The Intellectual History of Innovation

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I've been studying the intellectual history of innovation in my spare time ever since I got the invitation to lecture on it. And as I mentioned before, I think you can basically break up humanities intuitions of innovation into largely three periods. So here goes all the way from Zina Fon who's one of the first at least recorded to use the Greek phrase kenotomia and he was proposing a new way for people to do minds. Then you have the Reformation as well as the Republic period that formed innovation in a way. And then you have our modern industrial period. In this we'll call it in antiquity. The dominant view of innovation was that it was bad that it probably

Ahead of the release of the next episode of his lecture series on René Girard, Johnathan Bi returns for his second appearance on the show. He and Jim discuss Girard, prestige, innovation, AI, and much more. Enjoy! Important Links:

Show Notes:

The Girardian notion of prestige
What proof is there for mimesis?
The difference between mimesis and status signalling
Philosophical critiques of Girard
Girard on innovation
Historical understandings of innovation
A conversation between a pessimist and an optimist
AI, progress and the panopticon
Could we ban innovation?

Books Mentioned:

The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It; by Will Storr
The Alchemy of Finance; by George Soros
The Laws of Imitation; by Gabriel Tarde
When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer; by René Girard
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World; by David Deutsch
The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England; by Paul Slack
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future; by Peter Thiel