower
Phonograph
Rubber Heels
The Periodic Table
Discovery Of Electromagnetic Fields
The Tao Of Physics
Congenital Impact of Rubella
Typewriter
The Theory Of Evolution
The Benzene Ring
The Wreck Of Titanic
Wagner's Rheingold
Underwater Construction
Search For The "Hidden Likeness"
Fermi & Nuclear Fission
Cash Register
Discovery Of Current Electricity
Cure Of Diabetes
Boolean Algebra
Principle Of Photosynthesis
Ball Point Pen
The X-Ray
The Fuschian Functions
Safety Glass
The Creative Triggers
Why Aeroplanes Cannot Fly
The "Brownies" Of Stevenson
The Blunder That Founded 3M
Invention Of AC Motor
Discovery Of Teflon
Toynbee's The Study Of History
Inventors' Blindness
The Excitement Of Creativity
Electric Fan
How Typhus Gets Transmitted
Proof Of The Big Bang
Mathematical Theory Of Chance
Coleridge's Kubla Khan
Vulcanisation Process
Structure Of The Crystals
The Compulsion To Create
3M's Post-It Note Pads
Ice Cream Cones
The Structural Theory Of Atom
IBM And Computers
Helicopter
How Experts Resist Ideas
Creative Reveries Of Enid Blyton
Predictions In Gulliver's Travels
Float Glass Technology
Principle Of Immunisation
Journey Into Unknown
The Genius Of Karl Fredrich Gauss
Jean Coceteau's The Knights Of The Round Table
Neon Light
Transistor Radios
Precocious Minds?
The Masterpiece Of Sir Walter Scott
The "Fraud" That Changed The World
The "99% Perspiration"
Xeroxing
The Poem Of Stephen Spender
The Anatomy Of Inspiration
Travellers' Cheques
Edison's Fraud
Awe, Wonder And Alienation
The Logic Of Irrational
Epilogue: Themes & Patterns
|
Journey into Unknown
Creative endeavour is often like the voyage of Columbus. One often ends up in places one had not aimed for. And creative people seem to quite aware of this uncertainty. Some examples:
- According to poet Robert Frost: "I have never started a poem yet whose end I know."
- According to inventer and aircraft designer Barnes Wallis: "Research... has a time element... almost as inexorable as the time element in the playing of a great symphony; only in this case the symphony one is conducting? composing? playing? is not only unfinished but unknown."
- TS Eliot wrote: "the poet does not know what he has to say until he has said it."
- Paul Dirac who received Nobel prize for his work in Quantum Mechanics wrote: "One should allow oneself to be led in the direction which the mathematics suggests... one must follow up a mathematical idea and see what its consequences are, even though on gets led to a domain which is completely foreign to what one started with..."
- JRR Tolkein remarked about The Lord of the Rings: "It grew without control, except one major one that the ring had to be destroyed... Several times I tried to write that last scene ahead of time, but it didn't come out, never worked."
- Picasso commented on Cubism: "When we invented cubism, we had no intention of inventing cubism, but simply of expressing what was in us."
- Writer Gerture Stein suggested that one should not at all think in terms of the final product while writing: "Write without thinking of result in terms of a result, but think of writing in terms of discovery... If you feel this book deeply it will come as deep as your feeling is when it is running truest and the book will never be truer and deeper that your feeling."
- In his study of innovation, William Kingston concluded: "Amongst people with experience of innovation, there is always a realization that it is never known until the very end of the innovatory process, either what the true nature of the idea that is being turned into concrete form is, or where it fits into the world."
*****
|
