Cycles of Invention and Discovery
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Cycles of Invention and Discovery
| Full title | Cycles of Invention and Discovery: Rethinking the Endless Frontier |
|---|---|
| Author | Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Toluwalogo Odumosu |
| Published | 2016 |
| Pages | 160 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | A direct rebuttal to Vannevar Bush: Narayanamurti and Odumosu argue the basic/applied distinction is an artefact of Bush’s 1945 report, that invention and discovery actually cycle into each other, and that Bell Labs worked precisely because it never respected the split. |
Where I heard about it
- A reply to Sarah Guo — in the thread under her question on X (March 2025): “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” The full list of replies is on Is There a Book… (tweet).
Connections
- Science, The Endless Frontier — the report this book is arguing with, also saved in this thread.
- Vannevar Bush — the target of the critique.
- Bell Labs — the counter-example the authors run on.
- Scientific Freedom — the other book on the list attacking the same orthodoxy from a different angle.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.