It’s Easier To Go Through a Continent of Ideas Than a World of Ideas

And the reason is simple

When penicillin was discovered, it was considered the wonder drug of the century.

As a fungal product, it proved once more that natural solutions can be found among us, particularly by seeking the assistance of organisms that have always been fighting for their lives for millions of years.

Today, however, we face impending ‘doom’. It’s carefully clutched with quotes because the world faced a similar problem after Malthus preached about the increasing unsustainable consumption of resources. Rather than face doom, we found solutions to the kinds of problems he preached.

David Deutsch considers the solution of problems as the beginning of infinite possibilities and creativity as the spice that adds variety to our lives. From a single drug, penicillin came other similar drugs.

In the medical jargon, they are called beta-lactams. They can disrupt the cell walls of bacteria and causing their death. How this progressed, however, was different.

Entangled in the story of bacterium, fungi, and humanity lies a concept of ideation and problem-solving.

Let’s dive in.

Two dimensions

Think of the Cartesian plane.

It has two axes — X and Y. Two dimensions. These axes intersect at the origin, where both of them have the 0, 0 coordinates. Past that, they never meet again, whether they are in the negative or the positive half of any of the four quadrants.

Suppose there’s a wave that moves up and down this plane.

This wave can move up and down the abscissa (x-axis) or the ordinate (y-axis) a number of times. For as long as the wave moves, it runs an easy chance of crossing any of these axes potentially for an infinite number of times.

Now, think about your closest town or city. How many times have you met someone who you knew without prior planning?

Such coincidences are a product of two reasons.

The first is focal points. If you’re lost in Nairobi City, it is easy to trace your footsteps to KICC or Afya Centre. There are focal points where you can make a good guess where someone is likely to be.

In thought experiments, focal points are the reason people decide to split fifty-fifty. It’s where your interest and my interest intersect. It’s similar to a path that crosses either the abscissa or the ordinate.

On the Cartesian plane, the origin, 0,0, is also a focal point.

The other reason we meet with those we never anticipated to meet is the two-dimensional plane of the meeting points. Paths can cross easily on two dimensions regardless of the direction one takes.

It’s the reason ants can find their way home even if they have lost their original tract. They walk on a two-dimensional space, a surface, and can cross the axis of the pheromone gradient to lead them back to the nest.

Three dimensions

An extra dimension makes it difficult.

Searching for a home in a two-dimensional space is similar to searching for your home on a continent. We barely live underground. Except when trying to escape calamities as in the early 20th century or those who use the subways.

When I was younger, my brother gave me the single advice I have always told anyone who felt like they would get lost in Nairobi — just find your way to a main road. You can then reposition yourself to your determined destination.

But an X, Y, and Z axis makes it difficult. It is no longer a surface — there is depth. That’s equivalent to several surfaces stacked onto each other, like a rim of photocopying papers, where each paper is a continent.

Finding your home in such a space is difficult. Borderline impossible.

Since they are surfaces, continents can be considered two-dimensional. In an estate where every house is akin to a solution to a problem, or an estate of potential ideas, going through them is easy. An estate is just a small portion of the continent.

However, once one considers the stratosphere and the depths of the sea, it becomes three-dimensional. Height when we go up towards the stratosphere and depth when sinking deep into oceans and seas. Finding solutions in a three-dimensional space now become difficult.

Suppose a bird is lost. Finding the nest becomes close to impossible because it doesn’t search for a nest on the continent. It searches for it in the air up there. This is a three-dimensional space.

On the continent, a lost ant can find its way home. In the air, a lost bird can get lost forever.

New ideas

If idea spaces are anything analogous to the dimensions I have discussed, it is easier to explore them on a continental plane than in a stratospheric sphere.

Alexander Fleming’s serendipitous discovery is no different from finding a solution in a world of possibilities — in a three-dimensional space. It is no wonder the world was ecstatic and grateful. Its nothing like meeting you’re friend who you haven’t seen for years.

It’s like having Morpheus hand you the pill that opens you to reality and opens you to a world of possibility. Penicillin pulled the plug to the microbial matrix.

However, once this solution was discovered, more of these solutions were explored on a continental level. Several other drugs were used in the continent of drugs that also destroy the bacterial cell wall. These are aminopenicillins, carboxypenicillins, ureidopenicillins — basically other penicillins.

Getting solutions outside this continent is not as easy. But they were found.

We cannot count on luck to find these solutions. We have to actively search for them. For instance, one group of drugs known as cephalosporins has several generations — first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. These too are solutions explored on the same continent of penicillins.

Getting new drugs is no doubt possible, but getting another of a different dimension is difficult. That’s why solutions for the impending antimicrobial resistance are an issue.

It is also the reason why new ideas are considered to be ‘out of this world’. Consider that:

• Despite Ptolemy’s model, Copernicus told us that the sun was at the centre of our system and not the Earth.
• Darwin told us that species are shaped by Natural Selection, and not an all-supreme deity.
• Einstein told us that time was relative and not absolute.
• Popper talked of falsification as the criteria of scientific demarcation and not induction.
• Margulis spoke of the cooperative force of symbiosis as key in generating new species and domains, not just competition.
• Everett talked about the multiple-world hypothesis of quantum mechanics and not just the single one as outlined in the Copenhagen interpretation.
• Defection was considered the preferred option in a one-off prisoner’s dilemma while cooperation was the option of choice in an iterative game, but not the reverse. For this reason, tit-for-tat was the best strategy compared to any other complex one.

Finding a solution in three dimensions is difficult. But once it was discovered, it changed the rules of the game. They are revolutionary.

What I’m trying to say is…

Three dimensional ideas are laudable because its difficult to conceive them.

But once found, and verified or rather, once they have proven difficult to falsify, they are accepted as game-changers.

In this regard, my theory seems very strange. It’s not in the continent of ideas sprung from Natural Selection.

It’s from a different depth. It could explain in part why it’s strange. It was strange for me. It still is.

It opens up a whole new world, one I would wish to introduce you to if only you’re willing.

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