This is intended as a very abstract philosophical question.
Like Einstein with relativity was inspired by a man falling from a roof and a moving train. Most creative ideas seem to boil down to a person moving ideas across domains. Do you think this is always true even if the person is unwilling to admit the root thoughts, or perhaps they are completely unaware of the connections they subconsciously made? Is there truly a provably unique thought or is everything a product of experience?
Everything has to come from experience I think, but it doesn’t always feel like that. I know some songwriters say it’s like a fountain they cannot turn off, coming from somewhere else. Often when I have a problem I am stuck on, letting it go and sleeping works, I can wake up knowing things I didn’t know when I fell asleep.
Things coming from experience doesn’t rule out original, unique or novel ideas at all, though.
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I can’t really say either way. Like the enormity of human knowledge intuitively implies a likely probability of unique thought, but I struggle to name an example.
I have been wondering if my missing intuitive connection here is the scope of human experience.
I think sociologists call it tribal epistemology, which posits that humans primarily rely on their immediate social groups for information and understanding, often finding it difficult to grasp perspectives beyond these. I get the impression the scope of human knowledge and creativity may be directly caused by the true scale of human experience that we struggle to comprehend.