It can safely be said that most great ideas result from errors (including accidents), because the real break-throughs occur when the prevailing paradgim (“business as usual”) is so demonstrably unfit as to call into question its further utility OR something really sensational is discovered that is totally inconsistent with the prevailing paradigm. PERSISTENCE rooted in INTEGRITY is the key. That is a definition of sanity. Persistence rooted in LACK OF integrity–continuing to do the wrong thing, even the wrong thing righter–is insanity. Dissent is an “error” of the system. Repressing dissent is a crime against humanity and refuses the commensurate discovery that dissent offers. The lunacy continues.
Although there was nothing specific on this site directly focused on your tremendous inquiry, here are a few things we have found that address your question and also add to the value of this public intelligence blog.
Great quote: “A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”
Key historical assertion: “…Bacon devised the trial and error method of finding knowledge while cataloguing very carefully all the circumstances of these trials.”
Great Scientific Discoveries of the Twentieth Century
9 things invented or discovered by accident
Our greatest error has been to repress women and minorities. Women have smaller egos and better intuition than men do, and are hard-wired for open-ended compassion instead of closed-mind “justice”, which makes all the difference in humanity. Minorities bring diversity of experience, need, and low-cost solutions that the Industrial Era Empire refuses to consider because it treats humans as a commodity to be exploited, not as the co-owner and co-creater of all that we might enjoy.
Learning to See in the Dark: The Roots of Ethical Resistance — Carol Gilligan Speaks at MIT
Review: Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education
Review: All Rise–Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity
See Also:
Extract from Ideas of the Great Philosophers by William and Mabel Sahakian
Extract from Inventors and Inventions Volume 1
Extract from Encyclopedia of Creativity, Volume 1
PDF Using Citation Classics to Study the Incidence of Serendipity in Scientific Discovery
Richard Watson, Future Files and Future Minds
Within Phi Beta Iota:
1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)
Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both
Reference: Open Source Insurgency
Review: Gag Rule–On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy
Review: New World New Mind–Moving Toward Conscious Evolution
Review: Philosophy and the Social Problem–The Annotated Edition
Review: The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
Review: The Lessons of History
Review: World Population and Human Values–A New Reality
TED video: Anil Gupta on Mapping the Creative Mind of India & the World at Grassroots (G2G)
Worth a Look: Innovation Orientation
NOTE: “Innovation” permeates this web site to the point that you are better off searching yourself.
