Can we truly invent?

Question

When you create something, what are you doing really? It seems to me like it's simple arithmetic. For example, imagine your average modern bicycle. No one can imagine that design out of nowhere. Even if they're genius, they have to see it part by part. To understand something, you have to break each part down into single concepts. Hence the term "part." You then take into account the effect of putting parts together, (i.e., part 1 + part 2 = operation 1 in your mind.) Those two parts and their operation might become a new single concept in your mind--a new part, allowing you to go further with your creation. The parts of a bicycle that you buy from a store have their own parts as well. Them and their operations had to be worked through minds, combined, tested, and reconfigured until, finally, we get the bicycle. So, what do you think? Can we ever really invent or do we just collect, analyze, reassemble, and combine?

Answer 1

I agree with you completely but one part u r mistaken.The first version of a new thing always comes in our mind. like the ancestors of ours, the early men had to invent all things on their own ,they had nowhere to take any ideas from.

Answer 2

Yes, I believe we can truly invent. For instance look at an ink pen someone had to come up with the idea of creating it.

Answer 3

Genius is looking at what everyone else has looked at, and seeing what no-one else has seen.

That's a paraphrase from somewhere.

Answer 4

there is nothing new under the sun but there are new combinations. So combine, dude