Good Ideas vs. Great Ideas
Where do great ideas come from and how would you know if you had one?
Steven Johnson in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, says that because of the language we use, we tend to think that ideas come in “flashes” of insight, or “strokes” of genius. We have epiphanies and eureka moments, all implying that good ideas come out of the blue.
Even Darwin believed his idea about evolution came in a relative flash while reading Thomas Malthus one day in 1838. Howard Gruber, a psychologist interested in the creative process, went back and looked at Darwin’s meticulous notes and discovered that he had the full theory of natural selection months before reading Malthus.
Like evolution itself, ideas need the right environment and time to be fully realized. Johnson believes in “liquid networks” where people get together and exchange ideas. He also believes in the “slow hunch” where ideas seem to incubate for long periods before coming to the forefront of our minds in a “flash.”
“Chance favors the connected mind.” — Steven Johnson
The Difference Between Good and Great Ideas
Johnson’s book blurb says, “The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery — these are all great ideas.” Although useful, I don’t think they rise to the level of greatness. The book title is correct, but the blurb goes a little too far.
To meet my definition, a great idea usually has to overcome at least two more hurdles: turn conventional wisdom on its head, and overcome extreme resistance. Good ideas like the wheel, make life easier, and fall into the category of invention. Great ideas like evolution, change our perspective and place in the world.
Examples of great ideas:
- Spherical Earth: Greek philosophers around the 5th century BC, Eratosthenes accurately estimated Earth’s circumference around 240 BC.
- Copernicus: Placed the Sun not the Earth at the center of the universe.
- Darwin: Proposed that all life descended from common ancestors by the process of natural selection.
- Einstein: Special and general relativity, photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence.
- Hubble: Expanded our known universe and proved the expansion is speeding up.
- Germ Theory: Ignaz Semmelweis, John Snow, Louis Pasteur, and many others advanced our understanding of disease saving millions of lives.
Beyond the inventions and medical advancements these ideas produced, they changed how we view ourselves. The change in our perspective is arguably as valuable as the inventions produced by the ideas. When our perspective changes and gives us a more accurate view of reality, answers to questions as well as solutions to problems become clear.
Resistance is Futile
Every one of these people and their great ideas met with more than skepticism — they met with persecution and extreme resistance sometimes bordering on violence. Religious persecution was common. Galileo was put under house arrest and Copernicus waited until he was on his deathbed to publish On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, fearing retribution.
You might think that the scientific community would be more open-minded to new ideas but that’s often not the case.
Germ theory, for example, was met with skepticism if not downright anger from the medical and scientific communities, slowing acceptance and costing many lives.
The theory of continental drift was proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 to explain why rock formations and animal fossils looked so similar on different continents. But geologists denounced Wegener’s theory because he didn’t have a model to explain how continents could move apart.
It took until the late 1950s and early 1960s before plate tectonics provided the model that proved Wegener’s theory. Looking at a map of the earth, seeing how the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle was not enough for the geologists of the time.
A more recent example: some paleontologists are still having a hard time accepting a theory that now seems obvious; birds are directly related to dinosaurs.
We may think that only members of dogmatic institutions are slow to change their minds, but that’s not the case. Even the smartest among us have a hard time with new ideas. Why?
In most cases, the key reason people cannot change their minds is that there are pre-existing beliefs that won’t allow it. For example, the miasma theory prevented the acceptance of the germ theory.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
Fortunately, resistance eventually breaks down because reality and the truth won’t go away. But there are other reasons why it’s difficult to accept new ideas.
Are You Going to Believe Me Or Your Lying Eyes?
Another aspect of great ideas is that they sometimes go against our very senses. From our perspective, we are at the center of the universe. Everything revolves around us. This has some profound psychological consequences. As individuals or as a society, real maturity only comes when we realize we are not at the center of everything.
Imagine the people in the 16th century. They see with their own eyes, the universe revolving around them. Why shouldn’t they feel special? Along comes Copernicus in 1543 and says the sun is at the center of everything, not us here on earth. Who would believe him over their own eyes and give up being special?
Galileo that’s who, and it still took over 350 years for the church to overturn their condemnation of him. Science has a nasty habit of making us feel smaller, less significant, the opposite of what people want to feel. That’s part of the reason people deny science.
Do You Have a Great Idea?
Okay, you have an idea you’ve been thinking about for a long time. You have taken bits and pieces from other ideas, “liquid networks,” connecting dots that haven’t been connected before and you’re meeting resistance. Do you have a great idea? It still needs to have some utilitarian value, or what good is it?
Below are some “proofs” that indicate you may have a great idea.
Does your idea:
- Answer questions that could not be answered before?
- Solve problems that could not be solved before?
- And make accurate predictions?
If your idea can do all three, you could be on to something.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” — Issac Newton
The Next Great Idea
You might be wondering if I think there is a great idea out there that has yet to be recognized. Ever since the September 11 attacks, I have been trying to figure out why people would believe something so fervently they would take themselves out of the gene pool. This led me to some interesting theories about human behavior.
The “Slow Hunch:” Over 40 years ago, Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, where he introduced the idea of a meme, and for me, it was a game-changer. It meets all the criteria of a great idea and it even explains the resistance to them. It explains so many things it will take several articles to cover it all.
I’m referring to Dawkins’s original meaning and intent of the word “meme,” not YouTube videos or images with witty captions that go “viral.”
The Urban Dictionary has a good definition:
An idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)
Note that the word “meme” itself is a meme and has mutated away from its original meaning. Ironically, this has hindered an understanding of the true power of the idea.
Writing about ideas, beliefs, and memes is my way of clarifying my thoughts and determining where I may be wrong. If I have learned anything at all, it’s that beliefs control minds — mine included.
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as escaping from old ones. — John Maynard Keynes
Book References:
Johnson, S. (2010). Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene.
