A Lot of Ideas

There is an interesting article in Time Magazine about originating ideas. After examining great innovators and creators, one element that seemed to spring up is that many of them had TONS of ideas that were failures. The difference for the great ones is that they tested their ideas, developed them, and were willing to part with them if they later on figured out they didn't make sense.

The best example they used was Charles Darwin, who started working on a theory of hypothetical life forms called monads, some type of spontaneous life form that sprang from inanimate matter. He theorized that when the monads died, all the species that evolved from them died at the same time, explaining why certain species did not continue to develop (later to be known as becoming extinct). In hindsight, it seems like a pretty silly self-contained theory or idea. But it's obvious that elements of this idea later developed into the theory of evolution.

I like stories like this.