World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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Accidental inventions
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In my opinion, the answer to the last question is yes. You won't discover much if you don't do anything. I think a huge number of chemical reactions have been discovered by accident, i.e. the experimenter was trying to do something else. This is not entirely surprising. In many cases a chemical reaction goes along a path of least activation energy, but there are often a number of other possible paths, and sometimes the chemist doesn't actually know which one will be favoured, but he hopes the one he wants will be. In my career, I have had a number that went in a way that was unpredictable, until in retrospect. Unfortunately, none of them were of the sort that leads to lots of dollars :-( Another way is there can be a catalyst accidentally added. One of the most useful industrial reactions was discovered by a chemist who added the catalyst accidentally - the flask he used was not cleaned properly from the previous user! This sort of thing is not really a side effect - it is not knowing what the true effect will be.
Would this include drugs that were prescribed for a specific condition and then were found to be helpful with other conditions? Not really inventions, but definitely accidental.
Yes, except that some companies take successful drugs and test them out for just about everything else they can think of. After all, if you have it approved through the FDA, which can cost a fortune, they want to take advantage of what they have. So that might be sort of deliberate.
Viagra was originally prescribed to treat hypertension and angina.
I guess you could say it wasn't hard to know Viagra was good for something..
Apple (iphone?) hitting Newton's head, Archimedes splashing the bath water, maybe it's better to send the scientist into the wild, so we'll hear this "Eureka" more often than when they sit in the comfy of their labs or offices?
Such stories are probably apocryphal, told by people so comfy they were the next best thing to asleep and couldn't bear to admit they had seen all the evidence themselves and did nothing.
Maybe a liberal in Texas getting COVID from a border crosser might cry "Eureka" and invent a movement against irresponsible immigration policies.
Scout wrote: "Maybe a liberal in Texas getting COVID from a border crosser might cry "Eureka" and invent a movement against irresponsible immigration policies."Scout, I think there's already a thread for that. :-)
Seriously though, wouldn't an invention need to be tangible and not simply policy or law?
I wonder, how many people were almost there and quit that line of research, which someone else then built upon to invent something of value. I am sure the person who figured out how to make glass out of sand never envisioned today's uses from phone screens to medical equipment. Considering the internal combustion engine was patented in 1794, I am pretty sure no one pictured today's automobiles.
For all the ones that succeed in turning a concept into practical plans, there are so many more that fail or run out of funding.
Hammurabi intentionally invented codified law. So not accidental.Penicillin, on the other hand, was a total accident.
I remember reading about the guy who invented the adhesive for Post-it notes. Spencer Silver was working for 3M, trying to "create super strong adhesives for use in the aerospace industry in building planes. Instead of a super strong adhesive, though, he accidentally managed to create an incredibly weak, pressure sensitive adhesive agent called Acrylate Copolymer Microspheres." For years, 3M couldn't see a viable application for the adhesive. But, "after 5 years of constant rejection for the adhesive and another seven years in development and initial rejection, Post-It notes were finally a hit and have since become a mainstay in offices the world over, today being one of the top five best selling office supply products in the world." A cool accidental invention. Read more here:https://www.todayifoundout.com/index....
Scout wrote: "I remember reading about the guy who invented the adhesive for Post-it notes. Spencer Silver was working for 3M, trying to "create super strong adhesives for use in the aerospace industry in buildi..."I suspect many inventions follow this line, where you are trying to do something and fail, but the failure does something different. "Failure" can also be relative. My most common one is to invent something that works, but not well enough to be marketable, or there is too small a market to be bothered. This last one may be more restricted to the chemical field where you need something for one "right now" purpose, so when you have it you start looking form other uses, particularly whether it has biological activity. My one invention that is currently in the market was started mainly as an accidental byproduct, but since I had a lot of it I put it in a bag and kept it. Then someone approached me and asked for something to do a specific use and I tried this stuff, and it worked. Accident? Or keeping eyes open and taking advantage of what you have?
"Accidents", "revelations", whatever seems to be an important ingredient of a scientific process. Here is rubber, for example: "accidentally discovered that combining rubber and sulfur over a hot stove caused the rubber to vulcanize"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
Unless, of course, you can dream creatively: https://www.famousscientists.org/7-gr...
In some of the examples in the second link, maybe the dreams are just ordering what the person already knew subconsciously. Thus if we take Mendeleev, the periodicity had long been suspected and there had been a number of attempts to make tables, but the early guys had been hampered by the small number of elements known. Mendeleev was fortunate enough to be thinking of it at a time when a number of new ones had just been discovered. I am not trying to reduce his effort, but maybe his mind was unconsciously sorting through the previous stuff and reaching the proper conclusion.
And then there's Einstein:"Some of the most influential and successful creative ideas of all time were inspired by the subconscious while dreaming. A field of cows inspired Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which, according to a survey by meditation and sleep specialists calm.com, is one of the most important ideas that ever came out of sleep. In his dream, Einstein was telling a farmer about cows being surrounded by an electric fence, but the farmer saw something different. Einstein awakened with the realisation that the same event could vary from different perspectives, and the theory of relativity began to take shape. "
https://www.readersdigest.com.au/true...
Lots of cool stuff in this article, including the dream origin of McCartney's song "Yesterday."
Not so sure of that one, Scout. The story I heard was that Einstein was stumped about the fact that the speed of light was only dependent on fundamental constants, and not on initial speed, as Galilean relativity would have. He went on a picnic with some friends and someone said something like, "It's the same for me as you," and suddenly Einstein jumped up and ran back to his apartment. The key was the laws of physics are the same for everyone, irrespective of how fast they were travelling. Maybe we shall never know the truth as it is lost in fable.
My take on these recent posts - I need to sleep more. Creative people apparently sleep.
http://www.businessinsider.com/accide...
I guess in science and research too, luck or happy coincidence may sometimes be more important than effort and persistence.
Can side effect be often more important than an effect? Is doing/trying something is still a pre-requisite for an intentional or unintentional success?