Ideas and their origins

Stephen Wolfram, in considering his book Idea Makers, writes:

And I have to say I’ve found it a lot of fun to try to discover those intellectual missing links—that let one see just how someone went from here to there to manage to arrive at a particular idea.

The story itself is usually interesting—both historically and personally. But I’ve also found that knowing the story of how an idea came to be almost invariably lets me understand the idea itself more deeply.

and

Instead of heading straight for an abstract goal, what often happens is that the trajectories of people’s lives cause them to work on solving some practical problem. Needless to say, most people will just be satisfied if they solve the practical problem, and will go no further. But some will try to generalize it, and build up an abstract intellectual framework around what they have done. And that, in my observation, is where a great many important new ideas come from.

Paths from here

• On Writing to Understand: using your brain, not just your tools
• Dive Deeper: going deep to understand