Robert Greene, Mastery, 2012
pp.184─185
B. Allow for serendipity
The brain is an instrument developed for making connections. It operates as a dual processing system, in which every bit of information that comes in is at the same time compared to other information. The brain is constantly searching for similarities, differences, and relationships between what it processes. Your task is to feed this natural inclination, to create the optimal conditions for it to make new and original associations between ideas and experiences. And one of the best ways to accomplish this is by letting go of conscious control and allowing chance to enter into the process.
The reason for this is simple. When we are consumed with a particular project, our attention tends to become quite narrow as we focus so deeply. We grow tense. In this state, our mind responds to trying to reduce the amount of stimuli we have to deal with. We literally close ourselves off from the world in order to concentrate on what is necessary. This can have the unintended consequence of making it harder to for to see other possibilities, to be more open and creative with our ideas. When we are in a more relaxed state, our attention naturally broadens and we take in more stimuli.
Many of the most interesting and profound discoveries in science occur when the thinker is not concentrating directly on the problem but is about to drift off to sleep, or get on a bus, or hears a joke ── moments of unstrained attention, when something unexpected enters the mental sphere and triggers a new and fertile connection. Such chance associations and discoveries are known as serendipity ── the occurrence of something we are not expecting ── and although by their nature you cannot force them to happen, you can invite serendipity into the creative process by taking two simple steps.
The first step is to widen your search as far as possible. In the research stage of your project, you look at more than what is generally required. You expand your search into other fields, reading and absorbing any related information. If you have a particular theory or hypothesis about a phenomenon, you examine as many examples and potential counter examples as humanly possible. It might seem tiring and inefficient, but you must trust this process. What ensues it that the brain becomes increasingly excited and stimulated by the variety of information. As William James expressed it, the mind “transitions from one idea to another ... the most unheard of combination of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbling about in a state of bewildering activity.” A kind of mental momentum is generated, in which the slightest chance occurrence will spark a fertile idea.
The second step is to maintain an openness and looseness of spirit. In moments of great tension and searching, you allow yourself moments of release. You take walks, engage in activities outside your work (Einstein played the violin), or think about something else, no matter how trivial. When some new and unanticipated idea now enters your mind, you do not ignore it because it is irrational or does not fit the narrow frame of your previous work. You give it instead full attention and explore where it leads you.
(Mastery / Robert Greene., 1. successful people., 2. success., 3. self-actualization (psychology), includes bibliographical references, BF637.S8G695 2012, 158─dc23, 2012027195, )
____________________________________
Semyon D. Savransky., Engineering of creativity, 2000 [ ]
p.137
Serendipity, or the principle of exploiting lucky breaks -- There are two types:
• a solver is stalled at a certain point in problem solving and a chance observation provides the answer: e.g., the famous case of rubber vulcanization by Charles Goodyear.
• a solver suddenly discovers a new principle unrelated to the work in which he is engaged but related to some other area, and then successfully applies this discovery to that area: e.g., discovery of the explosive properties of a potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur mixture.
p.135
In spite of the fact that there are only two reasons for inventions, there are various motivations. Some of them have been summarized by Edward and Monika Lumsdaine [1] as the following:
• As a response to a threat --> radar, weapons
• As a response to an existing need --> can opener
• As a response to a future need --> high-temperature ceramics
• For the fun of it -- as an expression of creativity
• To satisfy intellectual curiosity
• As a response to an emergency --> Band-aid
• To increase one's chance of survival and security
• To increase comfort and luxury in lifestyle
• Better problem solving --> hydraulic propulsion system
• Turning failure into success --> Post-It notes
• To overcome flaws --> “Magic” tape
• Accidentally, on the way to researching something else --> polyethylene
([ melted Hershey chocolate bar in a lab coat - microwave ])
• As a deliberate synthesis --> carbon brakes for aircraft
• Through brainstorming with experts or outsiders --> courseware
• From studying trends, demographic data, and customer surveys
• Through cost reduction and quality improvement efforts --> float glass
• Through finding new uses for waste products --> aluminum flakes in roofing
• Through continuous improvement of work done by others
• Through having new process technology --> proteins from hydrocarbons
• By finding new applications for existing technology
• Through having new material available
• To win a prize or recognition --> human-powered aircraft
• Meeting tougher legal and legislated requirements --> catalytic converter
• By having research funds available to solve a specific problem --> super-conductors
• By being a dissatisfied user of a product
• Responding to a challenge or assignment
• Because “it's my job” --> “I do it for a living”
• To improve the organization's competitive position
• To get around someone else's patent
([ also refer to as reverse engineering using blackbox method ])
•
( Savransky, Semyon D., Engineering of creativity : introduction to TRIZ methodology of inventive problem solving / by Semyon D. Savransky., 1. engineering--methodology., 2. problem solving--methodology., 3. creative thinking., 4. technological innovations., 2000, )
____________________________________
Jon Gernter., The idea factory : the Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation, [2012]
p.51
In truth, large leaps forward in technology rarely have a precise point of origin. At the start, forces that precede an invention merely begin to align, often imperceptibly, as a group of people and ideas converge, until over the course of months or years (or decades) they gain clarity and momentum and the help of additional ideas and actors. Luck seems to matter, and so does timing, for it tends to be the case that the right answers, the right people, the right place ── perhaps all three ── require a serendipitous encounter with the right problem. And then ── sometimes ── a leap. Only in retrospect do such leaps look obvious. When Niels Bohr ── along with Einstein, the world's greatest physicist ── heard in 1938 that splitting a uranium atom could yield a tremendous burst of energy, he splapped his head and said, “Oh, what idiots we have been!”11
(The idea factory : the Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation / Jon Gernter.
1. bell telephone laboratories──history──20th century.
2. telecommunication──united states──history──20th century.
3. technological innovations──united states──history──20th century.
4. creative ability──united states──history──20th century.
5. inventors──united states──history──20th century.
TK5102.3.U6G47 2012
384──dc23
384 Gernter
)
____________________________________
cosmic background radiation
cosmic microwave background radiation
____________________________________
Mario Livio, Brilliant blunders, 2013 [ ]
pp.172-173
Hoyle calculated that for carbon production to match the observed cosmic abundance, a resonant state in 12C was needed, at about 7.68 MeV above the lowest energy level (the ground state) of the carbon nucleus. Furthermore, using the known symmetry of the 8Be and 4He nuclei, he predicted the quantum mechanical properties of this resonant state.
p.180
Gamow wanted all the elements to have been created within a few minutes following the big bang (“in less time than it takes to cook a dish of duck and roast potatoes”). Hoyle wanted all the elements to be forged inside stars during the long process of stellar evolution. Nature chose to give-and-take: Light elements such as deuterium, helium, and lithium were indeed synthesized in the big bang, but all the heavier elements, and in particular those essential for life, were cooked in stellar interiors.
p.180
Detailed calculations have shown that nucleosynthesis in stars would predict for helium a cosmic abundance of only about 1 percent to 4 percent, while the observed value is about 24 percent. This left the big bang as the lone source for the lightest elements, just as Gamow and Alpher had suggested.
p.185 the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Today the stipulation of homogeneity and isotropy is known as the cosmological principle (a name coined by the German astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich), and the most powerful direct evidence for its validity comes from observations of the “afterglow of creation”: the cosmic microwave background radiation. This radiation is a relic of the primeval hot, dense, and opaque fireball. It comes from all directions and is isotropic to better than one part in ten thousand. (In the words of astronomer Bob Kirshner: “much smoother than a baby's bottom.”)
p.210
Penzias and Wilson were working at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey with an antenna built for communication satellites. To their annoyance, they were picking up some sort of pervasive background radio noise: microwave radiation that appeared to be the same from all directions. After failing to explain away this disturbing “hiss” as an instrumental artifact, Penzias and Wilson finally announced the detection of an intergalatic temperature excess of about 3 Kelvin (3 degrees above absolute zero).
p.210
Lacking the necessary background, Penzias and Wilson did not realize initially what they had found. Robert Dicke of Princeton University, however, recognized the signal immediately. Dicke was in the process of building a radiometer to search for the relic radiation from the big bang, previously predicted by Alpher, Hermann, and Gamow.
p.210
Consequently, his correct interpretation of the results of Penzias and Wilson literally transformed the big bang theory from hypothesis into experimentally tested physics.
p.210
As the universe expanded, the incredibly hot, dense, and opaque fireball cooled down continuously, eventually reaching its present temperature of about 2.7 Kelvin.
p.210
Since then, observations of the cosmic microwave background have produced some of the most precise measurement in cosmology.
(Brilliant blunders: from Darwin to Einstein ─ colossal mistakes by great scientists that changed our understanding of life and the universe / Mario Livio., 1. errors, scientific., Q172.5.E77L58 2013, 500─dc23, first Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2013, 2013, )
____________________________________
Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982
p.149
Two fundamental scientific breakthroughs, 50 years ago by Jansky and more recently by Penzias and Wilson, occurred as a result of attempts to improve telephone transmission. This involved dealing with sources of noise. In both cases, it is also worth noting, the scientific breakthrough involved the use of extremely sensitive equipment that had been developed at Bell Labs for research projects at a more applied level. Jansky was using a rotatable antenna designed by Harald Friis for dealing with problems connected with weak radio signals. Penzias and Wilson were using a remarkably sensitive horn antenna that had been built for the Echo and Telstar satellite communication projects.15
15 In an interview after receiving the Nobel prize, Wilson said that it was the availability of that antenna that had first motivated him to work at Bell Labs. “The thing that originally attracted me to Bell Labs was the availability of the horn reflector ─ built for Project Echo ─ and traveling-wave maser, which made a unique radio telescope.” Steve Aaronson, “The light of creation ─ an interview with Arno A. Penzias and Robert C. Wilson”, Bell Laboratories Record, January 1979, p. 13.
“”─“”‘’•─“”
p.149
Jansky had been asked to deal with the problems of radio static after the creation of the overseas radiotelephone service in the late 1920s. In 1932 he published a paper identifying three sources of noise: local thunderstorms, more distant thuderstorms, and a third source, which Jansky identified as “a steady hiss static, the origin of which is not known”. It was this star noise, as it was called, that marked the birth of radio astronomy.
p.149
Jansky's experience underlines one of the reasons why it is so difficult to distinguish between basic and applied research. Fundamental breakthroughs often occur while dealing with applied or practical concerns. Attempting to draw that line on the basis of the motives of the person performing the research ─ whether there is a concern with acquiring useful information (applied) as opposed to a purely disinterested search for new knowledge (basic) ─ is, in my opinion, a hopeless quest. Whatever the ex ante intentions in undertaking research, the kind of knowledge actually acquired is highly unpredictable. Historically, some of the most fundamental scientific breakthroughs have come from people, such as Jansky, who thought they were doing applied research.
([ mining applied research for fundamental scientific breakthroughs ])
Bell Lab's support of basic research in astrophysics is related to the problems and possibilities of microwave transmission, especially the use of communication satellites for such purposes.16
16 At very high frequencies, rain and other atmospheric conditions become major sources of interference in transmission. This form of signal loss has been a continuing concern in the development of satellite communication. It has led to a good deal of research at both the technological and basic science levels ─ for example, the study of polarization phenomena. See Neil F. Dinn, “Preparing for future satellite systems”, Bell laboratories record, October 1977, pp. 236─42.
“”─“”‘’•─“”
pp.149─150
Penzias and Wilson first observed the cosmic background radiation, which is now taken as confirmation of the “big bang” theory of the formation of the universe, while attempting to identify and measure the sources of noise in their receiving system and in the atmosphere. They found that “the radiation is distributed isotropically in space and its spectrum is that of a black body at a temperature of a 3 degrees Kelvin.”17
17 Impact, prepared by members of the technical staff, Bell telephone laboratories, and the Western electric company patent licensing division, M. D. Fagen, ed. (Bell telephone laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., 1972), p. 87.
p.150
Although Penzias and Wilson did not know it at the time, the characteristics of this background radiation were just what had been predicted earlier by cosmologists favoring the big-bang theory.
p.150
pp.184─185
B. Allow for serendipity
The brain is an instrument developed for making connections. It operates as a dual processing system, in which every bit of information that comes in is at the same time compared to other information. The brain is constantly searching for similarities, differences, and relationships between what it processes. Your task is to feed this natural inclination, to create the optimal conditions for it to make new and original associations between ideas and experiences. And one of the best ways to accomplish this is by letting go of conscious control and allowing chance to enter into the process.
The reason for this is simple. When we are consumed with a particular project, our attention tends to become quite narrow as we focus so deeply. We grow tense. In this state, our mind responds to trying to reduce the amount of stimuli we have to deal with. We literally close ourselves off from the world in order to concentrate on what is necessary. This can have the unintended consequence of making it harder to for to see other possibilities, to be more open and creative with our ideas. When we are in a more relaxed state, our attention naturally broadens and we take in more stimuli.
Many of the most interesting and profound discoveries in science occur when the thinker is not concentrating directly on the problem but is about to drift off to sleep, or get on a bus, or hears a joke ── moments of unstrained attention, when something unexpected enters the mental sphere and triggers a new and fertile connection. Such chance associations and discoveries are known as serendipity ── the occurrence of something we are not expecting ── and although by their nature you cannot force them to happen, you can invite serendipity into the creative process by taking two simple steps.
The first step is to widen your search as far as possible. In the research stage of your project, you look at more than what is generally required. You expand your search into other fields, reading and absorbing any related information. If you have a particular theory or hypothesis about a phenomenon, you examine as many examples and potential counter examples as humanly possible. It might seem tiring and inefficient, but you must trust this process. What ensues it that the brain becomes increasingly excited and stimulated by the variety of information. As William James expressed it, the mind “transitions from one idea to another ... the most unheard of combination of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbling about in a state of bewildering activity.” A kind of mental momentum is generated, in which the slightest chance occurrence will spark a fertile idea.
The second step is to maintain an openness and looseness of spirit. In moments of great tension and searching, you allow yourself moments of release. You take walks, engage in activities outside your work (Einstein played the violin), or think about something else, no matter how trivial. When some new and unanticipated idea now enters your mind, you do not ignore it because it is irrational or does not fit the narrow frame of your previous work. You give it instead full attention and explore where it leads you.
(Mastery / Robert Greene., 1. successful people., 2. success., 3. self-actualization (psychology), includes bibliographical references, BF637.S8G695 2012, 158─dc23, 2012027195, )
____________________________________
Semyon D. Savransky., Engineering of creativity, 2000 [ ]
p.137
Serendipity, or the principle of exploiting lucky breaks -- There are two types:
• a solver is stalled at a certain point in problem solving and a chance observation provides the answer: e.g., the famous case of rubber vulcanization by Charles Goodyear.
• a solver suddenly discovers a new principle unrelated to the work in which he is engaged but related to some other area, and then successfully applies this discovery to that area: e.g., discovery of the explosive properties of a potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur mixture.
p.135
In spite of the fact that there are only two reasons for inventions, there are various motivations. Some of them have been summarized by Edward and Monika Lumsdaine [1] as the following:
• As a response to a threat --> radar, weapons
• As a response to an existing need --> can opener
• As a response to a future need --> high-temperature ceramics
• For the fun of it -- as an expression of creativity
• To satisfy intellectual curiosity
• As a response to an emergency --> Band-aid
• To increase one's chance of survival and security
• To increase comfort and luxury in lifestyle
• Better problem solving --> hydraulic propulsion system
• Turning failure into success --> Post-It notes
• To overcome flaws --> “Magic” tape
• Accidentally, on the way to researching something else --> polyethylene
([ melted Hershey chocolate bar in a lab coat - microwave ])
• As a deliberate synthesis --> carbon brakes for aircraft
• Through brainstorming with experts or outsiders --> courseware
• From studying trends, demographic data, and customer surveys
• Through cost reduction and quality improvement efforts --> float glass
• Through finding new uses for waste products --> aluminum flakes in roofing
• Through continuous improvement of work done by others
• Through having new process technology --> proteins from hydrocarbons
• By finding new applications for existing technology
• Through having new material available
• To win a prize or recognition --> human-powered aircraft
• Meeting tougher legal and legislated requirements --> catalytic converter
• By having research funds available to solve a specific problem --> super-conductors
• By being a dissatisfied user of a product
• Responding to a challenge or assignment
• Because “it's my job” --> “I do it for a living”
• To improve the organization's competitive position
• To get around someone else's patent
([ also refer to as reverse engineering using blackbox method ])
•
( Savransky, Semyon D., Engineering of creativity : introduction to TRIZ methodology of inventive problem solving / by Semyon D. Savransky., 1. engineering--methodology., 2. problem solving--methodology., 3. creative thinking., 4. technological innovations., 2000, )
____________________________________
Jon Gernter., The idea factory : the Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation, [2012]
p.51
In truth, large leaps forward in technology rarely have a precise point of origin. At the start, forces that precede an invention merely begin to align, often imperceptibly, as a group of people and ideas converge, until over the course of months or years (or decades) they gain clarity and momentum and the help of additional ideas and actors. Luck seems to matter, and so does timing, for it tends to be the case that the right answers, the right people, the right place ── perhaps all three ── require a serendipitous encounter with the right problem. And then ── sometimes ── a leap. Only in retrospect do such leaps look obvious. When Niels Bohr ── along with Einstein, the world's greatest physicist ── heard in 1938 that splitting a uranium atom could yield a tremendous burst of energy, he splapped his head and said, “Oh, what idiots we have been!”11
(The idea factory : the Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation / Jon Gernter.
1. bell telephone laboratories──history──20th century.
2. telecommunication──united states──history──20th century.
3. technological innovations──united states──history──20th century.
4. creative ability──united states──history──20th century.
5. inventors──united states──history──20th century.
TK5102.3.U6G47 2012
384──dc23
384 Gernter
)
____________________________________
cosmic background radiation
cosmic microwave background radiation
____________________________________
Mario Livio, Brilliant blunders, 2013 [ ]
pp.172-173
Hoyle calculated that for carbon production to match the observed cosmic abundance, a resonant state in 12C was needed, at about 7.68 MeV above the lowest energy level (the ground state) of the carbon nucleus. Furthermore, using the known symmetry of the 8Be and 4He nuclei, he predicted the quantum mechanical properties of this resonant state.
p.180
Gamow wanted all the elements to have been created within a few minutes following the big bang (“in less time than it takes to cook a dish of duck and roast potatoes”). Hoyle wanted all the elements to be forged inside stars during the long process of stellar evolution. Nature chose to give-and-take: Light elements such as deuterium, helium, and lithium were indeed synthesized in the big bang, but all the heavier elements, and in particular those essential for life, were cooked in stellar interiors.
p.180
Detailed calculations have shown that nucleosynthesis in stars would predict for helium a cosmic abundance of only about 1 percent to 4 percent, while the observed value is about 24 percent. This left the big bang as the lone source for the lightest elements, just as Gamow and Alpher had suggested.
p.185 the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Today the stipulation of homogeneity and isotropy is known as the cosmological principle (a name coined by the German astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich), and the most powerful direct evidence for its validity comes from observations of the “afterglow of creation”: the cosmic microwave background radiation. This radiation is a relic of the primeval hot, dense, and opaque fireball. It comes from all directions and is isotropic to better than one part in ten thousand. (In the words of astronomer Bob Kirshner: “much smoother than a baby's bottom.”)
p.210
Penzias and Wilson were working at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey with an antenna built for communication satellites. To their annoyance, they were picking up some sort of pervasive background radio noise: microwave radiation that appeared to be the same from all directions. After failing to explain away this disturbing “hiss” as an instrumental artifact, Penzias and Wilson finally announced the detection of an intergalatic temperature excess of about 3 Kelvin (3 degrees above absolute zero).
p.210
Lacking the necessary background, Penzias and Wilson did not realize initially what they had found. Robert Dicke of Princeton University, however, recognized the signal immediately. Dicke was in the process of building a radiometer to search for the relic radiation from the big bang, previously predicted by Alpher, Hermann, and Gamow.
p.210
Consequently, his correct interpretation of the results of Penzias and Wilson literally transformed the big bang theory from hypothesis into experimentally tested physics.
p.210
As the universe expanded, the incredibly hot, dense, and opaque fireball cooled down continuously, eventually reaching its present temperature of about 2.7 Kelvin.
p.210
Since then, observations of the cosmic microwave background have produced some of the most precise measurement in cosmology.
(Brilliant blunders: from Darwin to Einstein ─ colossal mistakes by great scientists that changed our understanding of life and the universe / Mario Livio., 1. errors, scientific., Q172.5.E77L58 2013, 500─dc23, first Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2013, 2013, )
____________________________________
Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982
p.149
Two fundamental scientific breakthroughs, 50 years ago by Jansky and more recently by Penzias and Wilson, occurred as a result of attempts to improve telephone transmission. This involved dealing with sources of noise. In both cases, it is also worth noting, the scientific breakthrough involved the use of extremely sensitive equipment that had been developed at Bell Labs for research projects at a more applied level. Jansky was using a rotatable antenna designed by Harald Friis for dealing with problems connected with weak radio signals. Penzias and Wilson were using a remarkably sensitive horn antenna that had been built for the Echo and Telstar satellite communication projects.15
15 In an interview after receiving the Nobel prize, Wilson said that it was the availability of that antenna that had first motivated him to work at Bell Labs. “The thing that originally attracted me to Bell Labs was the availability of the horn reflector ─ built for Project Echo ─ and traveling-wave maser, which made a unique radio telescope.” Steve Aaronson, “The light of creation ─ an interview with Arno A. Penzias and Robert C. Wilson”, Bell Laboratories Record, January 1979, p. 13.
“”─“”‘’•─“”
p.149
Jansky had been asked to deal with the problems of radio static after the creation of the overseas radiotelephone service in the late 1920s. In 1932 he published a paper identifying three sources of noise: local thunderstorms, more distant thuderstorms, and a third source, which Jansky identified as “a steady hiss static, the origin of which is not known”. It was this star noise, as it was called, that marked the birth of radio astronomy.
p.149
Jansky's experience underlines one of the reasons why it is so difficult to distinguish between basic and applied research. Fundamental breakthroughs often occur while dealing with applied or practical concerns. Attempting to draw that line on the basis of the motives of the person performing the research ─ whether there is a concern with acquiring useful information (applied) as opposed to a purely disinterested search for new knowledge (basic) ─ is, in my opinion, a hopeless quest. Whatever the ex ante intentions in undertaking research, the kind of knowledge actually acquired is highly unpredictable. Historically, some of the most fundamental scientific breakthroughs have come from people, such as Jansky, who thought they were doing applied research.
([ mining applied research for fundamental scientific breakthroughs ])
Bell Lab's support of basic research in astrophysics is related to the problems and possibilities of microwave transmission, especially the use of communication satellites for such purposes.16
16 At very high frequencies, rain and other atmospheric conditions become major sources of interference in transmission. This form of signal loss has been a continuing concern in the development of satellite communication. It has led to a good deal of research at both the technological and basic science levels ─ for example, the study of polarization phenomena. See Neil F. Dinn, “Preparing for future satellite systems”, Bell laboratories record, October 1977, pp. 236─42.
“”─“”‘’•─“”
pp.149─150
Penzias and Wilson first observed the cosmic background radiation, which is now taken as confirmation of the “big bang” theory of the formation of the universe, while attempting to identify and measure the sources of noise in their receiving system and in the atmosphere. They found that “the radiation is distributed isotropically in space and its spectrum is that of a black body at a temperature of a 3 degrees Kelvin.”17
17 Impact, prepared by members of the technical staff, Bell telephone laboratories, and the Western electric company patent licensing division, M. D. Fagen, ed. (Bell telephone laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., 1972), p. 87.
p.150
Although Penzias and Wilson did not know it at the time, the characteristics of this background radiation were just what had been predicted earlier by cosmologists favoring the big-bang theory.
p.150
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