Going after Examples
Gamma: By the way, sometimes they coincide literally.
Delta: What do you mean?
Gamma: Invention. . . . Say, an inventor tries to create a new engine. He
has to assemble some known things in a new form.
Kappa: Don’t you think that the idea of a new engine has to come to
his mind first?
Gamma: For example?
Kappa: Well, . . . I don’t think I have any specific knowledge . . .
Delta: Jets! My dad says it was a revolutionary change in aviation!
Alpha: Ah. The Chinese invented gun powder rockets lo-o-ong ago.
And aircraft were invented too. All it took was just to join the two
ideas.
Kappa: Just to join? That easy?
Gamma: “Join”! See?
Alpha: What?
Gamma: What “what”? You take two different things: aircraft and
rocket, and arrange them into one idea—a jet! See?
Alpha: What I’m trying to say is that it was not so horribly new.
Kappa: What is “horribly new” for you? Something born out of
nothing?
How New Content Emerges
Beta: Wait, wait. I’ve got an interesting assumption! A new idea
equals the new form! The one you arrange known things in!
Alpha: Is that not what we’ve been discussing for the last half an
hour?
Delta: Five minutes at most . . . after Gamma gave her last definition.
Alpha: All right, let it be five minutes! What’s Beta’s discovery,
anyway?
Delta: It isn’t clear for me either, to be frank. . . . Beta, can you
elaborate?
Beta: I realized that a new idea is totally equal to a new form . . .
Gamma: Totally?
Beta: Yes.
