Can too much knowledge put our heads in a box?

Look at the major innovators in the boating industries in the last 150 years and see who stands out. There are just a handful of men, that repeatedly show they can find new and better ways to do things and the common thread is they were all trained and educated.

Again, every once and a while a crack pot comes up with something, but then you never hear a peep from them again. This isn't out of the box or innovative thinking, but likely just dumb luck. Then you look at Herreshoff (MIT engineer), Bolger (graduated cum laude from Bowdoin and apprenticed under Lindsay Lord), Hoyt (don't know his education, though I'll bet on a business administration BA at least) and the other key inventors. The one thing that quickly stands clear, is a constant and continuous record of innovation, not just a flash in the pan idea they had after a good drunk, they happen to get lucky with.

Inventors and innovators constantly push the boundaries, especially when they know what and where they are (read education). How many first posts here are of an excited young fellow, with a "great idea" but not a clue how to implement it, let alone understand why it's just not possible and/or practical. With an education, he'd still have the active brain, but could actually apply it to things that can or just might work. I'm reminded of the helium filled hull idea recently posted. I didn't participate in that thread, mostly because of the ridiculousness of the idea, out of hand. With an education, the concept is dead on arrival, just simple physics and some easy mental math as to the volume of gas you'd need.

In short, you can chase your tail or have learned why you don't need to.

 

education is knowledge learned and how to apply it.
Most college grads start their REAL education after they enter their chosen field. The formal system of education is supposedly to give them a well rounded foundation and basic research, communication, and learning skills to EVENTUALLY become experts. You can only become a second class expert by reading books written by first class experts.

IMHO College today is more about CREDENTIALS and proof of survival in a stress filled enviroment, than usable applicable knowledge fresh upon graduation.

 

Very nice and articulated replies, guys. I didn't expect such involvement.

I tend to agree almost entirely with PAR's point of view - the attitude towards innovation and creative thinking is probably an individual trait. However it can, at least partly, be trained and helped to develop, and I think our current educational system doesn't do that job properly.

I also have to note that the video in the OP is not about an uneducated person. Ugo Conti (inventor of the Spider Boat) obviously has a good engineering background. What he lacked, at the time when he invented it, is a specific in-depth knowledge about the naval architecture. The kind of knowledge found in specialist books, which helps us avoid repeating the same errors someone else have done in the past. But can that same knowledge also funnel our efforts towards standardized solutions and make us blind to other ways of arriving to the same goal? In that case a specialist knowledge could perhaps become a double-edged sword.

That's what my doubts from the OP are about.

 

Disciplism.
Many innovators are largely self educated.
Many of the last few hundred years top yacht architects were amateur architects. Never had an apprenticeship in a design office, assigned to draw piping for 5 years.

 

Just recalled that about 2 yrs ago I wrote a post imho closely-related to this topic: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/quick-note-thanks-33451.html#post378970

I still remain of that opinion. Interconnection and exchange of ideas between various (even unrelated) disciplines will be a growing necessity in the future. Our civilization is imho at a point where we are digging into tight and very deep holes, ending up with a myriad of holes next to each other, but separated from each other. In that way everyone get to learn so much about his own hole, but knows so little about neighbouring holes.

There's imho a need for more technical Agoras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora), like this site is, where gathered interdisciplinary knowledge and techniques for problem-solving could be exchanged. And sites like BD.net should be more actively promoted in the academic and industrial ambients, in order to involve a major number of people who can share their ideas.

That's something to think about more thoroughly imho, as I see it as one valid mean of connecting our holes.

 

Ideas are owned and in the hands of investors.. I have a friend would works at an electrical engineering , communication ..."THINK TANK". He and the engineering staff are paid by venture capitalists to innovate.

many innovations are presently asleep, owned by venture capitalists. The technology is either to destructive to present money flows or they are waiting for a monied application.

 

The plaza in mexican pueblos

 

I respectfully disagree.

An education provided a broad base of skills which one then learns to apply towards solving real problems once entering the work place.
It also teaches one where the state of knowledge is in any given field and literally directs student towards the cutting edge of our knowledge and its application.

I am with par- a 'can do' attitude is fine but much reinvention of the wheel and entering blind alleys will occur for those who lack a formal (or otherwise) education in the field.

 

http://library.mysticseaport.org/manuscripts/Garden.cfm

William Garden NA...no degree

 

I agree with you. You augment and better explain what I was trying to say. We aren't in disagreement. I believe I said it gave a good foundation to build upon.

 

Management is business science, but if management is the science of problem solving? Why are most corporate problem solving algorythyms so disfunctional? Why do they invariably include wastefull solution delaying stages devoted to finding someone to blame and deciding their appropriate punishment?

 

I think perhaps the question can be addressed differently if appraising pure design or the more mechanical aspects of engineering.

Look at the excellent 'out of the box' design work of our member yipster.

Once conceptualized- turn it over to a first year student to work out the mechanics of the build. They are secondary to the important innovation in design.

 

Agreed, there are indeed some very interesting ideas in his gallery.

 

One more thought.

In a science education the story of the 'eureka' moment is often told to describe the innovations and their discovery.

One is led to believe that the "prepared mind" in the right place is the person who breaks new ground.

By 'prepared mind', I take it as that person well immersed in trying to solve a given problem and therefor is educated or trained as it were in that endeavor.

Mendel was a modest monk- but was the father of modern genetics.
No degree required- but a lifetime of immersion in a problem; self educated as it were.

The anti-gravity drive when it appears will come out of a physics lab, not from the clerk at the local beer store...

 

One thing came to me about that Spider Boat... It was supposedly created to reduce motions of the nacelle when moving over waves. Well, in every video I managed to dig out, the contraption was moving over a nearly flat water. That's quite odd, because when you find a brilliant solution to a problem, you usually want to show and demonstrate it to the world.
Anyone knows if trials were performed in truly wavy seas, and how did it perform?