Greetings! You currently reading the first installation of my blog series ‘Thoughts on Thoughts’. This series will serve as a collection of reflection pieces. Thoughts on Thoughts, or ToT for short, will primarily focus on my personal analysis of inspirational quotes with occasional ties to meditation and mindfulness.
Without further ado, I would like to kick off this series with a thought from one of histories greatest thinkers:
The important thing is not to stop questioning. — Albert Einstein1
Some say necessity is the mother of all invention but I say nay! Curiosity is the mother of all invention. New things aren’t thought of because they are needed. It all starts with wondering. It wasn’t a need to fly that drove the Wright Brothers to the skies but rather an interest in flight. I can’t tell you exactly how the conversation went but I imagine it was somewhat like this:
Sketch by Orville Wright of the Penaud Helicopter Toy2
“Hey, Orville, do you think man is capable of flying like the birds?”
“I dunno, Wilbur, let’s find out!”
and then they made invented the airplane. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Because they had to finally answer the question they had been asking each other since they were children and their father gave them an old helicopter toy.
While life wouldn’t be the same without it, there has never been a need for the airplane, or any other invention. If you ask Abraham Maslow, we as people hardly need anything at all; certainly not airplanes. In fact, it’s quite difficult to need something that has never been. If mankind has made it this far without, why do you need it now?
So once again I say nay, necessity is not the mother of invention but curiosity!
The important thing is to not stop questioning. Question everything. Question me, question yourself, question the Wright Brothers, even question Einstein. Is there a better way to do this? A faster way to do that? You don’t need anything but if your question is: ‘how has mankind made it this far without…’, I can see where you’d get confused.
Fun fact: The Wright Brothers first took to the skies on December 17th 1903, exactly 90 years before my birthday.
1. 1955 May 2, LIFE, Death of a Genius: His fourth dimension, time, overtakes Einstein, Subsection: Old Man’s Advice to Youth: ‘Never Lose a Holy Curiosity’ by William Miller (Editor at LIFE magazine), Start Page 62, Quote Page 64, Time Inc., New York. (Google Books Full View) ↩
2. Gray, C. (1998-2003). FLYING MACHINES – Alphonse Penaud. [online] Flyingmachines.org. Available at: http://www.flyingmachines.org/pend.html [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018].↩
TFC 