Blockbusting the Ether
By Peter LloydThere are many ways to make yourself more innovative and creative. One of the most effective, you and Albert Einstein have mastered. At least you had it mastered at one time in your life.
In Think Naked, Marco Marsan and I present a creative-thinking principle called Blockbuster. We illustrate this Think Naked principle with a familiar childlike practice--stacking building blocks as high as possible and then gleefully knocking them over. More than just kid's play, this instinctual act of nihilism makes innovation possible.
In the first place, creative people are often inspired by the conviction that some old way of doing things falls short of the mark and, more importantly, that there's a better way. Better yet, they are motivated by the opportunity to find that better way.
Children and creative people practice Blockbusting, whether they realize it or not, as naturally as they breathe. Like children, creative thinkers are naturally skeptical, often rebellious, and sometimes destructive. Their Blockbusting is no cute quirk we need to tolerate. It's absolutely necessary for invention and innovation.
Old theories have to give way to new. Newton had to make way for Einstein. Newton and others held the idea that space consisted of a medium called the ether. As Einstein explained, the idea of an ether permeating all of space seemed at one time absolutely necessary in order to afford light the medium it needed to travel as a wave through space.
Cornered by the contradictions that arise when the new idea of electromagnetic fields is introduced into the ether, Einstein could not solve the riddle of Special Relativity until he threw out, or knocked down like a stack of blocks, the idea of ether.
Now comes what makes him the King of Blockbusters: On the record as discarding ether as it had been understood, he reintroduced it, somewhat redefined, in his General Theory of Relativity. Read for yourself how he describes this feat in Ether and the Theory of Relativity.
Einstein's devotion to truth made him the kind of Blockbuster that would
not think twice about busting his own blocks. He knew his thinking would have to make way for ideas that would modify his own. So he knocked down his own blocks before someone else came along and did it for him.
Blockbusting separates science and invention from quackery. It separates innovators and artists from cranks and hacks.
Ether and the Theory of Relativity
Albert Einstein, an address delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leyden
Einstein and the Ether
Ludwik Kostro
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.
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