IN CONCLUSION 



Man the Creator 



Like beavers and blue jays, human beings can put together stones and 

 sticks and other odds and ends in their constructions. But human beings are 

 truly creative, for they are able not only to put together what they can grasp 

 with their hands, but also, through their thinking and imagination, to 

 abstract, or draw out, ideas from their experiences and then recombine them 

 into new ideas of things that never existed before. This we can see in the 

 imaginary creations of old mythologies — gorgons, flying horses, magic 

 carpets, evil spirits — and in the creations of artists. 



Our practical work and our scientific thinking are also creative. Every- 

 body recognizes that the remarkable progress of modern times in the solving 

 of practical problems is connected with the growth of scientific knowledge. 

 But it is not due to knowledge alone. The results come from combining 

 people's purposes with the exact knowledge and big ideas of the scientists. 

 The inventor, or the "creator" of something new, does not make something 

 out of nothing. He combines elements of past experiences with ideas of a 

 need to be met. Edison is said to have admitted that there was nothing in 

 his electric lamp that had not existed before — glass bottles with air removed, 

 copper wires, charred fibers from a plant, and so on. It was the combina- 

 tion that was new, and revolutionary. 



The great advances in modern times have resulted in large part from 

 inventing new devices and methods for carrying on the day's work or new 

 gadgets for our amusement. But perhaps of greater moment has been the 

 distribution of new understandings about the nature of the world, scientific 

 ways of thinking, scientific ways of solving problems. A common under- 

 standing of what makes things happen has made it easier to introduce new 

 methods of farming, for example, new methods of selecting, preserving and 

 preparing food or new ways of preventing sickness. But it has also enabled 

 more and more people to use scientific ways of solving their practical prob- 

 lems both at home and in industry, and it has greatly accelerated the process 

 of invention. It has made it easier for people to find out what is going on in 

 other parts of the world or what ideas and methods are being used else- 

 where; and it has made it easier for people to adjust themselves to new con- 

 ditions and new ideas. 



In the very process of adjusting ourselves to new discoveries, new inter- 

 pretations, new practices, we are breaking down old habits, old prejudices, 

 old customs; and we are recombining elements of our own experience with 



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