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Scientific discovery is popularly believed to result from the sheer genius of such intellectual stars as naturalist Charles Darwin and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. Our view of such unique contributions to science often disregards the person’s prior experience and the efforts of their lesser-known predecessors. Conventional wisdom also places great weight on insight in promoting breakthrough scientific achievements, as if ideas spontaneously pop into someone’s head – fully formed and functional.

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There may be some limited truth to this view. However, we believe that it largely misrepresents the real nature of scientific discovery, as well as that of creativity and innovation in many other realms of human endeavor.

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Setting aside such greats as Darwin and Einstein – whose monumental contributions are duly celebrated – we suggest that innovation is more a process of trial and error, where two steps forward may sometimes come with one step back, as well as one or more steps to the right or left. This evolutionary view of human innovation undermines the notion of creative genius and recognizes the cumulative nature of scientific progress.

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Consider one unheralded scientist: John Nicholson, a mathematical physicist working in the 1910s who postulated the existence of ‘proto-elements’ in outer space. By combining different numbers of weights of these proto-elements’ atoms, Nicholson could recover the weights of all the elements in the then-known periodic table. These successes are all the more noteworthy given the fact that Nicholson was wrong about the presence of proto-elements: they do not actually exist. Yet, amid his often fanciful theories and wild speculations, Nicholson also proposed a novel theory about the structure of atoms. Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize-winning father of modern atomic theory, jumped off from this interesting idea to conceive his now-famous model of the atom.

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What are we to make of this story? One might simply conclude that science is a collective and cumulative enterprise. That may be true, but there may be a deeper insight to be gleaned. We propose that science is constantly evolving, much as species of animals do. In biological systems, organisms may display new characteristics that result from random genetic mutations. In the same way, random, arbitrary or accidental mutations of ideas may help pave the way for advances in science. If mutations prove beneficial, then the animal or the scientific theory will continue to thrive and perhaps reproduce.

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Support for this evolutionary view of behavioral innovation comes from many domains. Consider one example of an influential innovation in US horseracing. The so-called ‘acey-deucy’ stirrup placement, in which the rider’s foot in his left stirrup is placed as much as 25 centimeters lower than the right, is believed to confer important speed advantages when turning on oval tracks. It was developed by a relatively unknown jockey named Jackie Westrope. Had Westrope conducted methodical investigations or examined extensive film records in a shrewd plan to outrun his rivals? Had he foreseen the speed advantage that would be conferred by riding acey-deucy? No. He suffered a leg injury, which left him unable to fully bend his left knee. His modification just happened to coincide with enhanced left-hand turning performance. This led to the rapid and widespread adoption of riding acey-deucy by many riders, a racing style which continues in today’s thoroughbred racing.

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Plenty of other stories show that fresh advances can arise from error, misadventure, and also pure serendipity – a happy accident. For example, in the early 1970s, two employees of the company 3M each had a problem: Spencer Silver had a product – a glue which was only slightly sticky – and no use for it, while his colleague Art Fry was trying to figure out how to affix temporary bookmarks in his hymn book without damaging its pages. The solution to both these problems was the invention of the brilliantly simple yet phenomenally successful Post-It note. Such examples give lie to the claim that ingenious, designing minds are responsible for human creativity and invention. Far more banal and mechanical forces may be at work; forces that are fundamentally connected to the laws of science.

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The notions of insight, creativity and genius are often invoked, but they remain vague and of doubtful scientific utility, especially when one considers the diverse and enduring contributions of individuals such as Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Curie, Pasteur and Edison. These notions merely label rather than explain the evolution of human innovations. We need another approach, and there is a promising candidate.

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The Law of Effect was advanced by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1898, some 40 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work on biological evolution, . This simple law holds that organisms tend to repeat successful behaviors and to refrain from performing unsuccessful ones. Just like Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection, the Law of Effect involves an entirely mechanical process of variation and selection, without any end objective in sight.

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Of course, the origin of human innovation demands much further study. In particular, the provenance of the raw material on which the Law of Effect operates is not as clearly known as that of the genetic mutations on which the Law of Natural Selection operates. The generation of novel ideas and behaviors may not be entirely random, but constrained by prior successes and failures – of the current individual (such as Bohr) or of predecessors (such as Nicholson).

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The time seems right for abandoning the naive notions of intelligent design and genius, and for scientifically exploring the true origins of creative behavior.

科学发现通常被普遍认为是源自天才人物，如博物学家查尔斯·达尔文和理论物理学家阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦。我们对这些人在科学上独特贡献的看法往往忽视了他们之前的经验以及前辈们的努力。传统观念也将洞察力放在促进突破性科学成就上，仿佛灵感会突然蹦入某人脑海中——完全形成并发挥作用。

这种观点可能有一定的真实性，但我们认为它在很大程度上误解了科学发现的真实本质，以及人类努力在创造力和创新方面的其他领域。

撇开像达尔文和爱因斯坦这样的伟人——他们的重要贡献得到了应有的赞誉——我们认为创新更像是一个试错过程，前进的两步有时可能伴随着后退的一步，以及向右或向左的一步或多步。这种人类创新的进化观点削弱了创造天才的观念，并承认科学进步的累积性质。

以一个不知名的科学家为例：约翰·尼科尔森，他是20世纪10年代的一位数学物理学家，提出了外层空间存在“原子元素”的假设。通过结合不同数量的这些“原子元素”原子的质量，尼科尔森可以恢复到当时已知周期表中所有元素的质量。这些成果更加引人注目的是，尼科尔森在“原子元素”的存在方面是错误的：它们实际上并不存在。然而，在他常常幻想性的理论和疯狂的推测中，尼科尔森还提出了有关原子结构的新颖理论。现代原子理论的诺贝尔奖得主尼尔斯·玻尔就是从这个有趣的想法出发构思出了他现在著名的原子模型。

对于这个故事我们应该怎么理解呢？一个简单的结论可能是科学是一个集体和累积的事业。这可能是正确的，但也可以从中得到更深入的见解。我们提出科学不断演变，就像动物物种一样。在生物系统中，生物体可能表现出由随机基因突变引起的新特征。同样地，随机、任意或偶然的观念突变可能有助于推动科学的进步。如果突变被证明是有益的，那么动物或科学理论将继续繁荣发展，甚至可以繁殖下去。

对于这种行为创新演化观点的支持来自许多领域。考虑美国赛马界一项有影响力的创新例子：所谓的“acey-deucy”马镫放置，在这种情况下骑手左脚的马镫位置比右脚低多达25厘米，据信可以在椭圆形赛道上转弯时获得重要的速度优势。它是由一个名叫杰基·韦斯特罗普的相对不知名的骑师开发的。韦斯特罗普是否进行了有条不紊的调查或查阅大量电影记录以便在竞争中取胜？他是否预见到骑乘“acey-deucy”会带来的速度优势？答案是否定的。他因腿部受伤而无法完全弯曲左膝，他的改动恰好与左转性能的提升相吻合。这导致许多骑手迅速广泛采用了骑乘“acey-deucy”这种赛马风格，这种风格在今天的纯种赛马中仍然存在。

还有许多其他故事表明，新的进步可以起源于错误、冒险和纯粹的偶然性——一次幸运的意外。例如，在20世纪70年代初，3M公司的两名员工都有问题：斯宾塞·西尔弗有一种粘性较低的胶水，而且没有用处；同时他的同事艾特·弗莱正试图找出如何在他的圣歌书上安放临时书签而不损坏纸张。解决这两个问题的方法就是发明了非常简单但极为成功的便利贴。这些例子揭示了那些声称天才设计思维负责人类创造力和发明的说法是错误的。可能更加平凡和机械的力量正在发挥作用，这些力量与科学定律有着根本的联系。

对洞察力、创造力和天才的概念经常被提及，但它们依然模糊而无法确定其科学效用，尤其是考虑到像柏拉图、列奥纳多·达·芬奇、莎士比亚、贝多芬、伽利略、牛顿、开普勒、居里夫人、巴斯德和爱迪生等人的各种持久贡献。这些概念只是标签而不是对人类创新演化的解释。我们需要另一种方法，而有一个有希望的候选者。

行为创新的演化观点由心理学家爱德华·索尔贝在1898年提出，也就是在查尔斯·达尔文发表他关于生物进化的开创性作品大约40年后。这个简单的法则认为有机体倾向于重复成功的行为，并避免执行失败的行为。就像达尔文的自然选择定律一样，效果定律涉及到纯粹的变异和选择过程，没有任何预设的目标。

当然，人类创新的起源需要进一步的研究。特别是，效果定律作用的原材料的产生并不像自然选择定律作用的基因突变那样清楚。产生新颖的思想和行为可能并非完全随机，而是受到之前的成功和失败的限制——无论是当前个体（如玻尔）还是前辈（如尼科尔森）的成功和失败。

现在是时候放弃关于智能设计和天才的幼稚观念，科学地探索创造行为的真正起源了。