Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking
    How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking
    How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking

    By Aristotle

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    What we can learn about fostering innovation and creative thinking from some of the most inventive people of all times—the ancient Greeks

    When it comes to innovation and creative thinking, we are still catching up with the ancient Greeks. Between 800 and 300 BCE, they changed the world with astonishing inventions—democracy, the alphabet, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, mathematical proof, rational medicine, coins, architectural canons, drama, lifelike sculpture, and competitive athletics. None of this happened by accident. Recognizing the power of the new and trying to understand and promote the conditions that make it possible, the Greeks were the first to write about innovation and even the first to record a word for forging something new. In short, the Greeks “invented” innovation itself—and they still have a great deal to teach us about it.

    How to Innovate is an engaging and entertaining introduction to key ideas about—and examples of—innovation and creative thinking from ancient Greece. Armand D’Angour provides lively new translations of selections from Aristotle, Diodorus, and Athenaeus, with the original Greek text on facing pages. These writings illuminate and illustrate timeless principles of creating something new—borrowing or adapting existing ideas or things, cross-fertilizing disparate elements, or criticizing and disrupting current conditions.

    From the true story of Archimedes’s famous “Eureka!” moment, to Aristotle’s thoughts on physical change and political innovation, to accounts of how disruption and competition drove invention in Greek warfare and the visual arts, How to Innovate is filled with valuable insights about how change happens—and how to bring it about.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateNov 2, 2021
    ISBN9780691223599
    Author

    Aristotle

    Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist whose works have profoundly influenced philosophical discourse and scientific investigation from the later Greek period through to modern times. A student of Plato, Aristotle’s writings cover such disparate topics as physics, zoology, logic, aesthetics, and politics, and as one of the earliest proponents of empiricism, Aristotle advanced the belief that people’s knowledge is based on their perceptions. In addition to his own research and writings, Aristotle served as tutor to Alexander the Great, and established a library at the Lyceum. Although it is believed that only a small fraction of his original writings have survived, works such as The Art of Rhetoric, Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics have preserved Aristotle’s legacy and influence through the ages.

    Read more from Aristotle

    Related authors

    Related to How to Innovate

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      For The Thinkers

      Oct 16, 2020

      For several years now, Ian Olasov has set up ‘Ask-a-Philosopher’ booths around New York City, answering questions from passersby. This book reflects those conversations. From philosophical to frivolous, questions include: Are people innately good or

      2 min read

    • Article

      I’m More Fatty

      Sep 21, 2020

      “When lockdown ends, I’m more fatty.” I had to laugh at this wordplay comment on amor fati below Daily Stoic’s excellent Youtube video. Amor fati is a Latin phrase, and one of the central teachings of Stoicism. It can be translated as “love fate” or

      1 min read

    • Article

      Lessons To Live By

      Sep 18, 2020

      Lessons To Live By
      4 min read

    • Article

      Six Ingredients That Will Make Your Essay Stand Out From The Slush Pile

      Apr 25, 2020

      1 Timeliness. Why does this essay need to be told right now? What does it add to the current conversation? Include all this in your query letter.2 Originality. Maybe you know how to turn a phrase better than any wordsmith you know. Perhaps you wrote

      1 min read

    • Article

      Seeing The Big Picture

      May 26, 2022

      IBN KHALDUN (1332-1406) WAS A PIONEERING Arab scholar and one of the most important historians of the Middle Ages. He is best known for his three-volume masterwork the Muqaddimah, written in 1377, which integrated politics, sociology, economics, demo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Freedom vs. Order

      Nov 5, 2020

      The author is the first deputy president of the Central Institute of Socialism Ancient Greek civilization is considered the cradle of modern Western civilizations, and Chinese civilization experienced crucial evolution around the same time during the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Rebel Greek Philosophers

      Mar 23, 2023

      Rebel Greek Philosophers
      6 min read

    • Article

      Know Your Philosophers

      Aug 2, 2020

      Know Your Philosophers
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Tantalizing Promise

      Aug 4, 2023

      A Tantalizing Promise
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Reviews

      Dec 14, 2021

      TWELVE CAESARS: Images of power from the ancient world to the modern By Mary Beard ISBN: 978-0691222363 Princeton University Press (2021) – $35.00 www.press.princeton.edu The Caesars of Rome continue to beguile us. What is perplexing is why the first

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Companion to Curation

      Nov 4, 2020

      If there was ever a book that should be top of the bibliographic list for students studying art institutions and curatorial practice(s) of the past, present and future, this is it – A Companion to Curation edited by well-known Australian artist acade

      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Reviews

      Oct 6, 2023

      The Cambridge Companion to the Ancient Greek Economy Edited by Sitta von Redenl ISBN: 978-1108404846 Cambridge University Press (2022) - £29.99 www.cambridge.org The study of the ancient Greek economy occupies an unusual place in modern scholarship.

      5 min read

    • Article

      It’s Time To Stop The Rot

      Feb 29, 2024

      It’s Time To Stop The Rot
      8 min read

    • Article

      The New science Of History

      Mar 1, 2024

      The New science Of History
      16 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for How to Innovate

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      How to Innovate - Aristotle

      PREFACE

      It used to be said that the ancient Greeks were not keen on innovation. That view was based on a partial and insufficiently discerning interpretation of the evidence of ancient writings, and historians now recognize that the Greeks were never as disinclined to innovate as had been assumed. In fact, what requires explanation is the conspicuously innovative achievement that has always been recognized as a feature of ancient Greek society. Certain conditions, fertile for innovation, must have allowed for the range of inventions and discoveries that makes ancient Greek culture so influential for its inheritors in subsequent generations.

      In addition to these conditions, various mechanisms can be seen to underlie their innovative practices: mechanisms such as the borrowing and adaptation of external ideas, the cross-fertilizing of disparate disciplines, and the posing of disruptive critiques to the ideas and practices of their predecessors.

      These principles of innovation were not systematically formulated by the Greeks themselves. They emerge from various writings that address the notion of innovation in different ways. The format of this book therefore, while taking a single and overridingly influential author, Aristotle, to provide the central texts, adduces other less well known ancient sources to illustrate innovations that represent the key mechanisms of the Greeks’ innovative practices.

      Note on the Texts

      For ease of matching translation to the original, I have divided up the texts of Aristotle and Athenaeus into shorter paragraphs and provided a new alphabetic numeration for each section. The numbering and structure of the texts of Diodorus is that of the standard scholarly editions. I have aimed to create translations that are both accurate and readable, using the Greek texts (with a few minor variants) of the Loeb Classical Library editions.

      INTRODUCTION

      Innovation is the driving force of the modern world. In technology, politics, business, art, music, academia, the military, and countless other areas of life, change is constant, and the search for novelty is unremitting. Responses to change range from excitement to fear; change means loss, and when things are changing fast there can be little time to digest what has been lost and to embrace the new. While some may feel a pressure to be innovative, others are perplexed about the meaning of innovation and the value of the new. What is innovation, and how is one to think about creating change?

      Athens in the archaic and classical period (around 800 to 300 BCE) was a fast-changing society in which the idea of innovation was, for the first time in the written record, explicitly raised and discussed. The earliest use of a word for forging something new (Greek kainotomia) is found in a comic play by the dramatist Aristophanes, dating from the late fifth century BCE. While it’s often said that the ancient Greeks were averse to novelty and reluctant to innovate, their writings show that in a range of disciplines they were well aware of the power and advantages of the new. I don’t sing the old songs, my new songs are better, run the lines of some lyrics composed by the singer-songwriter Timotheus of Miletus in the late fifth century BCE. A similar promotion of novelty can be found in many other fields of activity and intellectual pursuits of the period.

      Despite largely conducting their lives within the bounds of a traditional agrarian society, the classical Greeks were responsible for creating a series of world-changing innovations. Early in the period of their efflorescence they invented the alphabet, by borrowing and adapting letterforms used in the Near Eastern nation of Phoenicia; and the Greek alphabet, as further adapted by the Romans, has been central to communication ever since. They went on to invent philosophy, logic, rhetoric, and mathematical proof; to be the first practitioners of theatrical drama, rational medicine, monetary coinage, and lifelike sculpture; and to create competitive athletics, architectural canons, the self-governing city-state (polis), and democratic politics.

      These transformative cultural changes, which took place over the five centuries from 800 to 300 BCE, cannot have happened by accident. None of the Greeks’ creations nor the products thereof, some of which have never been surpassed, could have come into being without the contributions of individuals who created and operated in conditions fertile for change, who were prepared and keen to innovate, and who understood how to exploit the means of doing so.

      Some Greeks also sought to understand the conditions that made innovation possible; and descriptions of the creative procedures that led to many of the Greeks’ novel achievements are preserved in their writings. What surviving texts illustrate is that, while the processes of creativity are potentially endless, the creation of the new relies on a few basic principles: notably, the adaptation of existing elements, the cross-fertilization of disparate entities, and the disruption of previous conditions. On these principles and combinations of them, change was created in practice for centuries. It inspired the earliest Greek thinkers from the sixth century BCE to ask questions such as where does everything come from? and what is change? Toward the end of the classical period, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) sought to analyze the logic of change on different levels, natural, metaphysical, and political.

      Aristotle’s theoretical analysis of change in Physics book 1 begins by refuting the counterintuitive notion proposed by predecessors such as Parmenides that change itself is impossible. He goes on to argue that all change requires a preexisting situation or substrate from which change can and must proceed. His argument may be generalized to affirm that the new depends on the old, a position summarized in Physics book 1. Aristotle was keen to understand change in practice as well as in theory. The key political unit of the Greek world of his time was the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1