The Invention of "What"

My reasons for posting the following are not yet fully-formed in my mind. Take it then at your own leisure, at your own pace.

From Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air":

"...in Priestley's age at least, leisure time was where ideas happened. You can't dabble in scientific experiments when you've got to use all your cognitive resources just to put food on the table, or when you don't even have a table to put the food on. Priestley was a professional minister and educator, in that he was paid directly for those labors, but in some fundamental sense he was an amateur scientist, particularly through the first two decades of his life. Like most of his Enlightenment-era peers, he was a hobbyist where science was concerned."

Priestley reached the top of Maslow's pyramid. His journey unburdened by worries about his next meal or the roof over his head; someone is paying him to think and to pass on knowledge. The latter action made Priestley something to talk about, as well. Though he was mistaken in some of his beliefs, he expended energy in putting his true and false thoughts to paper and mailing them to friends and associates around the world, including Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's thoughts on sharing information could be best said in his own words (quoted by Johnson in "Invention").

"These Thoughts, my dear Friend, are many of them crude and hasty, and if I were merely ambitious of acquiring some Reputation in Philosophy, I ought to keep them by me, 'till corrected and improved by Time and farther Experience. But since even short Hints, and imperfect Experiments in any new Branch of Science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good Effect, in exciting the attention of the Ingenious to the Subject, and so becoming the Occassion of more exact disquisitions (as I before observed) and more compleat Discoveries, you are at Liberty to communicate this Paper to whom you please; it being of more Importance that Knowledge should increase, than that your Friend should be thought an accurate Philosopher."

This sounds much like what we see going around the Internet -- on blogs, and comments, and discussion groups -- the sharing of thoughts and ideas in various stages of completeness and validity. Much like this post here. My own leisure time for the day is at an end and I must now click 'publish post' but will return tomorrow with more stuff.