Curiosity + Triviality == Discovery
Reading and thoroughly digging Steven Johnson’s Invention of Air and seeing an overlap with discussions about planning and innovation (clunky intro, but accurate).
Early in Johnson’s book, he tells the story of how we discovered the Gulf Stream. It was a convergence of vaguely, not immediately apparently, connected things. In the 1760s there were several things being observed by people engaged in undirected, scientific observation. Joseph Priestley was using the new Fahrenheit thermometer to measure ocean water temperatures at different depths and locations. He had no idea if it would add up to something, but was simply curious and observant. Benjamin Franklin had notices that there were “gulph weeds” present along certain lines of sight in the ocean, lines which had little connection to landmass or shorelines. Sailors were informally logging certain places where sailing was smoother and faster. There was also a fascination with and fear of waterspouts.
All of these things were unconnected or loosely connected, until a question about the postal system emerged: why does it take longer for letters to travel from Europe to America than it does for letters to travel in the opposite direction?
Johnson’s characterization of this intellectual convergence, says something about innovation and discovery:
[British authorities curious about this question] were lucky in another respect: the postmaster in question happened to be Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin would ultimately turn that postal mystery into one of the great scientific breakthroughs of his career: a turning point in our visualization of the macro patterns formed by ocean currents. Franklin was well-prepared for the task. As a twenty-year old, traveling back from his first voyage to London in 1726, he had recorded notes in his journal about the strange prevalence of “gulph weed” in the waters of the North Atlantic. In a letter written twenty years later, he had remarked on the slower passage westward across the Atlantic, though at the time he supposed it was attributable to the rotation of the earth.
There’s additional layers to this very compelling story (I just love Johnson’s books), but the key things of interest to me are the components of discovery and invention:
A theme that cuts across all of these is looseness of process connected to open-ness to the new. This is an occasional theme in innovation literature which talks about generosity of spirit, lateral inspiration and thinking, and the ability to quickly move in and out of modes of discourse, multiple configurations of ideas and data points.
(Image taken from http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org/)