If you could transport yourself back to the 1840s and ask the people what might improve their lives, it’s unlikely anyone would have responded, ‘How about some blue sparks leaping between copper spheres?’ Yet, that’s what Michael Faraday presented in his experiments before a puzzled audience.
When Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone, having witnessed Michael Faraday’s demonstration of the newly discovered phenomenon of electromagnetic induction [a fundamental force of nature most commonly used to generate electricity], asked: ‘But what use is it? Faraday famously replied, ‘I don’t know, but one day, sir, you may be able to tax it’. (According to another version, however, or perhaps even on a different occasion, his riposte was supposed to have been, ‘What use is a newborn baby?’)
Walter Gratzer – Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes
Imagine life without electricity. Homes are devoid of the usual hum of electronics. Medical care, once driven by high-tech machinery, is now relying on old-fashioned tools and procedures. Education has been stripped back to the basics: chalk and slate. Transportation is slowed to the pace of horse-drawn carriages. Instant information communication at the speed of light dwindles to the speed of winds or wings. No doubt humanity may have another Prometheus-like revelation and discover a new mighty force instead of electricity. But in the nineteenth century, many of the applications of electricity we now take for granted were unimaginable.
It was not as if people’s homes were cluttered with dormant dishwashers and televisions, waiting for Faraday to complete his experiments so they could be switched on. The applications of electricity followed the harnessing of electricity itself.
Sir Ken Robinson – Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative
Because we tend to greet innovation with scepticism (“What good is it?”, “That’s not how we do things here”, “This will never work”), judging the values of new ideas can be difficult. Only with the benefit of hindsight do some ideas appear inevitable or logical.
Perhaps society’s obsession with efficiency and ruthless optimization alienates us from pursuing ideas that might initially seem worthless or impractical. Blinded by deterministic perspectives, it is easy to overlook subtler nuances of our complex existence.
In complex natural systems, the relationship between inputs and outputs is non-linear, leading to a phenomenon where minor changes can create significant or unexpected results — a concept exemplified by “the butterfly effect” from chaos theory. This makes predicting the system’s behaviour an inherently challenging task.
Generating ideas can mirror these natural systems, as revolutionary concepts rarely emerge fully formed. We simply do not know how non-linear interactions (tossing ideas back and forth until a flash of inspiration occurs) could affect, predict or control a system’s behaviour (groundbreaking theories). While these iterative steps might seem insignificant or worthless, they’re fundamental to the process.
Sociologist William Bruce Cameron said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Similarly, the ultimate worth of novel ideas is not always in their practical utility but in their potential to deepen and broaden our understanding, challenging our pre-existing beliefs.
What is the use of such a study? The criticism implied in this question has never bothered me, for any activity seems to me of value if it satisfies curiosity, stimulates ideas, and gives a new slant to our understanding of the social world.
Stanley Milgram – The Individual in a Social World
Faraday’s humble blue sparks ultimately transformed our world. Centuries later, relentlessly pursuing growth and facing AI generative knowledge, we start to ask ourselves what differentiates us as humans from machines. To this question, there might never be a better answer than Faraday’s:
“I don’t know what good this idea is. Perhaps one day you can tax it.”