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[johnslat]

Issac Asimov, no strange to new ideas, in an previously unpublished essay on how to come up with new ideas:

“How do people get new ideas?” Asimov muses. Asimov himself wrote and edited more than 500 works and was famed for his science fiction novels. One can surmise that he was not short on ideas — or a method of cultivating creativity.
Asimov instead looks at how Darwin and Alfred Wallace came up with the theory of evolution via natural selection, and breaks down the essentials of creativity. Just as important as Darwin and Wallace’s background and travels was their ability to make connections between granules otherwise detached:
“Obviously, then, what is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected.”
The “cross-connection” Asimov explains is specially cultivated from certain personality and societal factors.
“Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a ‘new idea,’ but as a mere ‘corollary of an old idea.’”
“It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable. It seems the height of unreason to suppose the earth was round instead of flat, or that it moved instead of the sun, or that objects required a force to stop them when in motion, instead of a force to keep them moving, and so on.”
“A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.”
Despite writing “that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required,” Asimov does write at length for the rest of the essay on how best to foster creativity in groups — five is a good number, he suggests. To cultivate group creativity he believes the perfect human petri dish is one of ease and relaxation:
“But how to persuade creative people to do so? First and foremost, there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness. The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t object.”
Asimov wrote this before radical changes were made to office structures, before Steve Jobs and Pixar, before Silicon Valley and the culture of start-ups were perverted and mass marketed. His ideas seem far before his time.
Yet his essay was published at the exact right moment — a moment when our society may need to be reminded of this simple prescription. We need to shed some of the manic hype for the “next thing” and take a moment to make true, daring new connections. To be informed and eccentric.
This line stands out: “It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a ‘new idea,’ but as a mere ‘corollary of an old idea.’”


for the full essay:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-mulls-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/

Regards,
John

[Mushkilla]

But Isaac Asimov does not believe in Santa Claus, and his writing is more to do with science fictions and robotics in space!

[johnslat]

Dear Mushkilla,

He was so much more:

"Isaac Asimov (/ˈaɪzɨk ˈæzɨmɒv/;[2] born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov; circa January 2, 1920[1] – April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.[3] His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.[4]

Asimov is widely considered a master of hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime.[5] Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series;[6] his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are explicitly set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, beginning with Foundation's Edge, he linked this distant future to the Robot and Spacer stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson.[7] He wrote hundreds of short stories, including the social science fiction "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.[8]

Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction. Most of his popular science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery, as well as works on astronomy, mathematics, the Bible, William Shakespeare's writing, and chemistry."


http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html


Isaac Asimov: Man of 7,560,000 Words

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-profile.html

Regards,
John