How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking PDF
Preview How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking
HOW TO INNOVATE Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers For a full list of titles in the series, go to https:// press . princeton . edu / series / ancient - wisdom - for - modern - readers . How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking by Aristotle How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land by Many Hands How to Tell a Joke: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humor by Marcus Tullius Cicero How to Keep an Open Mind: An Ancient Guide to Thinking Like a Skeptic by Sextus Empiricus How to Be Content: An Ancient Poet’s Guide for an Age of Excess by Horace How to Give: An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving by Seneca How to Drink: A Classical Guide to the Art of Imbibing by Vincent Obsopoeus How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders by Suetonius How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership by Plutarch How to Think about God: An Ancient Guide for Believers and Nonbelievers by Marcus Tullius Cicero How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management by Seneca How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides HOW TO INNOVATE An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking Aristotle Selected, translated, and introduced by Armand D’Angour PRINCE TON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCE TON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2021 by Armand D’Angour Princet on University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the prog ress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting f ree speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press .p rinceton . edu Published by Prince ton University Press 41 William Street, Princet on, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press . princeton . edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Aristotle. Works. Selections. English. | Aristotle. Works. Selections. | D’Angour, Armand, editor, translator, writer of introduction. Title: How to innovate : an ancient guide to creative thinking / Aristotle [and others] ; selected, translated, and introduced by Armand D’Angour. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2021] | Includes selections of works by Aristotle, Athenaeus, and Diodorus. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | In English and Greek. Identifiers: LCCN 2021010048 | ISBN 9780691213736 (hardback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780691223599 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Technological innovations—Greece—Early works to 1800. | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical | SELF-HELP / Creativity Classification: LCC T16 .H69 2021 | DDC 609/.009—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010048 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Editorial: Rob Tempio and Matt Rohal Production Editorial: Sara Lerner Text and Jacket Design: Pamela L. Schnitter Production: Erin Suydam Publicity: Maria Whelan and Amy Stewart Copyeditor: Kathleen Kageff Jacket Credit: Statue of Archimedes in a bathtub, demonstrating the principle of buoyant force. Located at Madatech, Israel’s National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space. Photo: Aquatarkus / Shutterstock This book has been composed in Stempel Garamond Printed on acid-f ree paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of Ameri ca 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Thinking new thoughts e very day νέα ἐϕ’ ἡμέρῃ ϕρονέοντϵς —Democritus, phi los o pher, fifth century BCE CONTENTS preface ix introduction xiii 1 Princi ples of Change 1 The Logic of Change 9 2 The Conditions of Creation 18 The Eureka Imperative 31 3 The Princi ple of Disruption 52 A Winning Strategy 59 4 The Benefits of Competition 68 The Father of Invention 77 5 The Uses and Abuses of Innovation 82 Aristotle on Constitutions 87 further reading 135 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 interpre- tation of the evidence of ancient writings, and historians now recognize that the Greeks w ere never as disinclined to innovate as had been as- sumed. 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 in- novation, 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 t hese conditions, vari ous mech- anisms can be seen to underlie their innovative practices: mechanisms such as the borrowing ix HOW TO INNOVATE and adaptation of external ideas, the cross- fertilizing of disparate disciplines, and the posing of disruptive critiques to the ideas and practices of their pre de ces sors. These princi ples of innovation w ere not sys- tematically formulated by the Greeks them- selves. They emerge from vari ous writings that address the notion of innovation in dif fer ent ways. The format of this book therefore, while taking a single and overridingly influential au- thor, 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 Ath- enaeus into shorter paragraphs and provided a new alphabetic numeration for each section. x
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