Forks, Phonographs, and Hot Air Balloons: A Field Guide to Inventive Thinking

Oxford University Press | 292 pages | PDF | 14 MB
How do inventions take shape? How did the inventors of the sewing needle, the hammer, or the wheel find their ideas? Are these creations the result of random events, or are hidden principles at work?
Using everyday objects most of us take for granted --from forks and Velcro to safety pins and doorknobs-- noted cognitive psychologist Robert Weber takes a fascinating look at how our world of inventions came into being, and how the mind's problem-solving abilities gave them the forms they have.

Weber finds a hidden intelligence at work in everyday objects as well as recurrent heuristics (basic principles or rules of thumb) that are common among many of our most successful inventions--heuristics powerful enough to generate endless new ideas.
Weber ranges across the work of Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, the Wright brothers, as well as grade-school children who have won national awards for their inventions, revealing that the same principles are at work in the discoveries of all of them.
Basic principles of invention, he writes, govern how we think, solve, and manipulate ideas, whether mechanical or mental, real or mythological.

Weber's playful, original, and insightful look at the inventions around us reveals a hidden intelligence in everything from screws to tea bags to synthesizers--an intelligence based on principles of creativity and problem-solving.
His fascinating account sheds light on how the mind hones its most original thoughts and products, and provides a field guide for how we can tap into our own creativity.

Contents
Prologue: Peeling an Apple
I The Hidden Intelligence of Invention
1. A Context for Invention
2. Novice Invention and a Problem-Based Diary
3. Expert Invention and the Turn of the Screw

II An Invention Framework
4. Describing an Invention
5. Evaluating and Comparing Inventions
6. Understanding the Created World

III The Heuristics of Invention
7. Heuristics as the Engine of Variation
8. Single-Invention Heuristics
9. Multiple-Invention Heuristics: Linking
10. Multiple-Invention Heuristics: Joining
11. Transformational Heuristics
12. Discovering Heuristics
13. Applying Heuristics: Inventions After Their Time?

IV Common Invention Themes
14. A Material World
15. The Interface's Form
16. The Art of Containment
17. Procedure's Way
18. Transgenic Myth to Transgenic Mouse
Epilogue: Invention Through the Looking Glass

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