Passion is clearly necessary for a truly great idea to take hold among a people--passion either
on the part of the original thinker, the audience, or ideally both. The claim that the most
lucrative subject matter for inspiring great ideas is "commonplace things"may seem initially to
be counterintuitive. After all, aren'great ideas usually marked by their extraordinary character?
While this is true, their extraordinary character is as often as not directly derived from their
insight into things that had theretofore gone unquestioned. While great ideas certainly can
arise through seemingly pure innovation... say, for example, Big Bang cosmology, which developed
nearly all of its own scientific and philosophical precepts through its own process of formation,
it is nevertheless equally true that such groundbreaking thought was, and is, still largely a
reevaluation of previous assumptions to a radical degree... after all, the question of the
ultimate nature of the universe, and man's place in it, has been central to human thought since
the dawn of time. Commonplace things are, additionally, necessary as material for the generation
of "the best ideas" since certainly the success among an audience must be considered in
evaluating the significance and quality of an idea.
The advent of Big Bang cosmology, which occured in rudimentary form almost immediately
upon Edwin Hubble's first observations at the Hooker telescope in California during the early
20th century, was the most significant advance in mankind's understanding of the universe in
over 400 years. The seemingly simple fact that everything in the universe, on the very large
scale, is moving away from everything else in fact betrays nearly all of our scientific knowledge
of the origins and mechanics of the universe.
This slight, one might even say commonplace, distortion of tint on a
handful of photographic plates carried with it the greatest challenge to Man+AJI-s general, often
religiously reinforced, conception of the nature of the world to an extent not seen since the
days of Galileo.
Not even Charles Darwin's theory, though it created more of a stir than Big Bang
cosmology, had such shattering implications for our conceptions of the nature of our reality.
Yet it is not significant because it introduced the question of the nature of what lies beyond
Man's grasp. A tremendous number of megalithic ruins, including the Pyramids both of Mexico and
Egypt, Stonehenge, and others, indicate that this question has been foremost on humankind's
collective mind since time immemorial.
Big Bang cosmology is so incredibly significant in this line of
reasoning exactly because of the degree to which it changed the direction of this generally held,
constantly pondered, and very ancient train of thought.
Additionally, there is a diachronic significance to the advent of Big Bang cosmology, which is
that, disregarding limitations such as the quality of optical devices available and the state of
theoretical math, it could have happened at any point in time.
That is to say, all evidence points to
roughly the same raw intellectual capacity for homo sapiens throughout our history, our progre
merely depended upon the degree of it that a person happens to inherit, a pace that has been
increasing rapidly since the industrial revolution. Yet this discovery had to happen at a certain p
in time or another--it cannot have been happening constantly or have never happened yet still
be present--and this point in time does have its own significance.
That significance is precisely the fact
that the aforementioned advent must have occurred at precisely the point in time at which it truly
could have occured--that is to say, it marks the point in our history when we had progressed
sufficiently to begin examining, with remarkable substantiated acuity, the workings of the
universe across distances that would take millions of human lifetimes to reach or to traverse.
The point for the success of this advent must necessarily have been, additionally, the point at
which the audience concerned was capable and prepared to accept such a radical line of reasoning.
Both factors, a radical, passionate interpretation of the commonplace and the preparedness to
accept such an interpretation, are necessary for the formulation of a truly great idea.
If the passion is absent from an inquiry by the thinker or by the bulk of an audience, the idea
will die out if it comes to fruition at all. If the material is not sufficiently commonplace to
be considered by an informed audience of sufficient size, the same two hazards exist.
Given these two factors, the idea must still be found palatable and interesting by the audience
if it is to hope to gain a foothold and eventually establish itself in a significant fashion.