This is intended as a very abstract philosophical question.
Like Einstein with relativity was inspired by a man falling from a roof and a moving train. Most creative ideas seem to boil down to a person moving ideas across domains. Do you think this is always true even if the person is unwilling to admit the root thoughts, or perhaps they are completely unaware of the connections they subconsciously made? Is there truly a provably unique thought or is everything a product of experience?
This question’s answers will veer into “no true scotsman” debates because how can I express thoughts except through language learned from others? How can I make art without being influenced by the world I inhabit?
Counter point: Is human existence unique and separate from the universe we live in? If you can influence someone’s thoughts by changing their brain chemistry then how separate from our surroundings are we?
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Humans don’t exist in a vacuum, even if we think something is wholly our own, original idea, it likely pulled in stuff we don’t even know it pulled in. This doesn’t take away from the individual contribution of that inventor. There are lots of people who will see something and not think anything special about it. But, sometimes the right person sees the right thing and it kicks off a series of connections in their brain and they come up with something novel. But for that particular person’s unique set of experiences, that novel thing may not have been created.
If you invented something unique your first problem is going to be describing it to yourself. You’ll need new nomenclature. The second problem is describing the unique thing to someone else.
One could argue that anything that can be nailed down by language cannot be unique because the metaphors and phrases to describe it preexisted.
Everything is a remix. https://youtu.be/nJPERZDfyWc
How does one form thoughts without attaching them to something else in their brain? You can’t have ideas about something without it being in reference to something else, or else you couldn’t possibly understand your own idea.
I think the problem is (ironically) exacerbated by lacking better language to describe things. Einstein was trying to describe the world, not come up with something new. I think that does involve “creativity,” but I’d argue that it’s not the same impulse.
Children absolutely come up with things that don’t seem to have any relation to what they’ve experienced, but it’s not useful creativity, like what Einstein possessed.
This comment somehow feels insulting to both Einstein and children, but I don’t mean it like that.
Everything has to come from experience I think, but it doesn’t always feel like that. I know some songwriters say it’s like a fountain they cannot turn off, coming from somewhere else. Often when I have a problem I am stuck on, letting it go and sleeping works, I can wake up knowing things I didn’t know when I fell asleep.
Things coming from experience doesn’t rule out original, unique or novel ideas at all, though.
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I can’t really say either way. Like the enormity of human knowledge intuitively implies a likely probability of unique thought, but I struggle to name an example.
I have been wondering if my missing intuitive connection here is the scope of human experience.
I think sociologists call it tribal epistemology, which posits that humans primarily rely on their immediate social groups for information and understanding, often finding it difficult to grasp perspectives beyond these. I get the impression the scope of human knowledge and creativity may be directly caused by the true scale of human experience that we struggle to comprehend.
Whoever invented the internet seems to have succeeded in this.
Nope, they joined multiple WANs (existing infrastructure).
