Hi Pax,
Even if that were true there’d still be no need to blush. I doubt that I’ve ever had an original idea. But I’m pleased that you brought up the subject of originality, Pax.
My wife is a potter. She makes bowls, plates and such from clay on a pottery wheel. I’ve heard her remark that the invention of pottery dates to well before the dawn of human civilization. Since that early beginning nearly every human culture has made pottery. Given the long and varied history of pottery she thinks it’s nearly impossible to come up with something entirely new. She might throw a very modern looking vase, only to later find the same item staring at her in a picture book of ancient pottery.
I found the same was true when I did a bit of “inventing.” It’s maddening to have an “original” idea, only to visit the patent files and find dozens of patents have already been issued on every aspect of your “baby.” Once you’ve decided to seek a patent, no matter how novel you think your idea a struggle will invariably ensue between you and the patent examiner. You’re trying to make the broadest claims possible for your “invention,” and he’s trying to restrict your claims so as not to infringe on other patents. I collaborated with another fellow to convince a patent examiner that our idea was original. We were eventually awarded US patent number 5,463,598. I don’t believe for a moment that our idea was original. I’ll I can say is that our claims don’t infringe on anyone else’s claims.
Billions of humans have spent even more billion of hours thinking about our existence. What is the chance that a philosophical idea that’s popped into my head is original? The chance is infinitesimally small. Bear in mind that the archives don’t record all of man’s past ideas. They only record the ideas that were published.
An article in a recent issue of The Royal Institute of Philosophy raised the question if Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas might not have been original. The article never claims that Wittgenstein plagiarized, only that ideas similar to his had appeared in print before his Tractus Logico-philosophicus. I had to laugh when I read this article. I’d never supposed that his ideas were entirely original. And even if they were, what would it matter? Humans tend to give more credence to ideas they believe have originated in their own minds. Why? The fact that I am not the first man to discover love, in no way demeans my loving.
Is an idea somehow less valuable because it has previously passed though the head of another man? If this were true, then I should be prepared to have nearly all my ideas devalued. My friends in this forum have doubtless noticed my fondness for quotations. I think a good quote is a compact jewel that succinctly expresses a much larger idea. But the secondary reason for my use of quotes is to pay homage to the fact that my ideas are not original. My experience at the patent office excepted, I’m actually thrilled when I find some idea of “mine” in an ancient philosophical text.
I mentioned here once before the thrill I have in solving my Japanese Temple Geometry problems only to find that the path I’ve chosen to solve the problem has been well trodden. This invariably gives me a gemutlich feeling of connectedness. I’m not an isolated being - floating - lost in a vast cosmos. I’m not lost at all. I’m at home in a community that extends both through space and time.
It’s become a little game with me to recognize bits of myself outside of myself. Sometimes I identify an aspect of my ideas in nature, sometimes my ideas appear in the works of other men. A nice thought is that when I’m gone all these little bits of me will endure. Men not yet born will one day have the same charming thought pop into their head that once came into mine. It will give them the same pleasure that it now gives me. And when they look about them, they’ll see bits of themselves everywhere in the world; the same bits that I once thought of as reflections of myself.
Michael
Funny way to put it but that line struck me as, almost, an absolute evidence of Atheism. I’ll have to think about this one for awhile.
It looks like I’ve subconsciously assimilated everything you’ve said and just repackaged it my words! Haha, Oops! 