Throughout my life, as I pursue knowledge, I occasionally think I’ve had an original thought. It is exciting. I’m driven to further research which, in each case to date, has revealed that someone else had the idea before me. Curses. Out thunk again!!
How close to original have I been? I once had an idea that had only been thought of 8 years previously. My worst example was an idea that I later “discovered” had been advocated by Aristotle 2500 years prior. I think if you look at those numbers like a standardized test, the former is 99th percentile stuff, while the latter might clear the mean.
What follows is not quite in the “original thought” category, but I thought the sentiment was fairly unique. Those who know me well have heard my motto, “Question every technical assertion.” Little did I know that an entire Society of thinkers held this as their motto (roughly):
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6186
It’s an interesting little tidbit of history, and yet another confirmation (to me) that I stand in good company as a skeptic, even if I “came up with” the motto 350 years too late. (In truth I can only be faulted for, say 23 of those years, as I wasn’t alive for the first 307 and I had not broken the spell of Catholic indoctrination until age 21 or so.)