[gameprogrammer] Re: Innovation and Creativity. Getting OT?

On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 11:27, Latimerius wrote:
> On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:07:05AM -0500, Bob Pendleton wrote:
> 
> > You say above that war is not a contributor to technology, and then you
> > say strife is a contributor... War is just strife on a large scale. You
> > can't have it both ways.
> 
> War might be strife, but not all strife is war.  I'm sure you can see
> the difference. What he wrote wasn't incorrect IMHO.
> 
> > No one is saying that war is good. We are saying that it does lead to
> > the development of technology.
> 
> I don't believe this is accurate.  *Necessity*, not war is the mother of
> invention.  That this necessity has way too often been bred by war, is
> an entirely separate topic.  It just goes to show that many of us are
> too primitive to feel excitement other than that provided by power and
> control.  That's why the history of mankind is the history of wars and
> violence.  When you realize that most of the time spent by us since the
> dawn of mankind was spent by making wars, it doesn't seem too surprising
> that much of necessity and strife that motivated invention was spurred
> by war.  But it's still easy to fall into the trap of thinking that war
> is somehow semi-required for progress.
> 
> Fortunately, mankind was also able to produce great minds that could be
> motivated by far deeper, profound and admirable desire than the desire
> to opress.  And it turns out that much of what we know about nature and
> ourselves (and what we often use against each other, sadly) was revealed
> to us by those basically peaceful men that never participated in a war
> machine of any kind.
> 
> G.H.Hardy wrote in his book "A Mathematician's Apology" something along
> the lines of that mathematics (a science that provides underpinning for
> most of the inventions we talk about here) cannot be used for warfare,
> and never was.  While it perhaps might be argued that it could and was,
> it's clear that huge majority of successful research in mathematics,
> physics and other fields of science was seldom motivated by the desire
> to make war making more effective.  Neither Newton nor Einstein were
> warmongers even though their work was later (sometimes not much later)
> used for warfare - so you don't need to be either, even in the name of
> invention.
> 
> I know that your intentions are pure, I just thought I might point out
> to you that just because war makes someone to take a collection of
> existing generic theories or technologies (maybe throw in a couple of
> their own) and make the last step or two in turning them into a piece of
> weapon of some kind, it doesn't mean that war is somehow necessary for
> invention.  

But, no one every said that war was necessary for invention. If that is
what people think has been said, then there is a serious
miscommunication going on. Let me state that one more time. No one on
this list has stated that war is necessary for invention. I hope no one
on the list *believes* that war is necessary for invention.

As you said "necessity is the mother of invention". Strife creates
necessity and therefore stimulates invention. War is extreme strife, and
therefore stimulates extreme rates of invention.

> Yes, I know that there is quite a strong basic research in
> military environment but that doesn't contradict my point, namely that
> necessity is what motivates progress and that necessity can have roots
> anywhere, war being one of those places.  And that mankind would be
> better off *without* this particular motivator of progress since it
> takes much more than it gives and people would probably sooner or later
> find a way invent the good byproducts of military research anyway.
> 
>       latimerius

I see no contradiction between what I have been saying and what you just
said. Though, I think you said it much better. I think that some people
have such a strong negative emotional reaction to war that they cannot
accept anyone saying anything that may sound even slightly positive
about war. 

As always, your wisdom is a valued contribution to the list.

                Thank You

                        Bob Pendleton

> 
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+ Bob Pendleton: writer and programmer +
+ email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx             +
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