Mad Science

Chapter 14: Dethroning the kings of invention

Dear friends,

Controversial opening statement: We’ve never actually had freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech (as a government protected right) was always an illusion. A good illusion (and one I support absolutely) but an illusion nevertheless. If I had understood this sooner it wouldn’t have shocked me so much to see the abandonment of the first amendment in recent years. Is this surprising? Maybe it shouldn’t be. We would be naive to expect society to embrace controversial speech just because a government says it’ll protect you. Our default should be, “I’m going to say what I need to say and accept the consequences even if it means I am hated, jailed, or killed.” If your words have power, people will try to silence you. Expect it. Be prepared because your words will inevitably encounter resistance.

I don’t use the term, “freedom of speech” in this week’s chapter, but it’s there, lurking beneath the destruction of one of history’s greatest scientists, Nikola Tesla.

Stay creative. And stay safe. Your words have power, and that makes you dangerous.

Your friend,
Ade

“I had to expand what I had already learned by a great deal. I had to unlearn a great deal that I had already been taught.” —Buckminster Fuller

An exhausted beetle crawled across the palm of a young boy’s hand. The child rotated his arm as the bug walked, creating an endless treadmill for his little friend. Around and around the June bug went until eventually it flew away. As he watched it leave, the boy made a calculation. How many million bugs were there? If you could harness the energy of enough bugs could you power the world?

Every creation begins as a fragile, vulnerable insect awkwardly stepping into the periphery of your mind. It circles your mind, you hold it, tempt it to capture your attention. An idea begins to form, an empty space the shape of something to come. You are the first user of this idea, user zero.

Inspired by his calculation of bug power, the boy started building a prototype of a power generator. He collected all the beetles he could find and began gluing them to the propellors of a windmill. As the bugs tried to escape, the spindle turned. Success! With his theory validated, he showed his work to anyone who would listen.

His friends only saw a toy. They were entertained by the misfortune of the bugs but couldn’t understand the fanaticism of their odd friend. Grownups saw torture. What kind of kid kills so many insects for amusement? And why isn’t he playing with the other children?

His mother was in awe of the invention. She praised his ingenuity, gently questioned the ethics of his bug-killing device, and told him that his mind was capable of changing the world. Imagine a different parent in this situation, a mother who discouraged the ambition of her young inventor.

In the vulnerable moments of uncertainty about our abilities we look at the faces of our parents searching for approval and encouragement. Had this boy found shame in his mother’s eyes, Nikola Tesla may never have unlocked the mysteries of electricity. Had his experiments harvesting the energy of beetles as a child been thwarted, Tesla may never have harnessed the power of Niagara Falls leading to the electrification of the world.

It only takes one trusted voice to keep our visions alive, a mentor who praises our ingenuity, gently questions our ethics, and believes in our unlimited potential.

How many children have had their inventive flames extinguished by the spittle of grownups who dowsed the flames of innocent creativity with criticism? How many of us as adults yearn for the days of our childhood when everything was still possible? How much of what we call “talent” is really the result of a creative spirit that somehow survived the crippling contact with negativity and persevered?

It is not a stretch to diagnose Tesla as the type of child who today would be medicated. He had imaginary friends, he saw visions, he barely slept. There are limits to how much of a child’s world can be imaginary before an adult steps in and re-establishes reality. Today, the creation of imaginary worlds is mostly outsourced by modern children to fantasies that play out on digital screens. The effort required to trigger the imagination is simply a matter of flipping a channel or opening an app. Tesla had to work a bit harder to escape his reality. He wrote:

“Then I began to take mental excursions beyond the small world of my actual knowledge. Day and night, in imagination, I went on journeys — saw new places, cities, countries, and all the time I tried very hard to make these imaginary things very sharp and clear in my mind. I imagined myself living in countries I never had seen, and I made imaginary friends, who were very dear to me and really seemed alive.

This I did constantly until I was about seventeen, when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then, to my delight, I found that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings, or experiments. I could picture them all in my mind.”

When Tesla’s ideas left the safe egg of his mind, they encountered the wind tunnel of opposition. Little compares to the destructive power of a trusted mentor to damage fragile creativity. Tesla describes a classroom experiment where an instructor demonstrated a machine that was sparking badly. Tesla naturally brainstormed ideas that might reduce the sparks. The teacher rebuked Tesla, ridiculing his ideas as “equivalent to a perpetual motion scheme.” Of the experience, Tesla said,

“This statement from such a high authority caused me to waver in my belief for some time. Then I took courage and began to think intently of the problem, trying to visualize the kind of machine I wanted to build, constructing all its parts in my imagination.”

The idea captivated Tesla, and for years he imagined solutions to the machine. Finally the solution appeared in his mind as he walked in the park while he quoted a poem to a friend.

“Even while I was speaking these glorious words, the vision of my induction motor, complete, perfect, operable, came into my mind like a flash. I drew with a stick on the sand the vision I had seen. They were the same diagrams I was to show six years later before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.”

Like an unexpected beetle, the idea appeared from nowhere. Inspired by the insight, Tesla refined his mental process. He systematized his thinking so that he could replicate his success with future inventions.

“After inventing this motor, I gave myself up more intensely than ever to the enjoyment of picturing in my mind new kinds of machines. It was my great delight to imagine motors constantly running. In less than two months, I had created mentally nearly all the types of motors and modifications of the system which are now identified with my name.”

It is worth contrasting Tesla’s method of invention against the process of his rival, Thomas Edison. The lightbulb was born out of Edison’s endless determination to find a material suitable for the filament. It took trial-and-error of 6,000 substances to create a marketable product. This is the scientific method in action, the process that most of us are comfortable with. We test hypotheses through observation, measurement and experiment.

Done correctly, nothing can withstand the brute force of a steady application of the scientific method. That is why it is so difficult to imagine an alternative to the scientific method that doesn’t sound insane. Indeed, sanity itself has become linked with an unwavering belief in all things scientific. The fact that Tesla is thought of as the original “mad scientist” stereotype is not a coincidence. Break from scientific tradition at your own risk.

At the dawn of the 20th century, at the genesis of the most important inventions in human history, you would expect to find the scientific method cranking out hit after hit. And indeed, there is Edison, the quintessential champion of the scientific method. But we also find Tesla, a scientist who practiced something else. Tesla described his process in his auto-biography. As you read Tesla’s essay, monitor your thoughts. Note the resistance you feel to his words, the urge you have to label him mad. Also note the moments when what he describes aligns with your experience. Tesla wrote,

“I have evolved what is, I believe, a new method of materializing inventive ideas and conceptions. It is a method which may be of great usefulness to any imaginative man, whether he is an inventor, business man, or artist.

Some people, the moment they have a device to construct or any piece of work to perform, rush at it without adequate preparation, and immediately become engrossed in details, instead of the central idea. They may get results, but they sacrifice quality.

Here, in brief, is my own method: After experiencing a desire to invent a particular thing, I may go on for months or years with the idea in the back of my head. Whenever I feel like it, I roam around in my imagination and think about the problem without any deliberate concentration. This is a period of incubation.

Then follows a period of direct effort. I choose carefully the possible solutions of the problem. I am considering, and gradually center my mind on a narrowed field of investigation. Now, when I am deliberately thinking of the problem in its specific features, I may begin to feel that I am going to get the solution. And the wonderful thing is that if I do feel this way, then I know I have really solved the problem and shall get what I am after.

This feeling is as convincing to me as though I already had solved it. I have come to the conclusion that at this stage the actual solution is in my mind subconsciously, though it may be a long time before I am aware of it consciously.

Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind, I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch, I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made accurate drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop.

The inventions I have conceived in this way, have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum tube wireless light, my turbine engine, and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.”

This is not the scientific method. And yet, to most creators this description doesn’t sound crazy. Few of us can hold working prototypes in our minds, but Tesla’s words sound like the creative process that most of us are used to. Our best ideas strike us in the shower. Our creative wells go dry for months and then out of nowhere insight appears. You would expect inspiration to strike in the laboratory, the theoretical home of the scientific method, but that is rarely the case. It is no coincidence that Tesla’s first mental breakthrough came to him while he was on a walk with a friend, while talking about poetry.

Does science have room for this type of thinking? I would like to think the answer is yes. Ask anyone who is making actual contributions to scientific knowledge and they will confirm that while they fully endorse the scientific method, their actual insights are completely unexplainable. It is only the scientists in the laboratory, the lab rats conducting experiments by checklists, who struggle to believe in the unpredictable power of creative invention. Creativity boils out of chaos, not test tubes.

At the risk of dangerously over-simplifying the methods of the two greatest inventors in history, let’s craft some new terminology. Let’s call the trial-and-error method of incremental improvement Edisonian. For the ideas that require an intuitive leap of imagination, let’s call this method Teslian.

Some objects are opaque, their inner workings are hidden from us. Other objects are transparent, more easily understood because of the affordances they provide. These concepts map perfectly to Teslian and Edisonian methods. The inventions of Edison flourish in the realm of the transparent, while Tesla’s inventions dominate the opaque.

Edison was prolific in the realm of the transparent. He formed hypotheses based on observations, tested them through trial-and-error until insights revealed themselves. His amazing record of 1,093 patents were variations and incremental breakthroughs within light and power (389), the phonograph (195), the telegraph (150), batteries (141), and the telephone (34).

Tesla succeeded in the realm of the opaque. His methods uncovered uncharted territories, areas that required imaginative leaps rather than incremental steps. His inventions included alternating current, the radio, remote control boats, neon lights, the x-ray, and wireless power. Tellingly, Tesla preferred to be called a discoverer instead of an inventor despite having 278 patents.

Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of scientific method behind Tesla’s work. Likewise, Edison’s inventions required intuitive leaps of imagination. My point isn’t to disparage Edison or the scientific method, I simply want to point out that there are different modes of thought. These aren’t competing methods, they are complimentary to anyone committed to the creative process. Certain problems lend themselves to different mental models.

A Teslian practice fills in the gaps that are missing due to an opaque problem. It does this by intuition, incubation, and a cultivation of a mental space capable of imaginative leaps.

An Edisonian approach starts with an understanding of the problem because the components are more transparent. It may take a while, but breakthrough is only a matter of time and determination.

For problems that can be solved by brute force, like “what is the best material for conducting electricity,” Edisonian methods are the correct tool for the job. For problems of uncertainty, like “what is an alternative way to create light,” you are better off using Teslian thinking.

With the dominance of scientific method thinking it isn’t surprising that we are very good at brute force thinking within our specialities but not very good at imaginative thinking that unlocks unknown possibilities.

As technology advances, the opacity of our inventions inevitably shifts from transparent to opaque because complexity is unavoidable. We can’t iterate ourselves out of our mess. The problems we face are opaque but our thinking is Edisonian. We are using the wrong tool for the job.

It is unlikely that you or I will ever be able to design entire engines in our mind, but cultivating our mental space is critical if our ideas are to outgrow the limitations of our education. Compounded by the fact that most of us haven’t practiced Teslian thinking since we were children, it may take a little effort to prepare for. How is it done?

First, let’s create a little space. If this is going to work, we need to knock down some walls, clear out some mental debris and attempt to hollow out enough room for big ideas to stretch out and breathe. You probably already have your methods for doing this. Maybe you put on noise-canceling headphones and crank up the techno music. Maybe there is a quiet room you escape to when you really need to get some work done. Maybe you go for walks, meditate, or drink tea. There is no right or wrong way to get there.

When the mental conditions are just right, you inhabit a space where anything is possible. You have complete control here. There is infinite space, unlimited time, and the freedom to entertain all options, no matter how bizarre. This is where user zero operates.

Objects appear at your whim. They transform with ease. Here you can force collisions of opposing ideas. You can suspend competing ideas and force them to battle in death matches. You get to be the first person to play with prototypes, generate the rough sketches, float the rawest hypotheses. It is a special, almost sacred place.

I probably don’t need to tell you that this space is under attack. Right now my words are probably competing with the vibration of the phone in your pocket or the ping of an incoming message. Even if your phone is silent there is still that nagging pull, the fear of missing out. There is a constant thought that something important is happening in the news, on social media, or in the other room.

At work we feel like we can’t ignore the distractions. We can’t afford to miss the meetings, we can’t afford to ignore the questions of colleagues. The few remaining chunks of uninterrupted time in our day are too short to reasonably get productive work done. We end up doing lots of tiny tasks and rarely get blocks of time and space big enough to find flow.

Tiny tasks make as appear busy to colleagues, helping to perpetuate the impression that we are earning our paycheck. We avoid incubation because it looks like inaction. Once your consciousness has turned inward, the external signals of productivity shut down. It would be better to be caught watching a YouTube video than to be caught gazing into space.

If we are able to reclaim our Teslian mental abilities, what next? What reward awaits the person who returns from the cave with a genuinely new idea?

For Tesla, his legacy seems to be a caricature drawing as a mad scientist. Aside from odd appearances in movies or television shows as a convenient plot point, Nikola Tesla has mostly vanished from casual conversation. Even the car company that appropriated his last name does more to obscure the inventor than to keep his legacy alive.

His reclusive lifestyle and his provocative predictions made him an easy target for journalists hoping for a sensational headline. It didn’t take much coaxing for a reporter to get the father of electricity to talk about life on Mars or death-beams capable of destroying planes from 250 miles away. Nothing sells newspapers like crazy celebrity stories. Is this our fate?

As creators, we can’t wait to show people our masterpieces. We expect it to be received with open arms, for people to recognize the genius of our ideas. It rarely goes that way.

Our peers might acknowledge our effort but don’t fully support our odd fanaticism. Instead of praise we get, “You must have too much free time on your hands.” The people in charge shoot holes in our balloons, grounding our vessels before they can take flight. Instead of support we get, “Cute idea, kid, but that’s not on the roadmap.”

Nikola Tesla describes the opposition to creative thinking like this,

“Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

If truly original ideas are met with opposition, what happens to the awful ideas? You might have already guessed the answer. They receive a green light and are unleashed upon the world to the applause of idiots and the objection of nobody. In the next chapter we dissect some embarrassing moments in human invention.