What Granny Smith and Issac Newton Can Teach Us About the Opportunities to Create Breakthroughs by Capitalizing on Observation and Curiosity
“Every problem has a gift concealed in it for you. We look for problems because we need the gifts.”--Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull
I’m sure you have heard the first story I will share with you in today’s blog but I suspect the second story will be “news” to you.
Isaac Newton is reputed to have experienced his breakthrough thinking about gravity while sitting beneath an apple tree contemplating the mysterious universe. Suddenly -
A manuscript for what would become one of the earliest biographies of Newton, entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life, relates what Newton told archaeologist William Stukeley one evening while they were enjoying tea, under the shade of some apple trees:
"After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and...he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself..."
The second story involves Maria Smith. Maria and her husband, Thomas, immigrated to the Ryde district in the New South Wales Colony of Australia from England, an area known for fruit growing. The Smiths were respected growers of fruits. Maria Smith enjoyed looking for the unusual and using it in a novel way. One day, at the age of sixty-nine, Maria noticed a seedling growing out of a pile of discarded French crab apples. It seemed different so she nurtured it. The seedling was a natural mutant which had some very attractive features and Mrs. Smith began to work a few of these seedlings trees. Soon thereafter other local orchardists.began planting a large number of these apple trees.
Maria Smith died two years later. Two decades would pass before her apple, exhibited as “Smith’s seedling,” would win prizes as a cooking apple and be certified by the Australian government for export. That apple is known today as the Granny Smith apple.
Thoreau mused, “the world is but a canvas to the imagination.” Creativity, in thought and action, is the capacity to create something which didn’t exist in that form before. It involves taking something we have observed in the canvas of our surrounding world and organizing it into a material form that is pleasing to the eye, the ear, or the mind.
Frank Lloyd Wright observed, “In much of our preparation we don’t really know what we are preparing for.” And Seneca concluded: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Newton and Granny Smith had both prepared themselves to be observant and to reflect on what might spring from that canvas. In both cases being open to a new possibility allowed them to capitalize on their observations.
Has your curiosity led you to breakthrough thinking? What can we do to prepare ourselves to be more observant and reflective?
The Best is Yet to Come!!!
“Almost all creativity involves purposeful play”—Abraham Maslow
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