Four lessons on innovative thinking from Charles Darwin

His passion for discovery, research, complex problem solving, and error recognition is said to have helped Charles Darwin create successful research.

Charles Darwin, a British biologist, is one of the most influential scientists of all time with his famous theory of evolution. In addition to medicine, algorithms based on Darwin's work are also applied in everything from logistics to engineering, and are said to be a major contributor to artificial intelligence research.

More than 150 years after Darwin first published "On the Origin of Species," his theory of evolution remains one of the most essential and popular scientific tools. However, the value is not only in his research, but his innovative thinking process also leaves many valuable lessons.

According to Greg Satell, creative consultant and author of books on thinking, the first lesson from Darwin was the value of discovery . Today, when thinking about innovation, most people are concerned with adaptability and entrepreneurship.

"Aspirational young people often join a startup and repeat the process on a successful product. The goal is to learn from that failure quickly and with little loss, and then start. run into a successful business model while still having capital. If it doesn't work, they go into another startup and try again," Satell argued.

Meanwhile, Darwin followed a very different path. An ordinary student, but with a passion for geology and biology, Darwin signed up for a five-year cruise aboard the HMS Beagle to explore South America and the Pacific Ocean in 1831, as a naturalist way. It was this period that brought him the observations that led to his groundbreaking work.

British scientist Charles Darwin. Photo: The International Museum of Photography in New York.

Darwin's first discoveries related to geology. He found a series of seashells on the top of the mountain, helping to prove the theory that the world was not always what it is, but was formed over millions of years. In the early 19th century, this was considered a radical idea.

What impressed Darwin most, however, was the incredible diversity of life he witnessed with his own eyes. For someone who has never left England, it is extremely new to see each land, or small island, grow completely different species of flora and fauna. These administrative experiences are said to be the foundation of the theory of evolution.

Satell believes that Darwin's innovative thinking also comes from his ability to synthesize existing ideas . In addition to the new discoveries, the long voyage aboard the HMS Beagle gave him more time to read. The book that particularly influenced Darwin was Charles Lyell's "Principles of Geology," which helped him explain observations of seashells on mountaintops.

After returning to England, Darwin read an essay by the demographer Thomas Malthus, which described the process of populations growing faster than the resources supporting them. This essay is considered the final piece of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

If the world is constantly changing, as Lyell points out, and the population is always larger than the resources that support them, as Malthus argues, there must be a constant competition for survival. Under such conditions, traits favorable to a given environment will be inherited, while unfavorable traits will be lost.

Therefore, Darwin's theory is said to have combined Lyell's ideas about geology, observations from Malthus about population, and discoveries that he himself meticulously documented during the voyage.

Although Darwin's theory of evolution has proven to be one of the most successful studies in the history of science, it is far from perfect, and Darwin realized it soon after "On the Origin of Species" was published. Some aspects of the original theory are seriously flawed, such as the idea of ​​heredity, which assumes that children inherit on average the traits of their parents.

If genetics worked out that way, family members would become more and more similar over time, rather than more diverse. In addition, natural selection depends on the ability to adapt to change, so the idea of ​​heredity contradicts the very theory Darwin was trying to formulate.

Therefore, Darwin's work remained incomplete for about half a century, until different scientists found the general laws of heredity, which had been published by the Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel since 2001. 1865, shortly after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", but the two had never known each other's work.

According to Satell, Darwin also left a lesson in the ability to handle complex problems by approaching small parts. His theory is so complex that it seems impossible to find out, especially in an age where most people live their entire lives in the place of their birth, a lot of people can't read, and books are too expensive for most people.

Darwin began the process of unraveling the idea, that millions of competing species exist in an ever-changing environment, by painstakingly recording each and every species he found.

Theorist Sam Arbesman says today's complex problems should be approached in the same way. Cataloging and documenting each piece can help to find a more complete theory, as Darwin's work combined with Mendel's would produce the complete work.