The Production of Novelty  

Oleh:

Ohlsson, Stellan

Jenis: Article from Books - E-Book
Dalam koleksi: Deep Learning How the Mind Overrides Experience, page 53-86.
Topik: The Creativity Questions; Act of Creation; Theories of Novelty Production; Accumulation Through Heuristic Search; A Repertoire of Ideas
Fulltext: The Production of Novelty.pdf (492.28KB)

Isi artikel

Western culture recognizes three fi elds of activity as particularly devoted to the exercise of originality. Artists aim to create original works, scientists seek to discover previously unknown phenomena and technologists strive to invent new devices and techniques. Th e three verbs create, discover and invent jointly triangulate the application of mind to the production of novelty. Novelties are diverse in character and consequence. In 1935, when war in Europe seemed unavoidable, Arnold F. Wilkins, a junior scientifi c offi cer of the British National Physical Laboratory, was asked by his superior, superintendent Robert Watson Watt, to calculate whether radio waves could be emitted with enough force and precision to boil the blood of the pilot of an approaching enemy aircraft . Watson Watt had in turn been asked this question by a member of the Committee for the Scientifi c Study of Air Defence. When Wilkins’s calculations showed that this death ray concept was not workable, his superior asked how radio technology could be used to defend Britain instead. In a momentous act of inspiration, Wilkins proposed that perhaps we can detect enemy air planes at a distance by bouncing radio waves off them . Calculations showed that a detection device, unlike the death ray, could work. Five years later, when the bombers of the German Luft waff e attacked, a string of radar stations along Britain’s east coast gave the British Royal Air Force (RAF) advance warning of their approach. Without this advantage, the RAF might not have been able to fi ght off the Luft waff e and Germany might have invaded Britain, in which case World War II would have unfolded diff erently. Seldom have so many benefi ted so greatly from so simple an idea.

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