3 Things You Can Learn From Charles Darwin About Having Big Ideas That Change The World
If you're patient, and willing to see big things hiding in plain sight.
Insight Axis empowers you with practical philosophy.
I’m Zan - follow me on Substack and X.
Do you ever feel:
Like you're stuck in a creative rut?
Like you can't come up with any original ideas?
Like you have a lukewarm imagination?
You’re not alone. We've been brainwashed into thinking that creativity only feeds you a couple of big ideas in random spurts.
But that's not true!
Big ideas don't come through random flashes of creative inspiration.
There's a process.
Who better to learn from than the person who discovered one of the biggest ideas ever?
Enter Charles Darwin, who came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection. His theory launched biology and genetics. But it also disrupted other subjects like economics (Andrew Lo’s Adaptive Markets) and physics (David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality).
Let's dive in and see 3 things we can learn from how Darwin came up with his big idea.
Read to the end for a 4th Bonus!
1. Big Ideas Aren't As Big As You Think
In the first few pages of his book, Darwin listed 17 other people that were thinking about the same ideas. Darwin wasn't coming up with his ideas independently of his peers.
He was actively learning from them, and iterating his ideas with them.
Big ideas don't come from creative sparks of internal imagination. They come from tinkering over time. It's rare for just one person to have the same big idea. Alfred Russell Wallace also came up with Darwin's theory at the same time. Then there was Newton and Leibniz, Tesla and Edison... the list goes on.
Lesson 1: When the time's right, the big idea is obvious and doesn't seem that big.
2. Big Ideas Take A Long Time To Brew
Darwin's key evidence for his theory came from his journey to the Galapagos Islands in 1835. Do you know when he started writing his book to compile his evidence?
21 years later.
Do you know how long it took him to write his book?
3 years.
It took almost a quarter of a century to bring his single big idea to the world. That's a long time to think, iterate, and compile evidence. But that's what it takes to support a big idea.
Lesson 2: As always, we see that patience is key.
3. Big Ideas Are Deceptively Simple
Darwin's idea is so simple that we can teach it to school children. The same is true for many of the big questions of life. Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman were also inspired by very simple questions that a 5 year-old could come up with. Of course, their answers are more complicated, but the point is this:
Lesson 3: Simple questions spark big ideas.
There we have it, 3 lessons from Darwin about having big ideas
Big ideas are come through iteration, not random sparks of imagination.
Big ideas take time to become clear.
Big ideas come from asking simple questions.
4. BONUS Big Ideas Are Staring You In The Face
Darwin didn't do a single experiment or come up with a single equation to come up with his theory. Instead, he did one simple thing:
He looked.
He carefully observed how different breeds and species varied from each other. His keen eye was the only engine that fuelled his idea. Curious observation really is a superpower.
Anyone earlier in history could have come up with the theory of evolution. But nobody bothered to look as closely as Darwin, and actually think about what they were looking at.
Bonus Lesson 4: Just stop and look. The big ideas are staring you in the face
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Song of the week (not sure why, but I always think of this song when I think of Darwin!)
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Zan, these are great principles to keep in mind when we're "stuck" as we all inevitably are at times on what to write or ponder next. I've hoped that some common thread or theme in my my posts would eventually emerge and coalesce around a book-worthy idea. Your post makes me push out my definition of "eventually."
Interesting piece, Zan.
It does seem as though big ideas are sort of grown over time, the initial seed may be a sudden eureka moment, but then that seeds needs lots of cultivation. :)