Idea Space - Part I

IDEA SPACE - Part I

In the film Dogma, our hero tells us “Well, I say we get drunk because I’m all out of ideas.”  Notwithstanding the resolution to getting drunk, it expresses a common state all of us have experienced.   It is, 'I have a problem but can't see a pathway toward solving it.'  The point is basic everywhere.  We have a problem with no clue on how to proceed.  We need some help; it is the idea we need.   The need for ideas can range from glimmers of hope to full-fledged concepts or operational plans, from national issues to getting girl to like you.   Indeed…

Our world survives on ideas, and our need for new ideas is ever on the increase.   The challenges through the instantiation of new problems in this modern age with its concomitant technology has improved but complexified our everyday existence.   We need to solve ever newer and ever more complex problems; we need to understand new situations; we need to invent our way to continued survival.   Before any operational, strategic or tactical plan can evolve, the idea is required.

It is the idea of ideas that we consider today. Ideas are the progeny of innovation, the vehicle upon which the new in newness is manifest. Not just the really big ideas, such as relativity, is the topic at hand but those more routine ideas that help us run the hurdles of a modern world rushing before us. Long ago, the prescriptions of tradition have expired, though it is traditions that maintain stability.

We all have ideas. Some are good; some are truly good but most are terrible. Ideas are temporal. Few last for all of time. Thus, most ideas have a time signature in the sense that the value of an idea has a lifetime that can be measured in moments, days, years, or virtually forever. The life of an idea can be mapped on the time line versus acceptance, with the time axis as the horizontal and the idea’s acceptance from 0 to 100% on the vertical axis. Acceptance is a particularly vague term as it has not been given a context. The context varies according from the personal to the universal. Most personal ideas have no place in the public spectra of ideas. Therefore each graphic is localized to its particular setting. What is remarkable is the similarity between setting. Each idea has its own place in time-acceptance space, though it is not exactly this simple.

What ideas do depends on many factors and applies to many settings, from personal to corporate, from corporate to public, from religious to scientific. Each idea is created in the mind of a person, the machinations a team, even the ruminations of a congress.

How ideas are greeted by society depends on the societal signature, what it is willing to accept, and what it is willing to believe. As acceptance, not the creation, of ideas is the centerpiece of this discussion, let’s consider a few possible acceptance situations. The idea will

• Catch on quickly and gains 100% or lesser acceptance. On the other hand some ideas, particularly those without possibility of justified proof, quickly gain acceptance by a multitude but the percentage of acceptance may remain modest, say in the 50+% range. Many ideas of religion and faith fit in this category.
• Catch on quickly and then plummet quickly. Such ideas are the staple of the demagogue, and those regions where a rapid emotional attachment obtains. As is said, the “dawn of reality” soon sets in and acceptance vaporizes.
• Catch on slowly, rise in acceptance, until stabilized at a certain percentage. Modern theories of physics fit this description well. Not all ideas are fully accepted by all. Full acceptance of an idea can take centuries and multiple forms of justification.
• Catch on slowly, rise in acceptance, until stabilized at a certain percentage – and then decline.
• Catch on at some rate, but then stabilizes in an oscillatory mode, where the acceptance rate varies up and down. Various beliefs in God or gods exhibit this type of oscillation where there appears to be a strong belief in the idea but it oscillates in time.
  
  Some of these are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – Time vs. Acceptance

A parallel factor is that most frequently there is a slate of multiple ideas expressing pathways to the same problem. Each vectors toward a different solution. Ideas are often used to explain situations and new ideas can replace old or weaker ones, with concurrent existence of conflicting ideas.

Figure 2 – Idea Emergence for the Same Problem

As we see in Figure 2, the acceptance value of different ideas can and may intersect.  There is rarely, an idea vacuum where for a period of time there is no valued idea.  However, when two ideas intersect, that is to have the same acceptance values, there ensues a fundamental conflict between them, with one usually but not always dominating the other.  This may cause the precipitous decline in acceptance of the older in favor of the newer.  Yet, it is possible for different ideas to co-exist.   However, each influences the other.   These do lead to a class of impossible problems overall. 

Types of ideas. 

• ·         Bad ideas – to establish an idea as bad it must fail repeatedly.  I have dozens every day.  Don’t we all.  Sometimes recognition a bad idea takes time, courage, and intellectual or emotional resolve.  It is important to recognize a bad idea when much emotional commitment to its validity is sustained.
• ·         Good ideas – Good ideas emerge but take time to incubate, then germinate and then blossom.  In the study of innovation we learn the importance of a good idea as based on experience and knowledge.  Rare is the spontaneous good idea without a spectrum of information.
• ·         Untestable ideas – Because upon executing on a given idea, one can never know if an alternate idea would have worked better.  Examples are economic theories applied to entire economies.  
• ·         Idea root and tree – this is a root idea of often a full theory (e.g. atomic theory of Dalton).  It spawns new ideas   and then new ideas spawn more new ideas, as branches, and upon them ever newer ideas, i.e. branches.  The root idea may be defeated by failure of any of its branches.
• ·         Idea investment – When a particular group in power takes hold or ownership of an idea it may be sustained well beyond it natural life, sometimes owing to evidence to its contrary.  Such an investment engenders an idea with extraordinary acceptance which rarely fades but more often dissolves in acceptance.

Examples are important.  The following give brief descriptions of several significant world ideas in science and politics.  Each is illustrated by its own path to credibility. 

• Bloodletting – the practice of medicine is full of bad ideas.  One of the originals is that of bloodletting, a practice dating at least to ancient Egypt. Used to cure headaches and even fever, it was executed by priests, monks, barbers, hairdressers, and others up until  recent times.  It is thought by many that George Washington dies owing to the consequences of a bad cold and fever and of bloodletting.  By the late 1880’s, it was finally discouraged by scientific studies.  Bloodletting serves as on the foremost blunders of all ideas.  It has murder countless but has been sustained by the notion of “proper practice” without the requirement of evidence.   http://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-bloodletting
• Keynesian economics –  is the view that during times of economic downturn, the strength of the economy is strongly influenced by demand.  This government based idea supports the government intervention upon the money supply to stimulate the economy by overwhelming spending.  Credibility has been a constant issue with this idea.  Moreover, the idea is essentially untestable, as once pursued, it changes the dynamics of the environment.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
• Planetary motion – From the earliest days of astronomical observations there have been multiple ideas of the motion of planets.  Among the earliest were the geocentric ideas, that all planets and even stars circulate the earth on a daily clock.  Ptolemy developed a model for this motion that gained rapid acceptance.  As evidence appeared that it was not predictive, there were added to it the idea of epicycles, cycles upon cycles to make appropriate corrections.  Its death knell came with the work of Copernicus who suggested the heliocentric, or sun centered model.  Something of an improvement, it still speculated upon circular orbits.  Only with the work of Kepler was this notion put to rest.
• Germ theory – The germ theory of disease states that some diseases are caused by microorganisms.  Too small to see, they’re ability to cause disease was rejected from the outset of their discovery.   Proposed as early as the 16^th century, this idea gain credence by dint of discoveries in the 17^th through 19^th centuries.  It was Louis Pasteur that took germs to task by devised ways to defeat their destruction in a number of diseases including anthrax and rabies.  His work conflicted with current medical practices of the time, and the conflicts continued throughout the greater part of his life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory
•  Nature of God – The idea or ideas of god have been present for all of history.  They furnish and example of multiple idea concepts, multiple levels of acceptance, and multiple modes of oscillation.  As hard evidence either way is impossible to achieve, it remains speculative, a matter of faith, one way or another.
• Plate tectonics -  This idea, rather recent on the scientific scene, was profoundly rejected when first proposed.  It is a theory of the motion of the earth’s lithosphere.  Substantially, it is from the work of the meteorologist Alfred Wegener who amply described what he called continental drift, expanded in his 1915 book The Origin of Continents and Oceans and the scientific debate started that would end up fifty years later in the theory of plate tectonics.  Its acceptance was particularly slow, not because there was a competing scientific idea but more because it proposed such a wholly new idea it required some considerable evidence to gain credibility.  This idea seems here to stay.
• Evolution – Like plate tectonics, its predecessor was also an idea to explain the origins of life, its changes, and it causes.  We hear of the “survival of the fittest” and other significant sub-ideas within the context of evolution.  It has competed with religious views of the origin of species in a serious way from its inception in the mid 18^th century which continues to this day.

Simply considering these potential acceptance curves, we see the need to discuss qualitative factors.