How to Innovate by Aristotle

Author:Aristotle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

4

The Benefits of Competition

The ancient Greeks famously valued competition, and the competitive nature of Greek society has been highlighted by historians. The Greeks competed for athletic prizes, military glory, and artistic rewards. In ancient Athens, annual dramatic festivals, such as those held in honor of the god Dionysus, were the locus of intense competition between rival playwrights for coveted prizes. In Politics book 2 (see the selection printed in the final chapter of this book), Aristotle even tells of a proposal by Hippodamus to institute a formal contest to discover new legal or constitutional measures.

Necessity, it is said, is the “mother of invention”; so perhaps competition could be called the father. This chapter considers two ancient Greek accounts of competitive innovation, the first concerning the development of naturalistic painting in Athens, the second relating the earliest creation of artillery weapons in ancient Syracuse.

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