The history of cultural progress is, almost without exception, a story of one door leading to another door, exploring the palace one room at a time.
This quote comes from Stephen Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, in the Guardian article Eureka moments are very, very rare.
It reminds me of Thomas S Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Coming off the back of my post the other day about a-ha moments that occur in the shower, this article supports the idea that good ideas are less often a stroke of genius, and more often the logical next step in a cumulative history of progress.
I’m continually fascinated by this idea of where ideas come from, and how we can make ourselves more likely to come across ideas.
