The unoriginality of thought
@thedailyclick (3017)
January 15, 2010 2:08pm CST
Is it really possible to have an original thought?
Think about it, everything we know is somehow fed to us either through what we hear or see, we take things in from watching TV, reading books, listening to the radio, taught at school and the list goes on filling our heads with information. So when we think it is from this information we form our thoughts, they come from things we have been fed in one way or another. So are we therefore in a circle of subconciously regurgitating ideas that somehow we have taken in, unintentionally plagiarising what we have learned and not capable of a truly original thought?
What do you think?
1 person likes this
4 responses
@kiran8 (15348)
• Mangalore, India
21 Jan 10
Hi , That is very thought provoking. I agree that most of our thoughts come through our experiences and interactions. But there are bound to be some related to our early memories which may not be fed to us.It is more so now, when we have (dis)information flowing from all sides and our thoughts get somehow interwoven with the images we see and read.What an artificial world we live in 
.. All the best tdc and have a nice day
.. All the best tdc and have a nice day1 person likes this
@megamatt (14292)
• United States
15 Jan 10
Well I suppose its possible to have an original thought. The chances of it happening in this day and age are really slim, because there are countless people in human history and countless ideas. Its likely something that has already come up. In fact, ideas come up very often at certain points. I'll leave everyone with this quote to sum up my thoughts. Don't remember who said it, but it fits. "To steal from one person is plagiarism, to steal from many is research."
@thedailyclick (3017)
•
16 Jan 10
lol, I have used that quote many times myself when I used to write for a site and caught plagiarists who would copy paragraphs from many resources to make their review.
@loudcry (1043)
• India
18 Jan 10
There have got to be some original ideas. How about Newton thinking up gravity or Einstein relativity? Everything we know is fed into us through some external means, but using this information as raw material we can come up with somehting new. What do you think?
@trruk1 (1028)
• United States
18 Jan 10
Some of us do have original thoughts from time to time, but completely new ideas are rare. The original ideas we come up with are normally a slightly different perspective on concepts that are already being discussed by other people. Einstein and relativity is often cited as an example of truly original thinking. It was not. It was brilliant, but it is what is called a "classical" physics concept. Relativity was an elaboration of work that had been done earlier but was not clearly understood. If you want to look at truly original thinking, look at quantum physics. If it seems clear and straightforward to you, you do not understand it. Quantum physics cannot be dealt with or understood in the same we comprehend daily events. It is different.
