How to invent artifacts and ideas

Weber, Robert J.; Perkins, David N.

doi:10.1016/0732-118x(89)90037-8

Cited by 25 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…In another project Finke et al (1995) demonstrated that people could use imagery to produce more creative responses to design like problems if, in addition to combining shapes to produce something new, they were required to create the constituent parts, using mental imagery. Weber (1992), Weber et al (1990) and Weber and Perkins (1989) examined the way contemporary inventors in engineering produce new solutions to problems. Weber et al found that inventors routinely use visual mental images to both represent possible inventions, and to vary parameters and to test the effects of the variations.…”

Section: Images and Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Creative Thinking, Values and Design and Technology Education

Middleton

2005

Int J Technol Des Educ

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The development of Design and Technology curricula has always been premised on the importance of the act of designing and of the value of the contingent activity of creative thinking. Despite this, there has been a great deal of uncertainty about methods for developing creative thinking abilities in design and technology students. However, the results of research from cognitive psychology, engineering and invention suggest some promising strategies for application in design and technology classes. Moreover, these strategies are emerging during a time when issues concerning ethics and values are also being raised. This paper presents a brief summary of the research into problem-solving and design. It then explores a range of creative thinking strategies, and of their possible applications in design, and goes on to argue that the strategies and settings that promote creative thinking in design and technology make the area not only one that is suitable for addressing ethics and values, but that it may be one of the major reasons for including design and technology programs in school curricula.

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Section: Images and Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Creative Thinking, Values and Design and Technology Education

Middleton

2005

Int J Technol Des Educ

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“…This may be a good way of capturing the interrelated structure of cultural traits noted above, as well as bringing in the evo-devo approach discussed earlier (indeed, recipes are also a common metaphor for how genes operate: Dalton 2000;Ridley 2003). Cognitive psychologists (Weber et al 1993;Weber & Perkins 1989) have independently arrived at a similar concept to the recipe using schema theory, where an artifact is seen as a "frame" which has variable "slots" (representing the ingredients or physical characteristics of the artifact) and which is associated with "action scripts" (the behavioural rules required to make or use the artifact). Plotkin (1999; makes a similar point that cultural traits are best conceived of as hierarchically organised knowledge structures such as schemas, scripts, or frames (although it remains to be seen whether these concepts apply to other aspects of culture, such as organisations: Knudsen & Hodgson).…”

Section: R32 Cultural Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

2006

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We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in "social cognitive neuroscience," although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

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“…One of invention's fundamental strategies is the treatment of simple inventions as the building blocks of more complex integrations, a procedure we call joining (Weber and Dixon 1989;Weber and Perkins 1989). A join classification was suggested to us, in part, by the problems with mixed cases in the prior attempts at functional classification, where cases such as the claw hammer covered two categories, disassembly and assembly.…”

Section: A Use Scriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The use of symbols allows for ready comparison, abstraction, and generalization. As our symbolic description, we have chosen the frame (Lenat 1978;Minsky 1975;Weber and Dixon 1989;Weber and Perkins 1989), although other data structures, such as semantic nets or mental models (Carlson and Gorman 1989), would also be appropriate. As we use the concept, a frame is a collection of categories like context, purpose, principle, parts, and action that take on particular values, relations, or particular procedures.…”

Section: A Symbolic Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Studying Invention: The Hand Tool as a Model System

Weber¹,

Dixon²,

Llorente³

1993

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Invention is an important source of technology, and, to understand invention, one needs a model system or prototype. A candidate model system is the hand tool. Using the hand tool as an example, the authors present a systematic approach to invention, dealing with description, classification, and joining or integrating simpler forms. Heuristics for when to integrate are presented. Finally, the authors introduce a new way of thinking about hand tools: simple spatial transformations applied to an abstract element make possible the re-creation of a large number of tools. Mokyr (1990) has argued that invention is one of the principle sources of technological development. On the face of it, this is obvious but it has not always been so. Because the process of invention is mysterious, scholars have typically dealt with processes like diffusion that are more readily observed and understood. Although Mokyr goes a long way toward restoring the importance of invention to technology's origins, he does not provide any systematic framework for understanding it.No wonder why. Invention is a complex creative act. How can we understand it better? Other disciplines approach their complexity through the study of a model system. Just as genetics has its fruit fly or Drosophila and medical research its laboratory mouse and tissue culture, so we need a model system or prototype to study invention (Weber 1989(Weber , 1992Weber and Dixon 1989; AUTHORS' NOTE: We wish to thank Linnda Caporael and an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful suggestions. Send reprint requests to Robert J. Weber,

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How to invent artifacts and ideas

Cited by 25 publications

References 16 publications

Creative Thinking, Values and Design and Technology Education

Creative Thinking, Values and Design and Technology Education

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

Studying Invention: The Hand Tool as a Model System

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