Orlando, But aren't you and Jochen talking about insight here as if it were just some diffusion process of echoes of other things, rather than a synthetic event, and so leaving the core question of what the heck is making the echoes around here unaddressed? Ann's comment that even simple things display the use of real genius sometimes seems more like the kind of relevant question about things not immediately obvious that would lead to understanding why insight changes the world so completely we are left to see it as having been inevitable. After important new insights develop it sort of erases the world without them.
I made the radical leap to seeing that systems don't follow rules but make them when observing that every convective air current develops as a uniquely individual cell, each burrowing another hole to provide an inventive shortcut for their gradients. There's nothing present but a uniform compressible fluid and some diffuse heat and presto, a profusion of unique individual forms. That the 'new field' of studying how individual events of all forms develop, starting from that observation, was and remains largely "wide open" is a matter of some historical interest, maybe, but it seems to me that the simple kind of observation I started from could have been among the earliest discoveries of science and not delayed. That nature does everything individually and things develop where they occur, is actually kind of obvious, though still a struggle to think about because we're not trained to. It's quite readily observable in the smoke curls rising above a campfire, for example, that each 'breakout' curl develops on its own, and around a campfire is where people have been gathering to sit and think in an open way about the universe for many thousands of years. If our minds are just some kind of photo plate waiting to be stamped by the swirling world around us, why wouldn't the principle that nature develops everything individually where it occurs have gotten stamped in our minds somewhat sooner? I'd say discovery is a mix of things, like cultural developments coming to a head, schools of thought running into dead ends, things 'hidden in sight' and creative invention. At the time I was just bumming around wondering, along with everyone else at the time, what the limits of growth were anyway, and just happened to try to make sense a great profusion of simple forms that demonstrated it over and over. Phil > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Günther Greindl > Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:07 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Brain and Creativity 2 > > Hi, > > > Orlando here, > > What > > is it that allows Newton or Einstein or Picasso to see something > > essential that no one has seen or understood before? > > I guess the time is just ripe (viz.: enough knowledge has accumulated > and is lying around for a new synthesis) at certain moments for > intelligent guys to have insights. If it hadn't been Einstein or > Newton, > then it would have been another bright person 5 years later. > > The intelligence of these people in relation to other people is usually > overrated. > > See this lovely post by Eli Yudkowsky on OB about Einstein, the village > idiot, and _real_ superintelligences: > > http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/my-childhood-ro.html > > Cheers, > Günther > > > -- > Günther Greindl > Department of Philosophy of Science > University of Vienna > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Blog: http://www.complexitystudies.org/ > Thesis: http://www.complexitystudies.org/proposal/ > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
