Why is necessity the mother of all inventions?

Answer 1

really isn't; but in most cases, it's when you need something unusual that you come up with it.

Answer 2

People are inventing things all the time. Necessity allows them to realise a use for it, and helps guide things like design and function. Necessity is also useful in giving particular problems higher priority than others, allowing sharper focus on specific issues. Without the need, inventions would sit around unused, as previous answerers have suggested.

Answer 3

You can't really dismiss necessity completely. I am sure someone in this world is sitting on some amazing invention but they don't know it because there is no necessity for it, at least at the moment. This happens a lot in research. Just as you can stumble on to some amazing discovery, many scientist miss important aspects as well because that is not what they are looking for at the moment!

Answer 4

Invent stems from the Latin for to come upon or find. We often find that which we seek. We often seek that which will make life easier or more profitable, a necessity. As a mother produces a child, a quest (often) produces an invention.

Answer 5

Without a need, an invention would be useless. If someone had invented the cellphone in 1200 AD, there would have been no use for it, as towers, electricity, and other important devices would not have been invented yet. There must be a "need" for an invention to succeed.

Answer 6

Many inventions are come across by mistake or by chance and others because the person who invented them was a creative dreamer and was just playing around and experimenting for their own amusement. Sometimes it is not the inventor, but someone else who realizes that the novelty could be useful for something and then there is someone further who knows how to market it...

Answer 7

This is far from true. Leisure is the mother of invention. If you are scrabbling to make a living you have no time to invent.