The best ideas arise from passionate interest in commonplace things

The world is changing constantly, thanks to the advances in science and technology, the changes in the sociocultural and political mileu over the centuries.  At the root of all these changes are innovative ideas. Where do these ideas arise from? Many people think that the best ideas arise from passionate interest in commonplace things. I partially agree with this statement. I believe that ideas can happen serendipitously and can  also develop through years of deliberate efforts focusing on complex scientific hypotheses. Let me illustrate this with a few examples.

Newton’s discovery of the laws of gravity stemmed from his passionate interest in the subject after he noted an apple falling from a tree. Though this incident could be apocryphal, scientific world abounds with similar scenarios. Archimedes principle was developed after he noted the water overflowing from his bath tub, stimulating him to think about the connection between the density of the object immersed in water and the amount of water displaced by it.

Ideas can arise serendipitously. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin is a case in point. He was passionately about the properties of microorganisms, a not so commonplace subject. While culturing Staphylococci, a species of bacteria, he accidentally left some tissue culture samples unchecked for a while. Molds grew in the unchecked petri dishes, and he observed that the inhibition of bacterial growth around one particular type of mold, from which with the help of other scientists, the first antibiotics penicillin was meticulously isolated.

In summary, I believe that ideas can happen when some one is passionately interested in things granted as mundane. They can also occur by chance or by deliberate and thoughtful research.