I keep hearing from Sam Harris fans that neuroscience proves that humans don’t have free will. They want me to mull over their case and concede their correctness. Yet my opting — in contrast to the alternatives available — to take the initiative to contemplate their case and weigh the evidence for it is something that depends on my having the capacity to will myself freely to do all that.
Tuesday, August 04, 2026
Willingly
Stuart K. Hayashi
I keep hearing from Sam Harris fans that neuroscience proves that humans don’t have free will. They want me to mull over their case and concede their correctness. Yet my opting — in contrast to the alternatives available — to take the initiative to contemplate their case and weigh the evidence for it is something that depends on my having the capacity to will myself freely to do all that.
I keep hearing from Sam Harris fans that neuroscience proves that humans don’t have free will. They want me to mull over their case and concede their correctness. Yet my opting — in contrast to the alternatives available — to take the initiative to contemplate their case and weigh the evidence for it is something that depends on my having the capacity to will myself freely to do all that.
Monday, June 29, 2026
Stop Saying There’s No Such Thing As Originality
Stuart K. Hayashi
They Say That Instead of There Being Originality, There Is Only the “Re-Mixing” of Long-Established Ancient Ideas
You might notice that if no one in history ever conceived of anything that, up to that time, had been unprecedented, there would be no changes in customs or the degree of sophistication in technology. To that consideration, the originality-deniers offer a specious reply. They say that rather than anyone ever having been original, such changes occur through what is, at best, “re-mixing.” According to this argument, everything we call “original” is actually no more than a mixture of already-established ancient ideas. When such a mixture becomes particularly popular or useful and changes the culture, it is on account of this “re-mix” being both fortuitous and, ultimately, serendipitous. In his book Steal like an Artist, cultural commentator Austin Kleon makes what he calls a vital distinction. When a re-mix is trite and unimpressive, it is “bad theft.” By contrast, Kleon avows, when a re-mix provides a net gain in economic value, that is “good theft.”
A disciple of Austin Kleon’s Steal-Like-an-Artist interpretation is social-media-influencer and businesswoman Simrand Anand. On the social medium Threads, Ms. Anand does insist that developments that make truly important impacts in life actually are “not original. It’s just synthesis. That’s the magic. Synthesis is the real game now.” Fittingly enough, she is yet another TEDx Talks speaker. And she adds, “No one starts from scratch. Everyone is remixing.” That part is less synthesis or re-mix than just regular repetition of others.
It is true that when something truly original makes a grand impact on a culture, that innovation still possessed attributes that were traditional and established. Aristotle pointed this out in his work Poetics. The philosopher was mostly discussing literary style, but his evaluation is applicable to almost any topic that anyone finds interesting. When you find anything to be interesting, notes Aristotle, it has hit the sweet spot between familiarity and unfamiliarity. It was from Teller, the silent half of the magician duo Penn and Teller, that I learned of Aristotle saying this. The logic of Aristotle in this is as follows. If something is completely alien and unfamiliar to me, then it will not interest me. As far as I am concerned, it has nothing to do with me. By contrast, if something is completely familiar to me, it will not interest me either. The reason is that I already know everything there is to know about it, and hence no further investigation is needed. Distinct from both those ends of the spectrum, when something is fascinating and arouses curiosity and desire, it is on account of how it does pertain to you — thereby showing immediate benefits — while its unknown aspects invite further probing and exploration on your part.
In the twentieth century, the industrial designer Raymond Loewy coined an acronym for this balance. He said that when an invention greatly satisfies marketplace demand as it hits the market, it is MAYA — Most Advanced (the unfamiliar side) Yet Acceptable (the familiar side). The familiar “Yet Acceptable” side means that it addresses issues of which you know, and that it is familiar enough to you that you can learn how to use or enjoy it. The unfamiliar “Most Advanced” side is the area of enticement — it promises either to solve problems that previously have not been solved, or to solve them in such a manner more adequately than have the solutions heretofore presented.
As I am in agreement with the originality-deniers that innovations indeed possess specific qualities that are old, established, and even unoriginal, some readers might be under the misapprehension that my conclusions and the originality-deniers’ are not so incompatible after all. The reader might misapprehend that this is only a semantic difference — that what the originality-deniers and I are proposing is the same, only with my using the term originality and the originality-deniers preferring re-mix. The truth is no, there is a difference in emphasis, and the difference is so vast that the conclusions are discrete from one another. We are not in agreement.
The originality-deniers’ substitution of originality with re-mix is about placing all the emphasis on the already-existing elements — that which the allegedly-pseudo-original “artist” has “stolen” — so that the originality-deniers may, as a corolloary, downplay the aspects that are novel and unprecedented. In turn, it denigrates the sophistication of mental effort taken by the originator. There are cases where the degree of unprecedentedness is so great that the term genius really applies — genius is another term that originality-deniers often dismiss and disparage as a Great-Man-Theory myth promoted by elitists.
Original Ideas Are Real and More Sophisticated Than Just “Re-Mixes” of Long-Established Ancient Ideas
There are indeed some very enjoyable music re-mixes. I am impressed by this song mash-up of Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” with Imagine Dragons’s “Believer.” But in many instances where a new song becomes a hit, it’s the case that even if the song uses chord progressions or some snippets of notes that have been used before, there is enough novelty in the product for it to warrant being acknowledged as a new song altogether. The term “originality” is good and proper. The reason is that when we recognize some innovation that has elements both familiar and novel, it is that area of novelty that produces a net gain in value in our lives and motivates and enables future innovations that provide still further net gains. That novelty in the first innovation is the origin of further routes of greater change. That is a net gain in value that is greater than a mere sum of the parts that are “mixed” and “re-mixed” together.
The model of natural selection by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in evolutionary theory was distinct from — and far beyond — a mere re-mix of the speculations by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Anaximander, Rev. T. Robert Malthus, and all the other predecessors who proposed the general idea of biological evolution. In providing a model and principle that vindicated itself again and again in experiments for over a century, the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model did what previous discourses in the general idea of evolutionary theory did not. The Wright brothers’ flyer was not a mere “re-mix” of the ideas of predecessors such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Gustave Whitehead, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Octave Chanute, and Otto Lilienthal. The Wright brothers achieved something new — something those predecessors had not.
Insofar as a brilliantly productive application of an older idea to a new context is a “re-mix,” it is the case that in pretending a distinction between this “re-mix” and an original idea — saying “re-mixes” are real whereas original ideas are not — the originality-deniers betray an absence of understanding of ideas as such.
Consider Henry Ford’s application of an older idea of Eli Whitney’s. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, cotton-gin inventor Eli Whitney was mass-producing guns. For the process of mass production, Eli Whitney implemented the practice of using standardized interchangeable parts. Each gun consisted of several separate parts that were assembled together, and each type of part was uniform and standardized. On account of this practice, any customer familiar with one of Eli Whitney’s guns knew that if he purchased yet another unit of this model of gun, it would be of the same quality and operate in the same manner. Many decades later when Henry Ford was mass-producing his Model T’s on the assembly line, he implemented the same practice of having standardized interchangeable parts. This was how Ford lowered his costs and, with them, the price per unit sold.
It is very tempting for originality-deniers to say that Ford’s application of Eli Whitney’s technique was a fortuitous “re-mix” of older ideas — less-organized car manufacturers’ plus Eli Whitney’s gun production — rather than an original idea. But note that Henry Ford took the initiative to apply this method to producing a sort of product that Whitney did not. In so doing, Ford did something momentous that even a mind as grand as Eli Whitney’s didn’t. A highly rational and productive application of an older idea to a new and heretofore untried context isn’t a mere “re-mix” of the older ideas; it is an original idea in its own right.
In the latter part of this essay I provide a series of case studies of original thinking and action in science, invention, and even art. These case studies should make clear how innovation is not to be degraded as merely a fortuitous “re-mix” of old ideas; it is an act of psychological independence and originality in thought.
Does an Inability of Historians to Agree on Identifying the “First True Model” of a Well-Established Theory or Invention Prove There Is No Originality?
Here can also address the fallacy of Argument No. 2 — that if Party Y is at first hailed as original in its intellectual achievement, only for historians to discover later that Party X chronologically preceded Party Y in exploring the same general idea, that necessarily negates and strips Party Y of all credit for its own originality. Again, originality is not at the level of the grossest and most broadly defined general idea but instead within the most significant and decisive specifics.
In scientific discovery, technological product inventions, and even artistic movements, it happens that progress is incremental.
The originality-deniers can scoff that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace do not deserve their accolades for originality, as they had been preceded by many other scientists in exploring the general idea that one clade of organism can emerge from another, such as that humans and other backboned land-dwelling creatures can evolve from lobe-finned fishes. Charles Darwin’s own paternal grandfather, the innovative industrialist-physician-philosopher-poet Erasmus Darwin, contemplated this idea decades prior to the births of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander discussed an idea like this.
Likewise, these same originality-deniers can also scoff at praise for the Wright brothers for inventing controlled and powered flight in heavier-than-air machines — airplanes. The deniers can scoff as the Wright brothers were preceded by Gustave Whitehead and Leonardo Da Vinci in proposing that a heavier-than-air flying machine could be steered in flight through the warping of its wings.
Here we can acknowledge how some very significant specifics within the broader idea can make such an important difference. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were indeed original in identifying the natural-selection model as the specific mechanism through which evolution occurs. According to this model, there would be natural physiological variation among members of the same species within a particular environment. The members of that species that possessed the physiological attributes did not suit them to that environment would die off prior to being able to procreate. That would prevent them from transmitting those unfitting attributes to future generations. Conversely, the members of that species that did possess physiological attributes that well-fit them into the environment would survive long enough to procreate. In turn, among their spawn would be members of the species likewise possessing the same attributes that made them well-adapted.
In the case of an environment where water was shallow and in which it was difficult to access oxygen through such bacteria-filled water, among the best-adapted fishes would be ones that could breathe air outside of water and ones in which the paired fins would be strong enough to use in crawling around in the shallows. Over millions of years, in that environment a strain of land-walking fishes could emerge.
This specific and valid natural-selection model was something not proposed by Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Russel Wallace’s predecessors who similarly discussed the general idea of biological evolutionary change. This specific natural-selection model was not proposed by Erasmus Darwin or Anaximander. Nor was it even proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who did not believe that a batch of organisms of the same species could already vary, as a default, in physiological attributes, with the ones possessing the most-adaptable natural attributes simply surviving and procreating and transmitting the same attributes over generations. That Lamarck argued that evolutionary change happened through an organism acquiring a new physiological trait over its life experiences and then transmitting that newly-acquired trait to future generations, makes the decisive specifics of Lamarck’s theory very distinct from the decisive specifics of the newer theory of Darwin and Wallace.
The earliest prediction from the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model to be empirically confirmed was the existence of a hawkmoth with a very long proboscis — one thirty centimeters long. In 1862 Darwin had observed an orchid with a nectar tube of that length. Deductively applying the natural-selection model, Darwin and Wallace figured that this orchid had a have a pollinator possessing a proboscis of the same length. In 1903, that hawkmoth was discovered. Since 2021 that moth’s scientific name has even been Xanthopan praedicta — the latter name (the species name) meaning “the predicted one.”
And in the specific contents of the theory that are most decisive, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were truly original.
The same applies to the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers were not the first party to propose that in the powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine, steering of it could be achieved through the warping of its wings. But the Wright brothers were indeed original in incorporating, into this wing-warping, a more-specific method of counteracting the problem of “adverse yaw.” Adverse yaw is the tendency of a heavier-than-air flying machine’s nose to point in the direction opposite to the direction in which the flying machine is to turn. To counterbalance this frustration and maintain proper steering, the Wright brothers added a rudder to the process of the wing-warping steering. This was a decisive specific added effectively by the Wright brothers but not by Gustave Whitehead or Leonardo Da Vinci. In this they were truly original.
Note that acknowledging the originality of the specific-but-decisive detail of the natural-selection model does not diminish the stature of the insights of Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Anaximander, and other predecessors that have continued to hold up; these predecessors each have been validly original in their own right. Ditto goes for the Wright brothers’ predecessors — Leonardo Da Vinci and Gavin were each original in their own way.
This principle applies throughout all of the case studies I present later in this essay. Throughout this work I shall go over many instances where an innovator who was genuinely original in specific-but-decisive details was preceded by other thinkers in terms of exploring the general idea within which the specific-but-decisive details apply. Originality-deniers do cite the existence of these predecessors as proof that there is no originality, and insinuate that the fact of the alleged latecomer to the general idea receiving accolades for originality — such as Charles Darwin being a relative latecomer to the general idea of evolutionary theory — means that these alleged latecomers have wrongfully stolen credit for the general idea from their predecessors. In the case studies that shall follow, I shall show that these alleged latecomers do, as Charles Darwin does, deserve credit for originality. And it will follow that as these alleged latecomers do deserve their acclaim for originality, acknowledging justness of these deserts does not negate the dignity and stature of those thinkers who preceded them in exploring the general idea.
Thus we find that in saying that originality is found in details that are specific and decisive, I have explained what I have meant by specific; now I should elaborate further on the decisive. The decisiveness shows that it is not merely the specific detail presented by the innovative party that is new, but that the specific detail is able to go farther in achieving important effects not achieved by the other parties that preceded the innovator in presenting the general idea. In demonstrating to scientists the veracity of evolutionary theory, the Darwin-Wallace model of natural selection was able to do what Lamarckian model and other predecessors in the general idea of evolutionary theory were not able to do.
Deductive applications of the Darwin-Wallace model of natural selection produced predictions that were later empirically confirmed, whereas deductive applications of Lamarck’s model of acquired-traits evolution did not. Had Lamarck’s acquired-traits model been accurate, then it would follow that if the tails of adult mice were severed and then those adults mice were allowed to breed, then that should have a commensurate effect on the tails of their offspring. The offspring should have no tails or at least, upon their reaching adulthood, their tails should be shorter than were the tails of their parents’ prior to the parents losing the tails. The scientist August Weismann put this to the test. Once the offspring had reached adulthood, their tails were always the same length that their parents’ had been prior to the parents’ tails being mutilated.
By contrast, predictions logically deduced from the Darwin-Wallace model of natural selection have a long and impeccable record of later being empirically confirmed. In 1862, Charles Darwin observed a species of orchid with a nectar tube that was thirty centimeters in length. According to the highly-original specification of the Darwin-Wallace model, the organisms that thrive and regularly reproduce are those well-adapted- to their environment — fit into it, making them the fittest. From that, Darwin logically deduced that there should be a pollinator species in the vicinity with a proboscis of commensurate length — the same thirty centimeters. In the year 1903, that species of hawkmoth was discovered. It possessed the exact same physical attribute that the Darwin-Wallace natural selection model predicted, thereby confirming the consistent principle that is the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model. That species is even now named Xanothan praedicta — the latter word meaning “the predicted one.”
You can learn of entire litanies of instances here and here of the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model producing scientific predictions that have been consistently verified later. The Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model is further original in that it originated something big that the Lamarckian acquired-traits model has not: this long record — continuing to this day — of being practically applied and vindicated empirically. Hence, the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model is original both (1) in its specifics differing from previous models in the general idea and (2) in those specifics being decisive in producing practical results the previous models have not.
We also can think of how Charles Darwin applied an idea of Rev. T. Robert Malthus when he and Alfred Russel Wallace formulated their specific natural-selection model within the wider field of evolutionary theory. Rev. T. Robert Malthus was far from being the first economist but he was the first person upon whom a university bestowed the title of “professor of economics.” T. Robert Malthus argued that if the population of human beings in the West grows at a rate faster than does the food supply, it will create environmental pressures on humans. Then, continued Rev. Malthus, this economic pressure will influence which people live long enough to have children and raise them —and which people will die before being able to do so. Charles Darwin adapted this idea to a new context. Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace realized that in all environments, there are environmental pressures on all species, and that such environmental pressures will influence which members of a species survive and procreate and which members of that same species do not. The originality-deniers in Silicon Valley would say approvingly that the concern about environmental pressures was the idea that Charles Darwin and Russel Wallace cleverly “stole” from Rev. Malthus. That it is individual physiological variations within members of the same species in this environment, though, that decides which ones are best-adapted to these environmental pressures, is one decisive part of the model that does not come from Rev. Malthus. It is original to Darwin and Wallace.
The application of the concern about environmental pressures to all species at all times, was initiative taken by Darwin and Wallace and not by Rev. Malthus. And, indeed, the environmental pressures in deciding which members of the species successfully transmit their heritable traits across generations — and which do not — applies more consistently and accurately in the wild that Darwin and Wallace described than in the context of Rev. Malthus’s ultimately-failed predictions of an impending overpopulation-doomsday in the West. Again, when an older idea like Rev. Malthus’s is applied to a new context, with the application’s consequences being decisive, impactful, and enduring, that application is not a mere “re-mix” of Rev. Malthus’s older ideas; it is itself a new idea.
A decisiveness similar to the Darwin-Wallace model’s is present in the Wright brothers’ originality. It may be true that Leonardo Da Vinci and Gustave Whitehead preceded Orville and Wilbur in proposing that flying machine could be steered through the warping of its wings. But the practicality of the Wright brothers adding a rudder to reduce adverse yaw was decisive. It was a major reason that the Wright brothers produced an actual machine that could be steered properly in powered flight whereas Leonardo Da Vinci and Gustave Whitehead did not.
In the history of a particular category of product, such as an automobile, coming to possess all the features with which we associate it today — such as air-conditioning and windshield-wipers and even roofs — such features have been added over the years in many increments. For people who presume that “originality” can only occur if the entire general idea or premise behind something is wholly new and unfamiliar, the fact of incremental changes is a source of confusion to them. The occurrence of these changes in increments misleads them into propounding that that there is no originality after all.
For example, historians can argue over which particular model or unit was “the first true automobile.” And as the different models and units were usually made by different parties, these historians can likewise argue over which of these parties was truly original in inventing the automobile. Such disagreements happen on account of different historians and other experts coming with different criteria on the specifics of what makes a “true automobile.” As many proposed candidates for “first true automobile” lack in the features that some experts consider necessary to meet the criteria for “first true automobile,” there is contention over which is the true “first.”
If what defines an automobile is simply that it is a self-powered wheeled cart — one that does not need to be pulled by an animal, such as a horse — then one possible candidate for “first automobile” might be the giant steam-powered cart that Amédée Bollée introduced to France in the year 1873. This cart was an omnibus that Bollée called L’Obéissante (the Obedient One) and it could carry up to twelve passengers at a time.
By contrast, if we define an automobile as something possessing an internal combustion engine powered directly by gasoline, then we might say a better candidate for “first” was the Benz Patent Motorwagen that Carl Benz introduced in Germany in 1885. This machine had no throttle but it did have three wheels — two in the back to move the machine forward and one in the front that determined the direction of movement as it turned with the steering wheel. In this respect, the Benz Patent Motorwagen could be thought of as a large tricycle.
But if we define a true modern automobile as necessarily possessing four wheels instead of three, that would rule out the Benz Patent Motorwagen. We might instead consider the Mercedes 35HP that in 1901 came from the company Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG). This company was founded by Gottlieb Daimler. The engineers who worked most directly on the Mercedes 35HP were Gottlieb Daimler’s business partner Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb’s oldest son Paul Daimler. It was commissioned by the motor-wagon distributor Emil Jellinek; his daughter was named Mercedes Jellinek, and that is how this machine model got its name. This was not the internal-combustion-engine-possessing carriage to have four wheels, but it did have features that make it resemble our modern cars more closely than did prior models. Such older horseless carriages were boxy and tall to match the shapes of the horsedrawn carriages more familiar to people of that time. In contrast, the Mercedes 35HP was elongated and its shape set it closer to the ground, matching the shape that we now more closely associate with compact automobiles. Also more like a modern car, the Mercedes 35HP had a long hood to protect the passenger compartment.
Originality-deniers usually do know of this sequence of incremental changes in the history of automobiles. And because of their holding onto many false premises, these originality-deniers cite these incremental changes as proof of their most misbegotten conclusion. The first false premise is that for a model or unit of a device to be called “the first automobile,” it must possess all of the features now considered standard in our automobiles, such as windshield wipers and a self-starter engine. The second false premise is the one we’ve already discussed — that something is original only if the entire vague and gross general idea behind it is wholly unprecedented. And then the originality-deniers point to the fact that, for automakers to have incorporated all the features that are considered standard for an automobile today, there had to be an entire series of incremental innovations with each increment being introduced in a new model.
And as the originality-deniers are stuck on the presumption that there is no “invention of the automobile” unless all the modern standard features emerged simultaneously, they proclaim that no one party invented the automobile. And as they presume that “invention” can only occur if all the standard features of the present came to exist at the same time in the same model, they propound that it likewise follows that every technological change is a social collective effort and no one party invented the automobile or anything else. Further, as these originality-deniers presume from the outset that “invention” and “originality” of a work can occur only if all the standard features with which we associate it today were introduced simultaneously as the first model was unveiled to the public, the originality-deniers cite this historical progression of incremental improvements — which led to the culmination of standard features we have today — as proof that there is no originality and no one truly invents anything.
The quotaton from Henry Miller is a doozy.
We can expect the originality-deniers to say that these incremental improvements are not true originality or a real invention but instead a form of what they have labeled “re-mixes” or even, at best, “good stealing.” But to apply to these incremental improvements a label as bland as “re-mixes” or one as petulantly condescending as “good stealing” is to downplay the extent of the ultimately dramatic net gain in value that they produce.
We must correct the falsehoods of the originality-deniers. Originality is within specific-but-crucial details, and that is what these incremental changes happen to be. The consideration that automakers arrived at the culmination of all of today’s standard features through increments, then, does not discredit the concept of originality. As with originality itself, “invention” happens in the specific-but-decisive details. Hence, originality and invention are within the incremental improvements themselves. And as these incremental improvements were introduced by separate individual parties, originality and invention and innovation happen at the level of the individual.
For example, we can note that even if the Mercedes 35HP was not the first internal-combustion-engine-driven carriage, Wilhelm Maybach and the Daimlers still demonstrated originality and inventiveness within it. Maybach and the Daimlers were original and inventive in giving it the shape that it had and in giving it a hood that protected the passenger compartment.
We can quibble about the details in how we define the first true model of an automobile or any other invention that has historically been improved in incremental steps. Yet it holds true that there was a time in history when there were no automobiles, and now we do have automobiles. Even if we quibble over which exact model fits our exact definition of “the first true automobile,” the fact remains that if once were no automobiles and now there are, there necessarily was a first. Acknowledgment of the fact of human creative originality does not require being able to pinpoint, at some noumenal level, some case example that perfectly fits our exact definition of the first true instance of that configuration or convention being established.
The idea of originality is not the myth or falsehood. I will provide case studies of originality in thought throughout history.
James Clerk Maxwell and the Invisible Spectrum of Electromagnetic Waves
We know from Aristotle that descriptions of the phenomena of magnetism go back at least as far as ancient Greece with the culture’s earliest-known philosopher and scientist, Thales. During the Song dynasty, Chinese sailors invented the compass for navigation. Benjamin Franklin explained the phenomenon of electricity. Michael Faraday, André-Marie Ampère, and Carl Gauss each wrote mathematic formulae to describe electromagnetic phenomena that they observed. But none of these people knew the exact mechanism that caused these phenomena.
James Clerk Maxwell relied on the observations of all these predecessors. The originality is in where he went farther than they did. He proposed that electricity and magnetism were ultimately the same, and, going farther still, he said that light is ultimately the same as well. Not even such scientists as Faraday, Ampère, and Gauss identified this connection between light and electromagnetism. And Maxwell said that all of these phenomena are explained by a spectrum of waves that, with the exception of light, are invisible. With the exception of light, these electromagnetic radiation waves cannot be observed directly by the senses. However, many effects of these waves can be observed directly by the senses, as exemplified by the observations of Thales and Song-dynasty Chinese sailors.
Heinrich Hertz’s experiments used sensory data to prove, empirically, the existence of the phenomenon that Maxwell deduced. Radios, mobile phones, and wireless internet connection operate according to these principles. Thales and Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday observed electromagnetic phenomena, but Maxwell made truly original additions to understanding that even Thales, Benjamin Franklin, and Michael Faraday did not anticipate.
Marie Curie and Radioactivity
Likewise, Marie Curie’s description of radioactivity was original. Since ancient times, human beings have handled hazardously radioactive materials. Photography pioneer Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor — cousin to photography (specifically, heliography) inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce — observed radioactivity in one respect. In 1857 he noticed that even when he was working in the dark, photographic emulsions could be exposed by uranium salts. But he did not go farther than that. In 1895, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium emitted waves. But he did not extrapolate from that an entire scientific principle.
The explanation of the principles of radioactivity was original to Marie Curie. What was new was her explanation that, rather than the observed rays being a chemical reaction, they were an atomic property inherent to particular elements such as uranium. With her husband Pierre, she isolated particular highly radioactive elements and proved this.
Karl Landsteiner and Blood Type
And then there is blood type. Throughout the Renaissance, doctors attempted blood transfusions. They were repeatedly met with failure as the patients died. This was a cause of consternation, as, theoretically, the blood transfusions should have worked. In 1900, Karl Landsteiner explained that there are different particular blood types, and that, if you have one blood type, whether you survive the transfusion depends on the blood type of the blood you receive. The successful transfusions that followed are a testament to the efficacy of Landsteiner’s idea, an idea that was truly original.
Antoine Lavoisier Proving the Oxygen Theory of Combustion
Antoine Lavoisier’s explanation that the addition of oxygen is required for combustion to occur is an explanation that followed a long series of missteps in science. In ancient Greece, Empedocles said that fire was one of four elements that could not be reduced to simpler form. Aristotle said the same, except Aristotle added a fifth element he called “ether.” This was the dominant model among alchemists until Robert Boyle formalized chemistry as a hard science involving a strict and consistent methodology. In the 1600s, the German alchemist Johann Joachim Becher started what would, for a century, become the leading scientific authority’s leading theory in how objects catch fire: phlogiston theory. The phlogiston refers to the Greek root phlox, which means “flame.” Becher’s phlogiston theory was that all objects have an innate “fieriness” in them that is stored but dormant. When the object catches fire, said Becher, it mean the innate fieriness was no longer dormant, being activated and releasing material. According to Becher, the moment of combustion was the exact moment that the object lost mass.
In the 1700s, Joseph Priestley and Carl Scheele each independently discovered the element oxygen by isolating it from all other elements. In the 1600s, the English alchemist John Mayow discovered that for an object to start to combust, something from the air must be added to it. But he did not know which chemical or chemicals it was; as a placeholder he used the term nitro-aerial spirit. Then in the 1700s, Antoine Lavoisier put it all together: at the moment that an object began to combust, another greater-than-zero quantity of mass had been added, contradicting phlogiston theory. And that additional mass was a specific element that he was able to identify by isolating: oxygen. It was even Lavoisier — not Joseph Priestley or Carl Scheele — who gave this element the name of oxygen.
Other scientists had preceded Lavoisier in introducing parts of the theory. Priestley and Scheele each discovered the element oxygen in particular through isolating it, but did not notice that the introduction of oxygen was needed for combustion. Conversely, John Mayow did know that a sort of particle from the air needed to be added to an object for it to combust, but Mayow did not know which chemical it was, and he could not prove which chemical in particular it was as he did not isolate the oxygen. When Lavoisier put it all together, the result was something greater than the sum of its parts: for there to be an explanation that would advance scientific understanding, all of this theory’s elements — pun intended — had to be in place. It is a grotesque insult to everyone’s intelligence to give this mental integration of Lavoisier’s a label as petty as “good theft”; in intellectual achievement and consequence it is beyond a merely fortuitous “re-mix” of older established ideas. In putting the important pieces together in the exact places where they properly fit, Antoine Lavoisier was truly original.
On Thu., Nov. 5, 2026, I added the examples of commentators denying the reality of originality. On Monday, November 9, 2026, I added the explanation of the how the decisiveness in the specific-but-decisive originality of Charles Darwin and the Wright brothers refers to their originality achieving practical results not achieved by contemporaries and predecessors within the general idea of their area of study, contemporaries and predecessors with whom Darwin and the Wright brothers are compared unfavorably by the originality-deniers.
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Drawing by Stuart K. Hayashi from Nov. 4, 2023 to Oct. 22, 2025 |
Many people who think of themselves commonsensical initially doubt me when I mention this problem. Nonetheless, the situation is this. It is now very fashionable for the intelligentsia to deny that originality in thought, art, and invention is important or even possible. In intellectual essays, TEDx Talks presentations, and philosophic YouTube videos they proclaim that every idea that has been hailed for “originality” is actually ultimately unoriginal — that there is actually no such thing as originality. In effect, the conclusion is that no one in history has every had a truly original idea.
Yes, various philosophic YouTube videos smugly proclaim, “Buddy, nothing is original, or at least not quote-unquote ‘original’ like you think it is.”
The YouTube vlogger Thoughty2 says, “The inception of a one-hundred-percent unique idea is not possible.” For that reason, he titles his YouTube video, “In Your Lifetime You'll Never Think of an Original Idea.”
Likewise, marketing expert Tom Sargent pronounces, “Once you accept ‘originality’ is basically a well-dressed lie, you can stop agonizing over ‘being unique.’ ”
Branding expert Rachel Lee adds, “There is no such thing as originality in terms of ideas, concepts, styles. There’s nothing you can create that hasn’t been created in some similar way, shape, or form.”
“Was there a point in history,” says “Erografos,” “where humans had original ideas? My personal opinion is ‘no.’”
The vlogger “Propeller Duck” begins his own video, “The concept of a completely original idea in the modern age is an often-sought-after concept despite the fact that it’s utterly impossible and, frankly, has been since the birth of modern civilization and art itself.”
Yes, various philosophic YouTube videos smugly proclaim, “Buddy, nothing is original, or at least not quote-unquote ‘original’ like you think it is.”
The YouTube vlogger Thoughty2 says, “The inception of a one-hundred-percent unique idea is not possible.” For that reason, he titles his YouTube video, “In Your Lifetime You'll Never Think of an Original Idea.”
You can see further YouTube videos denying originality-as-such over here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. There are even TEDx Talks promulgating as much, as you can see here, here here, and here.
People who utter lines like that always do so in a self-congratulatory manner, as if they are giving an insight of the utmost philosophic profundity. It makes sense for these people to say nothing is original when they themselves all sound alike. And the pretentiousness is sometimes accompanied with lines like, We humans want to believe we are so ingenious that we can come up with great ideas out of nowhere, but that is sheer hubris. Hence, goes the assertion, by confessing that there is no true originality we as a species are finally learning some much-needed humility. The philosophic YouTube video essayist Thomas Rebour airs those sentiments overtly in the conclusion of his own work on the topic.
One of the few YouTube video essayists to say anything sane on this topic has been the illustratrix “LavenderTowne.” An apologist for AI image-generators — sic; image regurgitators told her, “The fact remains that originality doesn’t exist. It’s something every type of artist knows and has known for a century.”
To that, LavenderTowne quips, “Dude, I missed that part in history class where 1920s flappers discovered that originality doesn’t exist.”
LavenderTowne tragically being the outlier, there are several different motivations for the aforementioend army of commentators to deny the existence of originality. Some of the deniers are marketing executives and Silicon Valley company people who bristle at frequent accusations that their work lifts heavily from that of other entrepreneurs and inventors to whom they deprive proper credit. Rather than refute such accusations, these characters reply that everything supposedly original is heavily derivative and imitative anyway, and therefore the parties from whom they allegedly stole are no better than they are. To the degree that “originality” is interpreted as one big measure of excellence, these private-sector people concede that they have not reached it, but then add that excellence in this particular form is not possible to anyone else either. They would have it that on this measure, everyone finally learn to be resigned to such mediocrity and to such a cynical attitude.
I have heard some of these people say that they spent years in anxiety over how they could be original, and how they finally felt free to pursue their work only after they told themselves that originality is not possible to anyone anyway and therefore they need not worry about it. It is indeed sad if someone paralyzes herself in her art on account of feeling inadequate in this department. And it is true that originality is not the only important criterion of judging quality — it might not even be the most important. But this fear does not justify this completely illogical and ultimately harmful refusal to accept the existence and long-term necessity of original thinking.
Other deniers of originality are more consciously motivated by ideology — what they insist is of greater civic merit, what with their being political-economic social collectivists. They notice that throughout the early twentieth century, the recognition of originality to particular achievements — such as those of Charles Darwin and the Wright brothers — has contributed to those achievers being celebrated as rather exceptional individuals. The more that recognition of their originality causes them to be revered as exceptional, the more that contributes to what its detractors deride as “the Great Man Theory of History.” According to its opponents, this “Great Man Theory of History” posits that the course of history — the big changes in society and culture — are driven mostly by initiative in the action of particular exceptional individuals. For those who revile this idea, there is even a more-specific form of it for those in the intellectual fields — what Wikipedia calls “the Heroic Theory of Invention and Scientific Development,” which is where intellectual originals such as Darwin and the Wright brothers would be placed.
These political-economic collectivists snarl that celebration of exceptional individuals is unfair. They say that just as there is an unfairly unequal distribution of wealth in society, there is likewise an unfairly unequal distribution of appreciation in terms of who is admired for progress in society. For them, progress is the result of the societal collective — of the actions of everyone in general in society and no one in particular. In this interpretation, the lavishing of praise upon Darwin and the Wright brothers is an action that gives short shrift to everyone else, depriving everyone else of proper credit. For these political-economic collectivists, that indictment is merely an extension of their broader belief that a larger share of money going to a small number capitalists deprives everyone else in the community of the economic value that is their due. (I refute that accusation here.)
For the political-economic collectivists, social justice requires that such overrated historical figures be knocked down a peg or two. One way to dress them down properly is to discredit any notion that these individuals were all that original. And the best and most egalitarian route of going about this is to explain that true originality is not possible to anyone anyhow. In this model of thought, to revere originality is to revere an illusion — it is a form of false consciousness, similar to how capitalists have brainwashed rank-and-file employees into believing they are relatively satisfied in their lower-income station.
But deny all they want — the facts are facts. Human beings do have free will. Consequently, different people makes different choices in life. And some choices —especially particular dogged commitments to worthwhile endeavors — end up making a bigger impact than others. As a person’s choices are actually what most define her identity, that some choices are more impactful than others means that some people are more impactful than others. And among such impactful choices are the choice to be original in ideas and — even more important — the choice to commit to that original idea and pursue it to completion. (This is just as different people making different choices leads to variation in how much consumer demand each person happens to satisfy in her actions. And when one person’s choices to leads to that person’s actions doing substantially more than others’ to satisfy consumer demand, it commensurately results in that person having a substantially larger income than those others.)
Such thinking and actionary initative is done at the level of the individual. Thus it follows that originality in thought occurs at the level of the individual. It is not the reality that an original insight can emerge at once from everyone in general in society and nobody in particular. The original insight comes from someone psychologically independent enough to pursue an area of inquiry that she notices has not been pursued adequately by most other people. As those other people dismiss that insight as unimportant or even oppose it as something objectionable, psychological independence is also needed for this thinker to stand by this insight and see it through. As individualism is the basis for the production of insights of great impact, it stands to reason that those who deny the importance of the individual would, in turn, deny the existence of originality in thought.
To advance the notion that the very concept of originality in human thought and endeavor is a delusion, these originality-deniers foist two interrelated promulgations.
The big fallacy in that sort of thinking is its false criteria for what constitutes creditworthy “originality” in an important idea, discovery, invention, or artwork. To be completely valid in praising a work for its originality does not require that, on some noumenal level, every aspect of the general idea and general premise of the work be novel and unprecedented.
In sum, this philosophic movement’s attitude is well-phrased in part of the title of a post from one prominent and well-respected intellectual blog that repeatedly advances such notions: “...the Myth of Originality.” In this context, the word myth does not refer to a valid old story that explains our origins and conveys timeless truths. Nay, by calling the idea of originality a myth both this blog post and the wider movement mean that it is altogether a falsehood.
I have heard some of these people say that they spent years in anxiety over how they could be original, and how they finally felt free to pursue their work only after they told themselves that originality is not possible to anyone anyway and therefore they need not worry about it. It is indeed sad if someone paralyzes herself in her art on account of feeling inadequate in this department. And it is true that originality is not the only important criterion of judging quality — it might not even be the most important. But this fear does not justify this completely illogical and ultimately harmful refusal to accept the existence and long-term necessity of original thinking.
Other deniers of originality are more consciously motivated by ideology — what they insist is of greater civic merit, what with their being political-economic social collectivists. They notice that throughout the early twentieth century, the recognition of originality to particular achievements — such as those of Charles Darwin and the Wright brothers — has contributed to those achievers being celebrated as rather exceptional individuals. The more that recognition of their originality causes them to be revered as exceptional, the more that contributes to what its detractors deride as “the Great Man Theory of History.” According to its opponents, this “Great Man Theory of History” posits that the course of history — the big changes in society and culture — are driven mostly by initiative in the action of particular exceptional individuals. For those who revile this idea, there is even a more-specific form of it for those in the intellectual fields — what Wikipedia calls “the Heroic Theory of Invention and Scientific Development,” which is where intellectual originals such as Darwin and the Wright brothers would be placed.
These political-economic collectivists snarl that celebration of exceptional individuals is unfair. They say that just as there is an unfairly unequal distribution of wealth in society, there is likewise an unfairly unequal distribution of appreciation in terms of who is admired for progress in society. For them, progress is the result of the societal collective — of the actions of everyone in general in society and no one in particular. In this interpretation, the lavishing of praise upon Darwin and the Wright brothers is an action that gives short shrift to everyone else, depriving everyone else of proper credit. For these political-economic collectivists, that indictment is merely an extension of their broader belief that a larger share of money going to a small number capitalists deprives everyone else in the community of the economic value that is their due. (I refute that accusation here.)
For the political-economic collectivists, social justice requires that such overrated historical figures be knocked down a peg or two. One way to dress them down properly is to discredit any notion that these individuals were all that original. And the best and most egalitarian route of going about this is to explain that true originality is not possible to anyone anyhow. In this model of thought, to revere originality is to revere an illusion — it is a form of false consciousness, similar to how capitalists have brainwashed rank-and-file employees into believing they are relatively satisfied in their lower-income station.
But deny all they want — the facts are facts. Human beings do have free will. Consequently, different people makes different choices in life. And some choices —especially particular dogged commitments to worthwhile endeavors — end up making a bigger impact than others. As a person’s choices are actually what most define her identity, that some choices are more impactful than others means that some people are more impactful than others. And among such impactful choices are the choice to be original in ideas and — even more important — the choice to commit to that original idea and pursue it to completion. (This is just as different people making different choices leads to variation in how much consumer demand each person happens to satisfy in her actions. And when one person’s choices to leads to that person’s actions doing substantially more than others’ to satisfy consumer demand, it commensurately results in that person having a substantially larger income than those others.)
Such thinking and actionary initative is done at the level of the individual. Thus it follows that originality in thought occurs at the level of the individual. It is not the reality that an original insight can emerge at once from everyone in general in society and nobody in particular. The original insight comes from someone psychologically independent enough to pursue an area of inquiry that she notices has not been pursued adequately by most other people. As those other people dismiss that insight as unimportant or even oppose it as something objectionable, psychological independence is also needed for this thinker to stand by this insight and see it through. As individualism is the basis for the production of insights of great impact, it stands to reason that those who deny the importance of the individual would, in turn, deny the existence of originality in thought.
To advance the notion that the very concept of originality in human thought and endeavor is a delusion, these originality-deniers foist two interrelated promulgations.
- For an artwork, invention, or scientific idea to be truly original, it must be novel and unprecedented in every respect. Yet every idea that has been touted as “original” was still influenced or at least inspired by ideas that were much older and already well-established. For example, every artwork that has been praised for originality still relied upon many of the tropes and conventions of older forms of artwork. Similarly, every new invention that’s patented still has the attributes of much-older tools, equipment, and products that are grandfathered into the culture. Hence, nothing is truly new, and there is no true originality.
- Historians will initially think that they have identified the first instance of someone proposing an influential idea, making a great scientific discovery, inventing an important product, or introducing a revolutionary art style. But then it turns out that this instance was chronologically preceded by some other party coming up with something that was quite similar in general idea and general premise. And further, it turns out that this predecessor, too, had been preceded by yet another party that also proposed something similar in general idea and general premise. This goes farther and farther back in time, even into antiquity B.C. And since it’s a requirement for “originality” that the allegedly-original breakthrough had no similar precedents, the fact of someone doing — or conceiving of — something even remotely similar in a chronologically-earlier period thus “de-thrones” the achievement that was held to be so original. It is therefore nothing more than a conceit to believe that experts can ever objectively ascertain which moment in history was the one of inception for some important idea, invention, or artistic medium or method. In short, no objective “first” can ever be confidently ascertained. Once again, nothing is truly new. There really is no objectively discernible “original” or chronologically-first unit of anything. To the degree that there is change over time in customs and culture and technology, there is only a chronological continuum of sub-conceptual changes in increments, with none of these incremental changes constituting an indisputably objective “first” or “original” of any idea, art style, or invention. Hence, there is no originality.
The big fallacy in that sort of thinking is its false criteria for what constitutes creditworthy “originality” in an important idea, discovery, invention, or artwork. To be completely valid in praising a work for its originality does not require that, on some noumenal level, every aspect of the general idea and general premise of the work be novel and unprecedented.
What Originality Is and Is Not
First, we should understand that “originality” is relative. Originality, in this context, does not mean subjective or capricious. Rather, originality being relative means that it is something that is measured relationally. In effect, we observe originality by comparing this quality in one work against that of other works. Some works of fiction are more original than others; some are more derivative than others. The same applies to new inventions. Some technological innovations change our society and culture more dramatically than others do.
Inherent to this relative and relational aspect of originality is that we can zoom in and zoom out in terms of how specific and granular we want to be in evaluating the extent to which a work is novel and unprecedented — in other words, how original it is. Neither John Carpenter’s Halloween nor Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th were the first movie to feature a solitary and hidden villain killing off other characters one-by-one. However, Halloween chronologically preceded Friday the 13th. Moreover, Halloween strongly established, into the culture, many conventions of the nascent “slasher movie” genre, such as the killer having seemingly superhuman strength and not being killed by physical actions that would kill any ordinary mortal person. Sean Cunningham has stated publicly that the commercial success of Halloween gave him the idea to make a movie in this genre with a similar premise, Friday the 13th. Hence, although neither of these are the first horror movie or the first movie to feature a mysterious killer, in the aforementioned respects Halloween can legitimately be said to be more original than Friday the 13th. To say that Y is more original than X, of course, is not necessarily to say that Y is better overall; there are many other factors in assessing quality. Nonetheless, the degree to which an artwork is original remains an important consideration.
The reality is that to be correct and valid in valuing originality within a proposition, discovery, invention, or artwork does not require the absence of any older ideas, conventions, prior discoveries, or precedents in the presentations of the general idea and premise for it to build on. Instead, the presence of any greater-than-zero amount of novelty and unprecedentedness within a work is sufficient to prove the existence of originality and original thinking and the human capacity for all of that. And for a proposition, theory, invention, or artwork to be validly judged as highly original — and this is especially true for patent examiners — it is still not the case that the entire general idea or premise behind it be completely unprecedented. Even in possessing many attributes that have been traditional for thousands of years, a work can be validly judged as highly original if among its attributes are highly-specific-but-crucial features that are novel — either completely unprecedented or having very few known precedents. More simply, originality is found not within the general idea or general premise but instead the specific-but-crucial details that are new.
First, we should understand that “originality” is relative. Originality, in this context, does not mean subjective or capricious. Rather, originality being relative means that it is something that is measured relationally. In effect, we observe originality by comparing this quality in one work against that of other works. Some works of fiction are more original than others; some are more derivative than others. The same applies to new inventions. Some technological innovations change our society and culture more dramatically than others do.
Inherent to this relative and relational aspect of originality is that we can zoom in and zoom out in terms of how specific and granular we want to be in evaluating the extent to which a work is novel and unprecedented — in other words, how original it is. Neither John Carpenter’s Halloween nor Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th were the first movie to feature a solitary and hidden villain killing off other characters one-by-one. However, Halloween chronologically preceded Friday the 13th. Moreover, Halloween strongly established, into the culture, many conventions of the nascent “slasher movie” genre, such as the killer having seemingly superhuman strength and not being killed by physical actions that would kill any ordinary mortal person. Sean Cunningham has stated publicly that the commercial success of Halloween gave him the idea to make a movie in this genre with a similar premise, Friday the 13th. Hence, although neither of these are the first horror movie or the first movie to feature a mysterious killer, in the aforementioned respects Halloween can legitimately be said to be more original than Friday the 13th. To say that Y is more original than X, of course, is not necessarily to say that Y is better overall; there are many other factors in assessing quality. Nonetheless, the degree to which an artwork is original remains an important consideration.
The reality is that to be correct and valid in valuing originality within a proposition, discovery, invention, or artwork does not require the absence of any older ideas, conventions, prior discoveries, or precedents in the presentations of the general idea and premise for it to build on. Instead, the presence of any greater-than-zero amount of novelty and unprecedentedness within a work is sufficient to prove the existence of originality and original thinking and the human capacity for all of that. And for a proposition, theory, invention, or artwork to be validly judged as highly original — and this is especially true for patent examiners — it is still not the case that the entire general idea or premise behind it be completely unprecedented. Even in possessing many attributes that have been traditional for thousands of years, a work can be validly judged as highly original if among its attributes are highly-specific-but-crucial features that are novel — either completely unprecedented or having very few known precedents. More simply, originality is found not within the general idea or general premise but instead the specific-but-crucial details that are new.
They Say That Instead of There Being Originality, There Is Only the “Re-Mixing” of Long-Established Ancient Ideas
You might notice that if no one in history ever conceived of anything that, up to that time, had been unprecedented, there would be no changes in customs or the degree of sophistication in technology. To that consideration, the originality-deniers offer a specious reply. They say that rather than anyone ever having been original, such changes occur through what is, at best, “re-mixing.” According to this argument, everything we call “original” is actually no more than a mixture of already-established ancient ideas. When such a mixture becomes particularly popular or useful and changes the culture, it is on account of this “re-mix” being both fortuitous and, ultimately, serendipitous. In his book Steal like an Artist, cultural commentator Austin Kleon makes what he calls a vital distinction. When a re-mix is trite and unimpressive, it is “bad theft.” By contrast, Kleon avows, when a re-mix provides a net gain in economic value, that is “good theft.”
Original Ideas Are Real and More Sophisticated Than Just “Re-Mixes” of Long-Established Ancient Ideas
There are indeed some very enjoyable music re-mixes. I am impressed by this song mash-up of Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” with Imagine Dragons’s “Believer.” But in many instances where a new song becomes a hit, it’s the case that even if the song uses chord progressions or some snippets of notes that have been used before, there is enough novelty in the product for it to warrant being acknowledged as a new song altogether. The term “originality” is good and proper. The reason is that when we recognize some innovation that has elements both familiar and novel, it is that area of novelty that produces a net gain in value in our lives and motivates and enables future innovations that provide still further net gains. That novelty in the first innovation is the origin of further routes of greater change. That is a net gain in value that is greater than a mere sum of the parts that are “mixed” and “re-mixed” together.
Here can also address the fallacy of Argument No. 2 — that if Party Y is at first hailed as original in its intellectual achievement, only for historians to discover later that Party X chronologically preceded Party Y in exploring the same general idea, that necessarily negates and strips Party Y of all credit for its own originality. Again, originality is not at the level of the grossest and most broadly defined general idea but instead within the most significant and decisive specifics.
In scientific discovery, technological product inventions, and even artistic movements, it happens that progress is incremental.
The originality-deniers can scoff that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace do not deserve their accolades for originality, as they had been preceded by many other scientists in exploring the general idea that one clade of organism can emerge from another, such as that humans and other backboned land-dwelling creatures can evolve from lobe-finned fishes. Charles Darwin’s own paternal grandfather, the innovative industrialist-physician-philosopher-poet Erasmus Darwin, contemplated this idea decades prior to the births of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander discussed an idea like this.
Likewise, these same originality-deniers can also scoff at praise for the Wright brothers for inventing controlled and powered flight in heavier-than-air machines — airplanes. The deniers can scoff as the Wright brothers were preceded by Gustave Whitehead and Leonardo Da Vinci in proposing that a heavier-than-air flying machine could be steered in flight through the warping of its wings.
Here we can acknowledge how some very significant specifics within the broader idea can make such an important difference. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were indeed original in identifying the natural-selection model as the specific mechanism through which evolution occurs. According to this model, there would be natural physiological variation among members of the same species within a particular environment. The members of that species that possessed the physiological attributes did not suit them to that environment would die off prior to being able to procreate. That would prevent them from transmitting those unfitting attributes to future generations. Conversely, the members of that species that did possess physiological attributes that well-fit them into the environment would survive long enough to procreate. In turn, among their spawn would be members of the species likewise possessing the same attributes that made them well-adapted.
In the case of an environment where water was shallow and in which it was difficult to access oxygen through such bacteria-filled water, among the best-adapted fishes would be ones that could breathe air outside of water and ones in which the paired fins would be strong enough to use in crawling around in the shallows. Over millions of years, in that environment a strain of land-walking fishes could emerge.
This specific and valid natural-selection model was something not proposed by Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Russel Wallace’s predecessors who similarly discussed the general idea of biological evolutionary change. This specific natural-selection model was not proposed by Erasmus Darwin or Anaximander. Nor was it even proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who did not believe that a batch of organisms of the same species could already vary, as a default, in physiological attributes, with the ones possessing the most-adaptable natural attributes simply surviving and procreating and transmitting the same attributes over generations. That Lamarck argued that evolutionary change happened through an organism acquiring a new physiological trait over its life experiences and then transmitting that newly-acquired trait to future generations, makes the decisive specifics of Lamarck’s theory very distinct from the decisive specifics of the newer theory of Darwin and Wallace.
The earliest prediction from the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model to be empirically confirmed was the existence of a hawkmoth with a very long proboscis — one thirty centimeters long. In 1862 Darwin had observed an orchid with a nectar tube of that length. Deductively applying the natural-selection model, Darwin and Wallace figured that this orchid had a have a pollinator possessing a proboscis of the same length. In 1903, that hawkmoth was discovered. Since 2021 that moth’s scientific name has even been Xanthopan praedicta — the latter name (the species name) meaning “the predicted one.”
And in the specific contents of the theory that are most decisive, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were truly original.
The same applies to the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers were not the first party to propose that in the powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine, steering of it could be achieved through the warping of its wings. But the Wright brothers were indeed original in incorporating, into this wing-warping, a more-specific method of counteracting the problem of “adverse yaw.” Adverse yaw is the tendency of a heavier-than-air flying machine’s nose to point in the direction opposite to the direction in which the flying machine is to turn. To counterbalance this frustration and maintain proper steering, the Wright brothers added a rudder to the process of the wing-warping steering. This was a decisive specific added effectively by the Wright brothers but not by Gustave Whitehead or Leonardo Da Vinci. In this they were truly original.
Note that acknowledging the originality of the specific-but-decisive detail of the natural-selection model does not diminish the stature of the insights of Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Anaximander, and other predecessors that have continued to hold up; these predecessors each have been validly original in their own right. Ditto goes for the Wright brothers’ predecessors — Leonardo Da Vinci and Gavin were each original in their own way.
This principle applies throughout all of the case studies I present later in this essay. Throughout this work I shall go over many instances where an innovator who was genuinely original in specific-but-decisive details was preceded by other thinkers in terms of exploring the general idea within which the specific-but-decisive details apply. Originality-deniers do cite the existence of these predecessors as proof that there is no originality, and insinuate that the fact of the alleged latecomer to the general idea receiving accolades for originality — such as Charles Darwin being a relative latecomer to the general idea of evolutionary theory — means that these alleged latecomers have wrongfully stolen credit for the general idea from their predecessors. In the case studies that shall follow, I shall show that these alleged latecomers do, as Charles Darwin does, deserve credit for originality. And it will follow that as these alleged latecomers do deserve their acclaim for originality, acknowledging justness of these deserts does not negate the dignity and stature of those thinkers who preceded them in exploring the general idea.
Thus we find that in saying that originality is found in details that are specific and decisive, I have explained what I have meant by specific; now I should elaborate further on the decisive. The decisiveness shows that it is not merely the specific detail presented by the innovative party that is new, but that the specific detail is able to go farther in achieving important effects not achieved by the other parties that preceded the innovator in presenting the general idea. In demonstrating to scientists the veracity of evolutionary theory, the Darwin-Wallace model of natural selection was able to do what Lamarckian model and other predecessors in the general idea of evolutionary theory were not able to do.
Deductive applications of the Darwin-Wallace model of natural selection produced predictions that were later empirically confirmed, whereas deductive applications of Lamarck’s model of acquired-traits evolution did not. Had Lamarck’s acquired-traits model been accurate, then it would follow that if the tails of adult mice were severed and then those adults mice were allowed to breed, then that should have a commensurate effect on the tails of their offspring. The offspring should have no tails or at least, upon their reaching adulthood, their tails should be shorter than were the tails of their parents’ prior to the parents losing the tails. The scientist August Weismann put this to the test. Once the offspring had reached adulthood, their tails were always the same length that their parents’ had been prior to the parents’ tails being mutilated.
By contrast, predictions logically deduced from the Darwin-Wallace model of natural selection have a long and impeccable record of later being empirically confirmed. In 1862, Charles Darwin observed a species of orchid with a nectar tube that was thirty centimeters in length. According to the highly-original specification of the Darwin-Wallace model, the organisms that thrive and regularly reproduce are those well-adapted- to their environment — fit into it, making them the fittest. From that, Darwin logically deduced that there should be a pollinator species in the vicinity with a proboscis of commensurate length — the same thirty centimeters. In the year 1903, that species of hawkmoth was discovered. It possessed the exact same physical attribute that the Darwin-Wallace natural selection model predicted, thereby confirming the consistent principle that is the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model. That species is even now named Xanothan praedicta — the latter word meaning “the predicted one.”
You can learn of entire litanies of instances here and here of the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model producing scientific predictions that have been consistently verified later. The Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model is further original in that it originated something big that the Lamarckian acquired-traits model has not: this long record — continuing to this day — of being practically applied and vindicated empirically. Hence, the Darwin-Wallace natural-selection model is original both (1) in its specifics differing from previous models in the general idea and (2) in those specifics being decisive in producing practical results the previous models have not.
We also can think of how Charles Darwin applied an idea of Rev. T. Robert Malthus when he and Alfred Russel Wallace formulated their specific natural-selection model within the wider field of evolutionary theory. Rev. T. Robert Malthus was far from being the first economist but he was the first person upon whom a university bestowed the title of “professor of economics.” T. Robert Malthus argued that if the population of human beings in the West grows at a rate faster than does the food supply, it will create environmental pressures on humans. Then, continued Rev. Malthus, this economic pressure will influence which people live long enough to have children and raise them —and which people will die before being able to do so. Charles Darwin adapted this idea to a new context. Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace realized that in all environments, there are environmental pressures on all species, and that such environmental pressures will influence which members of a species survive and procreate and which members of that same species do not. The originality-deniers in Silicon Valley would say approvingly that the concern about environmental pressures was the idea that Charles Darwin and Russel Wallace cleverly “stole” from Rev. Malthus. That it is individual physiological variations within members of the same species in this environment, though, that decides which ones are best-adapted to these environmental pressures, is one decisive part of the model that does not come from Rev. Malthus. It is original to Darwin and Wallace.
The application of the concern about environmental pressures to all species at all times, was initiative taken by Darwin and Wallace and not by Rev. Malthus. And, indeed, the environmental pressures in deciding which members of the species successfully transmit their heritable traits across generations — and which do not — applies more consistently and accurately in the wild that Darwin and Wallace described than in the context of Rev. Malthus’s ultimately-failed predictions of an impending overpopulation-doomsday in the West. Again, when an older idea like Rev. Malthus’s is applied to a new context, with the application’s consequences being decisive, impactful, and enduring, that application is not a mere “re-mix” of Rev. Malthus’s older ideas; it is itself a new idea.
A decisiveness similar to the Darwin-Wallace model’s is present in the Wright brothers’ originality. It may be true that Leonardo Da Vinci and Gustave Whitehead preceded Orville and Wilbur in proposing that flying machine could be steered through the warping of its wings. But the practicality of the Wright brothers adding a rudder to reduce adverse yaw was decisive. It was a major reason that the Wright brothers produced an actual machine that could be steered properly in powered flight whereas Leonardo Da Vinci and Gustave Whitehead did not.
In the history of a particular category of product, such as an automobile, coming to possess all the features with which we associate it today — such as air-conditioning and windshield-wipers and even roofs — such features have been added over the years in many increments. For people who presume that “originality” can only occur if the entire general idea or premise behind something is wholly new and unfamiliar, the fact of incremental changes is a source of confusion to them. The occurrence of these changes in increments misleads them into propounding that that there is no originality after all.
For example, historians can argue over which particular model or unit was “the first true automobile.” And as the different models and units were usually made by different parties, these historians can likewise argue over which of these parties was truly original in inventing the automobile. Such disagreements happen on account of different historians and other experts coming with different criteria on the specifics of what makes a “true automobile.” As many proposed candidates for “first true automobile” lack in the features that some experts consider necessary to meet the criteria for “first true automobile,” there is contention over which is the true “first.”
If what defines an automobile is simply that it is a self-powered wheeled cart — one that does not need to be pulled by an animal, such as a horse — then one possible candidate for “first automobile” might be the giant steam-powered cart that Amédée Bollée introduced to France in the year 1873. This cart was an omnibus that Bollée called L’Obéissante (the Obedient One) and it could carry up to twelve passengers at a time.
By contrast, if we define an automobile as something possessing an internal combustion engine powered directly by gasoline, then we might say a better candidate for “first” was the Benz Patent Motorwagen that Carl Benz introduced in Germany in 1885. This machine had no throttle but it did have three wheels — two in the back to move the machine forward and one in the front that determined the direction of movement as it turned with the steering wheel. In this respect, the Benz Patent Motorwagen could be thought of as a large tricycle.
But if we define a true modern automobile as necessarily possessing four wheels instead of three, that would rule out the Benz Patent Motorwagen. We might instead consider the Mercedes 35HP that in 1901 came from the company Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG). This company was founded by Gottlieb Daimler. The engineers who worked most directly on the Mercedes 35HP were Gottlieb Daimler’s business partner Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb’s oldest son Paul Daimler. It was commissioned by the motor-wagon distributor Emil Jellinek; his daughter was named Mercedes Jellinek, and that is how this machine model got its name. This was not the internal-combustion-engine-possessing carriage to have four wheels, but it did have features that make it resemble our modern cars more closely than did prior models. Such older horseless carriages were boxy and tall to match the shapes of the horsedrawn carriages more familiar to people of that time. In contrast, the Mercedes 35HP was elongated and its shape set it closer to the ground, matching the shape that we now more closely associate with compact automobiles. Also more like a modern car, the Mercedes 35HP had a long hood to protect the passenger compartment.
Originality-deniers usually do know of this sequence of incremental changes in the history of automobiles. And because of their holding onto many false premises, these originality-deniers cite these incremental changes as proof of their most misbegotten conclusion. The first false premise is that for a model or unit of a device to be called “the first automobile,” it must possess all of the features now considered standard in our automobiles, such as windshield wipers and a self-starter engine. The second false premise is the one we’ve already discussed — that something is original only if the entire vague and gross general idea behind it is wholly unprecedented. And then the originality-deniers point to the fact that, for automakers to have incorporated all the features that are considered standard for an automobile today, there had to be an entire series of incremental innovations with each increment being introduced in a new model.
And as the originality-deniers are stuck on the presumption that there is no “invention of the automobile” unless all the modern standard features emerged simultaneously, they proclaim that no one party invented the automobile. And as they presume that “invention” can only occur if all the standard features of the present came to exist at the same time in the same model, they propound that it likewise follows that every technological change is a social collective effort and no one party invented the automobile or anything else. Further, as these originality-deniers presume from the outset that “invention” and “originality” of a work can occur only if all the standard features with which we associate it today were introduced simultaneously as the first model was unveiled to the public, the originality-deniers cite this historical progression of incremental improvements — which led to the culmination of standard features we have today — as proof that there is no originality and no one truly invents anything.
The quotaton from Henry Miller is a doozy.
We can expect the originality-deniers to say that these incremental improvements are not true originality or a real invention but instead a form of what they have labeled “re-mixes” or even, at best, “good stealing.” But to apply to these incremental improvements a label as bland as “re-mixes” or one as petulantly condescending as “good stealing” is to downplay the extent of the ultimately dramatic net gain in value that they produce.
We must correct the falsehoods of the originality-deniers. Originality is within specific-but-crucial details, and that is what these incremental changes happen to be. The consideration that automakers arrived at the culmination of all of today’s standard features through increments, then, does not discredit the concept of originality. As with originality itself, “invention” happens in the specific-but-decisive details. Hence, originality and invention are within the incremental improvements themselves. And as these incremental improvements were introduced by separate individual parties, originality and invention and innovation happen at the level of the individual.
For example, we can note that even if the Mercedes 35HP was not the first internal-combustion-engine-driven carriage, Wilhelm Maybach and the Daimlers still demonstrated originality and inventiveness within it. Maybach and the Daimlers were original and inventive in giving it the shape that it had and in giving it a hood that protected the passenger compartment.
We can quibble about the details in how we define the first true model of an automobile or any other invention that has historically been improved in incremental steps. Yet it holds true that there was a time in history when there were no automobiles, and now we do have automobiles. Even if we quibble over which exact model fits our exact definition of “the first true automobile,” the fact remains that if once were no automobiles and now there are, there necessarily was a first. Acknowledgment of the fact of human creative originality does not require being able to pinpoint, at some noumenal level, some case example that perfectly fits our exact definition of the first true instance of that configuration or convention being established.
The idea of originality is not the myth or falsehood. I will provide case studies of originality in thought throughout history.
James Clerk Maxwell and the Invisible Spectrum of Electromagnetic Waves
We know from Aristotle that descriptions of the phenomena of magnetism go back at least as far as ancient Greece with the culture’s earliest-known philosopher and scientist, Thales. During the Song dynasty, Chinese sailors invented the compass for navigation. Benjamin Franklin explained the phenomenon of electricity. Michael Faraday, André-Marie Ampère, and Carl Gauss each wrote mathematic formulae to describe electromagnetic phenomena that they observed. But none of these people knew the exact mechanism that caused these phenomena.
James Clerk Maxwell relied on the observations of all these predecessors. The originality is in where he went farther than they did. He proposed that electricity and magnetism were ultimately the same, and, going farther still, he said that light is ultimately the same as well. Not even such scientists as Faraday, Ampère, and Gauss identified this connection between light and electromagnetism. And Maxwell said that all of these phenomena are explained by a spectrum of waves that, with the exception of light, are invisible. With the exception of light, these electromagnetic radiation waves cannot be observed directly by the senses. However, many effects of these waves can be observed directly by the senses, as exemplified by the observations of Thales and Song-dynasty Chinese sailors.
Heinrich Hertz’s experiments used sensory data to prove, empirically, the existence of the phenomenon that Maxwell deduced. Radios, mobile phones, and wireless internet connection operate according to these principles. Thales and Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday observed electromagnetic phenomena, but Maxwell made truly original additions to understanding that even Thales, Benjamin Franklin, and Michael Faraday did not anticipate.
Marie Curie and Radioactivity
Likewise, Marie Curie’s description of radioactivity was original. Since ancient times, human beings have handled hazardously radioactive materials. Photography pioneer Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor — cousin to photography (specifically, heliography) inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce — observed radioactivity in one respect. In 1857 he noticed that even when he was working in the dark, photographic emulsions could be exposed by uranium salts. But he did not go farther than that. In 1895, Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium emitted waves. But he did not extrapolate from that an entire scientific principle.
The explanation of the principles of radioactivity was original to Marie Curie. What was new was her explanation that, rather than the observed rays being a chemical reaction, they were an atomic property inherent to particular elements such as uranium. With her husband Pierre, she isolated particular highly radioactive elements and proved this.
Karl Landsteiner and Blood Type
And then there is blood type. Throughout the Renaissance, doctors attempted blood transfusions. They were repeatedly met with failure as the patients died. This was a cause of consternation, as, theoretically, the blood transfusions should have worked. In 1900, Karl Landsteiner explained that there are different particular blood types, and that, if you have one blood type, whether you survive the transfusion depends on the blood type of the blood you receive. The successful transfusions that followed are a testament to the efficacy of Landsteiner’s idea, an idea that was truly original.
Antoine Lavoisier Proving the Oxygen Theory of Combustion
Antoine Lavoisier’s explanation that the addition of oxygen is required for combustion to occur is an explanation that followed a long series of missteps in science. In ancient Greece, Empedocles said that fire was one of four elements that could not be reduced to simpler form. Aristotle said the same, except Aristotle added a fifth element he called “ether.” This was the dominant model among alchemists until Robert Boyle formalized chemistry as a hard science involving a strict and consistent methodology. In the 1600s, the German alchemist Johann Joachim Becher started what would, for a century, become the leading scientific authority’s leading theory in how objects catch fire: phlogiston theory. The phlogiston refers to the Greek root phlox, which means “flame.” Becher’s phlogiston theory was that all objects have an innate “fieriness” in them that is stored but dormant. When the object catches fire, said Becher, it mean the innate fieriness was no longer dormant, being activated and releasing material. According to Becher, the moment of combustion was the exact moment that the object lost mass.
In the 1700s, Joseph Priestley and Carl Scheele each independently discovered the element oxygen by isolating it from all other elements. In the 1600s, the English alchemist John Mayow discovered that for an object to start to combust, something from the air must be added to it. But he did not know which chemical or chemicals it was; as a placeholder he used the term nitro-aerial spirit. Then in the 1700s, Antoine Lavoisier put it all together: at the moment that an object began to combust, another greater-than-zero quantity of mass had been added, contradicting phlogiston theory. And that additional mass was a specific element that he was able to identify by isolating: oxygen. It was even Lavoisier — not Joseph Priestley or Carl Scheele — who gave this element the name of oxygen.
Other scientists had preceded Lavoisier in introducing parts of the theory. Priestley and Scheele each discovered the element oxygen in particular through isolating it, but did not notice that the introduction of oxygen was needed for combustion. Conversely, John Mayow did know that a sort of particle from the air needed to be added to an object for it to combust, but Mayow did not know which chemical it was, and he could not prove which chemical in particular it was as he did not isolate the oxygen. When Lavoisier put it all together, the result was something greater than the sum of its parts: for there to be an explanation that would advance scientific understanding, all of this theory’s elements — pun intended — had to be in place. It is a grotesque insult to everyone’s intelligence to give this mental integration of Lavoisier’s a label as petty as “good theft”; in intellectual achievement and consequence it is beyond a merely fortuitous “re-mix” of older established ideas. In putting the important pieces together in the exact places where they properly fit, Antoine Lavoisier was truly original.
On Thu., Nov. 5, 2026, I added the examples of commentators denying the reality of originality. On Monday, November 9, 2026, I added the explanation of the how the decisiveness in the specific-but-decisive originality of Charles Darwin and the Wright brothers refers to their originality achieving practical results not achieved by contemporaries and predecessors within the general idea of their area of study, contemporaries and predecessors with whom Darwin and the Wright brothers are compared unfavorably by the originality-deniers.
Saturday, May 02, 2026
Humans Are a GMO and Have Been One Since the Stone Age
Genetically Modified As an Effect of the Technology of Our Apelike Ancestors
Stuart K. Hayashi
As of this writing, there have been no fewer than two proposed courses through which Stone-Age technology has produced, at least indirectly, revisions in the genetic makeup of the first Homo sapiens sapiens — yes, the sapiens is listed twice in our species’s official name. One route has do to with fire: that gift from that premodern Frankenstein, Prometheus. When meat is raw, the meat-eater has to expend a lot of calories to chew and digest it. When Homo erectus began cooking meat, it was a way for Homo erectus to complete part of the digestion process even before the meat entered anyone’s mouth. In this respect, a cooking fire or stove’s burner can be thought of as a “stomach external to the human body.” When the meat was cooked, it reduced the number of calories that Homo erectus had to expend on chewing the meat.
The paleo-anthropologist Richard Wrangham theorizes that the calories left over then went to expanding the brains of the Homo erectus. Our ancestral environment “selected” for individuals who were genetically predisposed to have their brains grow larger in response to the leftover calories. Hence, someone whose genes had predisposed her brain to enlarge from the leftover calories was one who was likelier to transmit this trait to successive generations. I thank the cultural commentator Scott A. Corbitt for pointing this out to me on the social medium Threads.
However, yet another avenue of Stone-Age technology altering our gene pool goes back even further in time. This one has to do with our ancestors dynamic with stone tools, as observed by cognitive archaeologist Natalie T. Uomini. Our two-legged ancestors would sharpen their stone tools. This was practiced even by species that predated the genus Homo; archaeologists have uncovered evidence of this practice being performed by the hairier, more-apelike Australopithecus afarensis. This practice would involve holding one stone still with one hand, usually the left, and scraping yet another stone against it using the other hand, usually the right hand. Anthropologists refer to this as “flintknapping” or “stone-knapping.”
Stuart K. Hayashi
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| Photo by Wolfgang Sauber; courtesy Wikimedia Commons |
In the near future, human couples might use in-vitro fertilization and then, while it is still an embryo, alter the DNA of their future child to edit out particular DNA sequences that would otehrwise predispose the child to hereditary diseases. This is formally called germline genetic engineering and derided with the pejorative label of “designer babies.” People fear the idea of technology altering the DNA of humans. They fret that this will bring about an unprecedented level of horror as depicted in such classic science-fiction dystopias as Brave New World and Gattaca. But the truth is that our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, has been a GMO from the start. Our species was genetically modified and outwardly physiologically altered as a consequence of the technology of our ancestors, ancestral species as recent as Homo erectus and possibly something as far back in the past as the much-hairier Australopithecus afarensis (as shown in the Wikimedia Commons photo on the left).
As of this writing, there have been no fewer than two proposed courses through which Stone-Age technology has produced, at least indirectly, revisions in the genetic makeup of the first Homo sapiens sapiens — yes, the sapiens is listed twice in our species’s official name. One route has do to with fire: that gift from that premodern Frankenstein, Prometheus. When meat is raw, the meat-eater has to expend a lot of calories to chew and digest it. When Homo erectus began cooking meat, it was a way for Homo erectus to complete part of the digestion process even before the meat entered anyone’s mouth. In this respect, a cooking fire or stove’s burner can be thought of as a “stomach external to the human body.” When the meat was cooked, it reduced the number of calories that Homo erectus had to expend on chewing the meat.
The paleo-anthropologist Richard Wrangham theorizes that the calories left over then went to expanding the brains of the Homo erectus. Our ancestral environment “selected” for individuals who were genetically predisposed to have their brains grow larger in response to the leftover calories. Hence, someone whose genes had predisposed her brain to enlarge from the leftover calories was one who was likelier to transmit this trait to successive generations. I thank the cultural commentator Scott A. Corbitt for pointing this out to me on the social medium Threads.
However, yet another avenue of Stone-Age technology altering our gene pool goes back even further in time. This one has to do with our ancestors dynamic with stone tools, as observed by cognitive archaeologist Natalie T. Uomini. Our two-legged ancestors would sharpen their stone tools. This was practiced even by species that predated the genus Homo; archaeologists have uncovered evidence of this practice being performed by the hairier, more-apelike Australopithecus afarensis. This practice would involve holding one stone still with one hand, usually the left, and scraping yet another stone against it using the other hand, usually the right hand. Anthropologists refer to this as “flintknapping” or “stone-knapping.”
In these activities, it was advantageous for a man to have one hand be more dexterous than the other. This practice “selected for” the men who were genetically predisposed to have a dominant hand. Men with a dominant hand were more likely than ambidextrous men to have children and then raise those children into adulthood. (I first learned of this explanation from Michael C. Corballis’s book The Lopsided Ape.) Additionally, Alastair Key and Chris Dunmore have found that this flintknapping also “selected” for thumbs to be more robust. Both of these physiological changes were already noticeable in Homo habilis, which pre-dates fire-making Homo erectus.
As our predecessors Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus already applied their conceptual faculties to restructuring objects from the wild to suit their own purrposes, it follows that our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, has never been without technology. But, more than that, our own species was already genetically altered, albeit unknowingly, by the technology of our ancestors going back at least as far as the chimp-faced Australopithecus.
Even the ancestors who altered us — Homo erectus or a similar contemporary — were genetically modified as a result of the technology of other hominin species that begat them. Homo erectus having genes for thick thumbs and a dominant hand was a byproduct of the technology of the predecessor Homo habilis or some contemporary to Homo habilis. Homo habilis, in turn, inherited the genes for those traits from Australopithecus or something closely related to it. The uses of particular technologies were customs that were ultimately chosen volitionally, and yet these choices influenced which genetically-caused traits were transmitted to successive generations and which were not. The conterminous transmission of chosen customs and unchosen inborn genetics is what ethologists Charles Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson dubbed gene-culture co-evolution.
This ancient pattern of technological transformation educing a corresponding transformation in the human genome and visible physiological traits had continued into the Bronze Age, at least in the region stretching from Europe to Asia. The new development was the switch from hunter-gathering to the farming of grains now being the primary method of obtaining food. In words written by Doug James, Nicky Thomas, and Ben G. Thomas for Seven Days of Science, this is how presenter Emilia Evans paraphrases this discovery of Ali Akbari and David Reich of Harvard and the rest of their team:
There is a lesson in this for those who abhor technological alteration as some unnatural tampering with biology. Stone-Age humans were the original ones to conduct genetic engineering on themselves and subsequent human generations, including us. That happened millennia prior to any technician going into a laboratory, placing a cell in a petri dish, and employing chemical methods to splice a foreign DNA segment into that cell.
Ridley Scott’s confusing Prometheus — his prequel to Sigourney Weaver’s Alien movies — portrays humans as having been engineered into existence by extraterrestrials through technologies far beyond what we have today. It turns out that aspects of that story may well be true, except that our technological creator was from Earth and that the technology employed in this endeavor didn’t even need to be as complex as ours.
There are at least two options in how we can interpret this. Should we think of Australopithecus as being in a category separate from ourselves, then, inasmuch as we have descended from Australopithecus or something like it, this Australopithecus was a mad scientist and we humans are his Creation. However, if we include Australopithecus and Homo habilis in the category of “us,” then, insofar as technological restructuring is a form of creativity, this process is an instance of autopoiesis: modern man is indeed self-made. Ultimately it is not the angels but we humans who are, in the words of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, “self-begot, self-raised...”
The technologies employed by our ancient ancestors — flintknapping, fire-making, and farming — were consciously chosen, but their lasting influence on changes to our genetic code were a byproduct that was not consciously chosen. Our Stone-Age ancestors didn’t even know of these effects. By contrast, when future couples engage in more-direct editing of the genetic codes of their children, those edits will indeed be consciously intended choices. For that to happen, these people will have in mind which specific DNA sequences to isolate in order to alter the very specific traits they are targeting. That is an important distinction between the technology-caused gene modificatoin of the near future versus the Pliocene past. But what has remained the consistent pattern since the prehistoric origin of our species is the presence of technology to influence the genetic codes of descendants.
As our predecessors Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus already applied their conceptual faculties to restructuring objects from the wild to suit their own purrposes, it follows that our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, has never been without technology. But, more than that, our own species was already genetically altered, albeit unknowingly, by the technology of our ancestors going back at least as far as the chimp-faced Australopithecus.
Even the ancestors who altered us — Homo erectus or a similar contemporary — were genetically modified as a result of the technology of other hominin species that begat them. Homo erectus having genes for thick thumbs and a dominant hand was a byproduct of the technology of the predecessor Homo habilis or some contemporary to Homo habilis. Homo habilis, in turn, inherited the genes for those traits from Australopithecus or something closely related to it. The uses of particular technologies were customs that were ultimately chosen volitionally, and yet these choices influenced which genetically-caused traits were transmitted to successive generations and which were not. The conterminous transmission of chosen customs and unchosen inborn genetics is what ethologists Charles Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson dubbed gene-culture co-evolution.
This ancient pattern of technological transformation educing a corresponding transformation in the human genome and visible physiological traits had continued into the Bronze Age, at least in the region stretching from Europe to Asia. The new development was the switch from hunter-gathering to the farming of grains now being the primary method of obtaining food. In words written by Doug James, Nicky Thomas, and Ben G. Thomas for Seven Days of Science, this is how presenter Emilia Evans paraphrases this discovery of Ali Akbari and David Reich of Harvard and the rest of their team:
...the rate of human evolution has accelerated over the last 10,000 years. ...cattle-herding populations from the Steppes of Eurasia moved into western Europe, bringing with them Bronze-Age technologies. ...cities have been constructed... ...farming and different ways of living seemed to have had profound effects on the human genome. Hundreds of versions of particular genes have become either more or less common over the past 10,000 years, indicating that these accelerating societal and cultural changes have, in turn, driven the acceleration of the evolution of the human genome. ...[Quoting lead author Ali Akbari,] “Everything has changed in the way we live, and that’s reflected in our genome and how it’s trying to catch up.”Ali Akbari, David Reich, and the rest of their team have identified particular physiological traits that became more prevalent as a ramification of these trends. Such traits included red hair and lighter skin. They were accompanied, strangely enough, by a reduction in the prevalence of male-pattern baldness.
There is a lesson in this for those who abhor technological alteration as some unnatural tampering with biology. Stone-Age humans were the original ones to conduct genetic engineering on themselves and subsequent human generations, including us. That happened millennia prior to any technician going into a laboratory, placing a cell in a petri dish, and employing chemical methods to splice a foreign DNA segment into that cell.
Ridley Scott’s confusing Prometheus — his prequel to Sigourney Weaver’s Alien movies — portrays humans as having been engineered into existence by extraterrestrials through technologies far beyond what we have today. It turns out that aspects of that story may well be true, except that our technological creator was from Earth and that the technology employed in this endeavor didn’t even need to be as complex as ours.
There are at least two options in how we can interpret this. Should we think of Australopithecus as being in a category separate from ourselves, then, inasmuch as we have descended from Australopithecus or something like it, this Australopithecus was a mad scientist and we humans are his Creation. However, if we include Australopithecus and Homo habilis in the category of “us,” then, insofar as technological restructuring is a form of creativity, this process is an instance of autopoiesis: modern man is indeed self-made. Ultimately it is not the angels but we humans who are, in the words of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, “self-begot, self-raised...”
The technologies employed by our ancient ancestors — flintknapping, fire-making, and farming — were consciously chosen, but their lasting influence on changes to our genetic code were a byproduct that was not consciously chosen. Our Stone-Age ancestors didn’t even know of these effects. By contrast, when future couples engage in more-direct editing of the genetic codes of their children, those edits will indeed be consciously intended choices. For that to happen, these people will have in mind which specific DNA sequences to isolate in order to alter the very specific traits they are targeting. That is an important distinction between the technology-caused gene modificatoin of the near future versus the Pliocene past. But what has remained the consistent pattern since the prehistoric origin of our species is the presence of technology to influence the genetic codes of descendants.
We would be best off giving up any aversion to GMOs-as-such. Our family lineage had become technologically-created GMOs in the Stone Age prior even to our becoming Homo sapiens sapiens. Far from technological innovation being some sort of deviation from our naturalness, the employment of technological innovation is inherent to human nature itself. Artifice does not refer necessarily to fakery; etymologically it means craftsmanship, being the root of artisan and artwork. And in the present and in the Stone Age, such crafting of both one’s surroundings and one’s own genetic makeup has been the way of the human. Thus, to be artificial is to be natural. It has always been our Stone-Age adaptation as an organism.
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
More Info for My Troubled Friend
Stuart K. Hayashi
I have written much-more-interesting blog posts exposing some falsehoods that my troubled friend and I were both told on topics of political economy not directly related to BPD. The truth is in my essays “Is the Pirating of Intellectual Property Just a Form of Intra-Industry Competition?” (spoiler: it’s not) and “Libertarians and the Myth of the Winner-Takes-All Patent Monopoly.”
A therapist named Betty DeShong Meador wisely observed, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That empowerment in life can be yours, if only you choose to commit to it. 🥲 That means returning and committing to regular psychiatric care with the proper BPD diagnosis, cutting out of your life those such as Corpse Artist who have reinforced your morbid tendencies, and not having the name of your abuser (and the maiden name of a known accomplice of an abuser) be your legal name.
Similar wisdom comes from some other people. One of them was the excellent Aristotle-influenced Renaissance humanist philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Pico was his last name; “Mirandola” was where he was from. Whereas the early Middle Ages had its Platonic theologians put all emphasis on how man is “fallen” and crummy-by-default, Pico took up the Aristotelian mantle by honoring human rationality and its efficacy. In his Oration on the Dignity of Man Pico pointed out,
Get it? Because he deals with hairs that have roots?
That is very different, by the way, from expecting those around you to pretend not to remember the embarrassing and decidedly-public morbid gestures of your past, as though some previous “you” had vanished, with your body magically and spontaneously being taken over by some undefinable new “you” to replace the previous ones. No, remember the errors of the past, let others remember and speak bluntly before you of those errors, and choose today the mental health that will allow you to make better choices still.
Chris Appleton’s message is apt. Since the twentieth century the intellectual fashion has been to deny free will in favor of saying that what makes you who you are is “nature or nurture.” But actually you are ultimately who and what you choose to commit to being. Choose to commit not to literal mountains but to mental health, the true prerequisite and passage to your liberation and flourishing.
On Thursday, June 18, 2026, I added the quotation from Pico and the section about the wisdom from celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton.
I have found some YouTube videos from psychologists that explain very articulately what happened between us. I was what psychologists call the “Favorite Person” [favorittperson] of someone who has borderline personality disorder. As the psychologists’ understanding predicted would happen, you eventually unpersoned me. It happens that in the role of Favorite Person, you replaced me with Pretentious, Chalky-White-Face-Corpse Artist, as he and his sister-in-law and brother have been all too willing to reinforce your morbid gestures and the façades you have put on.
Dr. Fox explains that one of the “worst coping strategies” is “emotional numbing.” Here, as emotions are often very painful, there is a great temptation to try to avoid emotions and emotional attachment. Such a policy can be phrased as “Keeping my feelings to myself has always been the safest choice.” No, it is not. As Dr. Fox notes, such emotional numbing “temporarily blocks pain but prevents healing.”
In this video, Dr. Fox says that persons suffering from BPD often have difficulties with their memories.
A therapist named Betty DeShong Meador wisely observed, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That empowerment in life can be yours, if only you choose to commit to it. 🥲 That means returning and committing to regular psychiatric care with the proper BPD diagnosis, cutting out of your life those such as Corpse Artist who have reinforced your morbid tendencies, and not having the name of your abuser (and the maiden name of a known accomplice of an abuser) be your legal name.
Similar wisdom comes from some other people. One of them was the excellent Aristotle-influenced Renaissance humanist philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Pico was his last name; “Mirandola” was where he was from. Whereas the early Middle Ages had its Platonic theologians put all emphasis on how man is “fallen” and crummy-by-default, Pico took up the Aristotelian mantle by honoring human rationality and its efficacy. In his Oration on the Dignity of Man Pico pointed out,
...you...may, by your own free will, ...trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. ...you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life [the self-described ‘Sunday nihilists’]; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.More recently, celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton has said the same. He wrote a self-help book explaining that when you’re an adult, what is most responsible for your current character and situation is not the environmental conditioning of the past — even the horrid childhood traumas imposed upon you — as today you have the opportunity to change that, in your case by committing to the beautiful treatment that you need. Hence, Chris Appleton titled his book Your Roots Don’t Define You.
Get it? Because he deals with hairs that have roots?
That is very different, by the way, from expecting those around you to pretend not to remember the embarrassing and decidedly-public morbid gestures of your past, as though some previous “you” had vanished, with your body magically and spontaneously being taken over by some undefinable new “you” to replace the previous ones. No, remember the errors of the past, let others remember and speak bluntly before you of those errors, and choose today the mental health that will allow you to make better choices still.
Chris Appleton’s message is apt. Since the twentieth century the intellectual fashion has been to deny free will in favor of saying that what makes you who you are is “nature or nurture.” But actually you are ultimately who and what you choose to commit to being. Choose to commit not to literal mountains but to mental health, the true prerequisite and passage to your liberation and flourishing.
On Thursday, June 18, 2026, I added the quotation from Pico and the section about the wisdom from celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton.
Friday, February 13, 2026
Amorous Anguirus
Stuart K. Hayashi
This is a practice drawing I did on Feb. 10, 2024, of Anguirus, the first monster ever to co-star in a movie with Godzilla. Anguirus is based on the real-life ankylosaurus, but I always thought Anguirus looked more like a porcupine. Anguirus is a trademark of Toho Co. Ltd.
This is a practice drawing I did on Feb. 10, 2024, of Anguirus, the first monster ever to co-star in a movie with Godzilla. Anguirus is based on the real-life ankylosaurus, but I always thought Anguirus looked more like a porcupine. Anguirus is a trademark of Toho Co. Ltd.
More Info for My Troubled Friend
Stuart K. Hayashi
I have written much-more-interesting blog posts exposing some falsehoods that my troubled friend and I were both told on topics of political economy not directly related to BPD. The truth is in my essays “Is the Pirating of Intellectual Property Just a Form of Intra-Industry Competition?” (spoiler: it’s not) and “Libertarians and the Myth of the Winner-Takes-All Patent Monopoly.”
A therapist named Betty DeShong Meador wisely observed, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That empowerment in life can be yours, if only you choose to commit to it. 🥲 That means returning and committing to regular psychiatric care with the proper BPD diagnosis, cutting out of your life those such as Corpse Artist who have reinforced your morbid tendencies, and not having the name of your abuser (and the maiden name of a known accomplice of an abuser) be your legal name.
I have found some YouTube videos from psychologists that explain very articulately what happened between us. I was what psychologists call the “Favorite Person” of someone who has borderline personality disorder. As the psychologists’ understanding predicted would happen, you eventually unpersoned me. It happens that in the role of Favorite Person, you replaced me with Pretentious, Chalky-White-Face-Corpse Artist, as he and his sister-in-law and brother have been all too willing to reinforce your morbid gestures and the façades you have put on.
Dr. Fox explains that one of the “worst coping strategies” is “emotional numbing.” Here, as emotions are often very painful, there is a great temptation to try to avoid emotions and emotional attachment. Such a policy can be phrased as “Keeping my feelings to myself has always been the safest choice.” No, it is not. As Dr. Fox notes, such emotional numbing “temporarily blocks pain but prevents healing.”
In this video, Dr. Fox says that persons suffering from BPD often have difficulties with their memories.
A therapist named Betty DeShong Meador wisely observed, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That empowerment in life can be yours, if only you choose to commit to it. 🥲 That means returning and committing to regular psychiatric care with the proper BPD diagnosis, cutting out of your life those such as Corpse Artist who have reinforced your morbid tendencies, and not having the name of your abuser (and the maiden name of a known accomplice of an abuser) be your legal name.
Saturday, February 07, 2026
More
Stuart K. Hayashi
I’ve published posts here for the benefit of my troubled friend but the truth is that if she ever came across this blog again, there are much better and more helpful posts I have written. Years ago I made an entire blog on the subject when my knowledge of it was much fresher in my mind: Letters to Derna (Stouthammer).
I have found some YouTube videos from psychologists that explain very articulately what happened between us. I was what psychologists call the “Favorite Person” of someone who has borderline personality disorder. As the psychologists’ understanding predicted would happen, you eventually unpersoned me. It happens that in the role of Favorite Person, you replaced me with Pretentious, Chalky-White-Face-Corpse Artist, as he and his sister-in-law and brother have been all too willing to reinforce your morbid gestures and the façades you have put on.
Dr. Fox explains that one of the “worst coping strategies” is “emotional numbing.” Here, as emotions are often very painful, there is a great temptation to try to avoid emotions and emotional attachment. Such a policy can be phrased as “Keeping my feelings to myself has always been the safest choice.” No, it is not. As Dr. Fox notes, such emotional numbing “temporarily blocks pain but prevents healing.”
A therapist named Betty DeShong Meador wisely observed, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That empowerment in life can be yours, if only you choose to commit to it. 🥲
Also, I have written much-more-interesting blog posts exposing some falsehoods she and I were both told on topics of political economy not directly related to BPD. The truth is in my essays “Is the Pirating of Intellectual Property Just a Form of Intra-Industry Competition?” (spoiler: it’s not) and “Libertarians and the Myth of the Winner-Takes-All Patent Monopoly.”
Years ago, I wrote a post titled “More BPD Treatments on Oahu.” The links on my old post are mostly outdated. Therefore, if my friend somehow stumbles upon this, here is an update.
Psychology Today magazine still has a directory of mental-health professionals in Hawai‘i who treat BPD and with whom you can speak in person. The link to the updated directory, as of my typing this, is here.
I was also impressed to learn that DBT-Hawaii — dialectical behavior therapy is one form of treatment for BPD — is still in operation, and at the same URL as it was so many years ago.
In this video, Dr. Fox says that persons suffering from BPD often have difficulties with their memories.
A therapist named Betty DeShong Meador wisely observed, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That empowerment in life can be yours, if only you choose to commit to it. 🥲
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