35. The scripture of invention

The notion of scripts can be used to elaborate on the theory of invention discussed earlier (item 31). When self-service restaurants emerged, compared to service restaurants the order of nodes, and details of their functioning, were changed into entry, selection, paying, seating, eating, and leaving. If one does not know the script, and one enters and sits one will not get food. The altered sequence of activities has implications for the nodes. Selection is no longer done from a menu but by picking up items on display.

In the item on invention I employed a cycle of generalization, differentiation, reciprocation, accommodation and consolidation. They can each be clarified in terms of scripts. In generalization, i.e. application in a novel environment, an existing script is fed into a new superscript. In differentiation, script structure and nodes are preserved but in one or more nodes a different selection of subscripts is made from existing repertoires. In reciprocation one borrows subscripts or entire nodes from other, outside scripts observed in the novel environment. In accommodation, one tries to eliminate obstacles in existing script structure for realizing the potential or efficient use of new nodes, by changing the order of nodes or the nature of their connections. When in this way a new script emerges many secondary changes are needed, in modification of nodes and their repertoires of subscripts, in the process of consolidation.      

The logic also indicates hat there are different levels of novelty: a new selection of subscripts from an existing repertoire, or addition to the repertoire, or a whole new node with its repertoire, or architectural change of network structure. In invention one should also look at the superscript of the user into which the invention has to fit. What changes of that script would the user have to make? The more radical that change, the more difficult it will be to have the innovation accepted.

Cognitively, scripts may be embodied in neural networks. Gerald Edelman’s ‘neural Darwinism’ seems a viable view of how embodied cognition could work, in terms of neural networks. They arise more or less by chance, in diverse, parallel and sometimes rival networks that compete (hence ‘Darwinism’) for reinforcement, according to the frequency, speed and continuity with which they are triggered, yielding easier passage of the thresholds (synapses) between neurons and a greater density of connections with other neuronal groups. New groups can arise from combinations between existing ones. The simultaneous ‘firing’ of neurons can lead to novel connections: ‘firing yields wiring’.

In sum, scripts serve to identify and make sense of perception but are also affected by it, in ‘novel combinations’, yielding novel concepts. I don’t think this process is well characterized by the empiricist phrasing of ‘elementary sense data used as building blocks in the construction of ideas’. All this is hardly described adequately by the phrase that ‘sense data build ideas’. However, the process of assimilating perceptions into scripts does contribute to the change, transformation or breakdown of scripts.