Blog #137--Necessity Is the Mother of Invention
Humans love to believe we are in control of our lives and create new things out of thin air whenever we wish. I argue the opposite point of view in my book “It’s a Secret, So Pass It On: a Toolbox For Life.” After all, how do we know what we need to invent without a catalyst pushing us in that direction and without a solution popping into our heads independent of our conscious control? We might ask in a prayer or statement of need for an answer to a problem, but we can’t force it to happen on our whim. It may come to us when we need it most, but not necessarily when we demand it.
A recent example of this comes from the only known voice recording of Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. In the recording, made 48 years after the fact, he describes a predicament in which he found himself during the winter of 1891. He was working as a physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was an especially brutal winter, and he was looking for something that could help his young men prevent boredom and keep them from hurting each other with their rough-housing.
He says in the tape recording that one day he was inspired to nail a peach basket at each end of a gymnasium. He had played a game called Duck-on-a-Rock in his native Canada, and this new game was based in part on that one. He placed nine players on each of two teams and had them see how many times they could shoot a soccer ball into the peach baskets.
At first he had few rules, but several major injuries during the first game, including a dislocated shoulder, forced him to add more. He said the main problem was “running with the ball” since that encouraged tackling. I suppose the first game resembled indoor rugby, which is a fairly dangerous sport even when played on grass outside. With more rules, the game evolved into what we have now, an extremely popular game.
Some say Naismith was not the first to invent basketball. Besides the game he played as a boy in Canada, ancient tribes in the American Southwest, Central and South America played a game where they had to throw a rock ball through a hole cut through a large stone. And perhaps a few other enterprising fellows had the same notion pop into their heads as it did with Naismith. But Naismith is the one who is credited with the game’s invention, and he became a long-time coach of the sport.
Regardless who invented it, the game began when an idea formed in their minds secondary to an expressed need. They didn’t tell themselves, “Today I’m going to discover basketball.” They simply felt pressure to create something to solve stated problems. Naismith and possibly others took the idea and ran with it, so to speak. But the invention came secondarily to the necessity to create it.
Naismith’s destiny included a rare opportunity to see his game grow into a popular world-wide phenomenon. In 1936, three years before his death, he observed firsthand the incorporation of basketball into an Olympic sport. It isn’t often someone ahead of his time lives long enough to see such extensive growth of a simple idea. I’m sure many artists and inventors who died before they became famous would envy Naismith for this.
There is no such thing as a solution without a problem preceding it. That is why the statement “necessity is the mother of invention” is a truism.
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