Stuart K. Hayashi
There are many philosophic YouTube videos (including at least four TEDx Talks), putting on a pretense of profundity, saying that because all new ideas are inspired by prior ideas, no artwork or invention or even scientific idea has ever been original. That’s a straw man, as originality doesn’t hinge on the complete absence of prior developments to provide inspiration and impetus for the new development. The presence of *any* greater-than-zero degree of novelty is sufficient to demonstrate originality’s existence. But I’ll give three examples of ideas that, when introduced, were truly original: James Clerk Maxwell proposing the existence of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation airwaves, Marie Curie explaining radioactivity, Karl Landsteiner explaining blood type, and Antoine Lavoisier explaining the oxygen theory of combustion.
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
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. In putting the important pieces together in the exact places where they properly fit, Antoine Lavoisier was truly original.
