I'm sure most of you've heard of Arthur C. Clarke.

Would you raise your hands? Good.

He said that if he wrote a book

that everybody enjoyed and understood

he said he wouldn't be saying anything new.

Think about that.

What I'm going to talk about is going to change some of your lives:

the way you look at yourself and the way you look at the world around you.

The subject matter is not the kind

you get from ordinary sources or books

so I would like your participation in an experiment.

Some of you might be able to tell what it is

that I draw on the board before I finish

and if you know what it is, interrupt, say "I got it!"

I'm going to start. Can all of you see the board?

I don't think I can make it with this.

Can all of you see the board? Can you hear me all right?

The minute you know what it is, interrupt.

(Audience member) Sinking ship, the Titanic.

- What is it? - Titanic. - OK, great.

If he didn't call that (remember, there's no ship there at all)

there were enough bits for his associative memory

to put that together. You know that's not a ship.

Now, what is this? Some of you older people might guess this.

(Audience member) - An alarm clock - Who did that?

You are amazing!

That's not an... Where's the alarm clock? Well, anyway

if she didn't call that, if she wasn't able to call that

I would have put the little legs on it, the clock, the hammer

everything until somebody called it.

Now, there is still some that cannot see the ship.

So I would have gone all along, put all the windows in Titanic

everything until somebody got up to said "Yeah, Titanic!"

This is an attempt to prove that all of us

are capable of making decisions and arriving at a conclusion

without all of the information prepared for us.

That is a unique quality in human beings: We can put things together.

We do not require the accumulation of a great deal of information.

In this system, if you understand the system quite well

who would you say, this is?

(Audience member) Lincoln? - Who said that?

Who said that? Someone said Lincoln.

I don't see Lincoln, but it is. It would have been Abraham Lincoln.

When I got through with it, I would have gone on with the beard and all the rest.

This is just to prove that people can put something together

and I'm going to try to explain to you

just what creative thinking really is.

I'm going to use old language, the language that I use

with people who are not familiar with this way of thinking.

The old language is that people can think and reason.

I do not believe that is possible.

I have many inventions. I've worked on many different things

but I don't believe that human beings can think or reason.

This is what I do believe. By the way, you don't have to accept anything I say.

During the question period, don't be polite!

Come at it from all angles. Break it down if you can.

This helps me and it helps you.

When I talk about thinking, reasoning and putting things together

we're talking about the forces that shape human behavior.

I believe that all human behavior is lawful

that the reactions and values that all people have

are perfectly lawful to the environment that they come from.

Every human being is perfectly well-adjusted

from where they are coming from

from their background and experience.

If you as a baby were raised by the Seminole Indians

you would behave (if you never saw anything else) like a Seminole Indian.

If you were brought up in any other Indian group

and you had feathers in your headgear

and you were dancing around the fire and I walked over and said

"That's ridiculous! Why are you dancing around the fire with the feathers?"

You don't take your hat, throw it on the ground and say

"I never thought about it that way." We can't do that.

We are victims of culture.

We look at the world with our background.

We have no other way of doing it.

Psychology is kind of a rudimentary form today

an attempt to grasp at the factors that shape human behavior

the facts that are responsible for the way we look at ourselves

other people and the way we behave or, if you wish, misbehave.

I don't believe that any human being misbehaves.

They use whatever tools they know of

whatever tools they're familiar with. Language is a tool.

If someone were to show you a picture of an airplane

(what appeared to be an airplane) without wings;

people look at it, they stand by and they say:

"It will never fly! " but they don't say "How do you propose

to lift off the ground without wings?"

That's the key to communication.

A very famous scientist

(deceased now) tried to get the government and people

to put up sufficient funds to monitor outer space

to try to make contact with extraterrestrial life.

I want to try to say this to you and think about what I say.

Toss it around. I'm using the old language

because you're not that familiar with these values.

If people, beings or things

can travel a hundred million light years

through time and space, they are not humanoid.

The storage system for water would occupy miles

and all of the facilities required by humans

would take up tremendous amounts of space

and require tremendous amounts of energy.

There are people that talk of flying saucers that land

here on Earth and they go to some farmer.

They take him into the saucer and they do all kinds of experiments on him.

First of all

people do not travel hundreds of millions of light years

to pick up some farmer and ask him what kind of suspenders he wears.

Carl Sagan wanted to communicate with extraterrestrials.

He hoped that they, in turn, would communicate with us.

Now you know, that Republicans can't communicate with Democrats.

You know that husbands and wives have difficulty in communicating.

Children and parents have difficulty because the language we use

was designed a long time ago.

It is inherently difficult to get ideas across

in the language that we use today.

However when engineers meet and talk

they speak a different language.

One engineer might present a very thin cable

and say "This can support 5,000 tons"

and the other engineer says "What's its tensile strength?"

He's given that information, then he puts it in a machine

and he snaps it to make sure that it holds to that.

When engineers design an airplane

they do all the calculations (this is a front view

a very rapid drawing of a front view of an airplane.)

They do all the rapid calculations and they figure

what that wing will be able to support.

After all their calculations and after they are certain

they then pile sandbags on the wing

until it breaks off, to make damn sure that it does the job.

That does not exist in everyday language.

In everyday language you don't have that ability.

When an engineer meets another engineer, he says

"I can illuminate an area with this tiny point of light

that has 50,000 square feet.

The engineer says "That's not possible! " he doesn't talk like that.

He says "How do you power that unit?

What kind of voltage does it take?

How do you illuminate that spot? " They ask questions.

The average person says "No, not in a thousand years..."

That's been around for a long time. That is a language of war

hatred, bigotry, prejudice:

the inability to ask questions.

We've got to be very careful about that.

At one lecture I remember at Princeton I was trying to say

that human beings cannot think or reason

(this was the psychology and sociology department).

One of the individuals stood up (one of the staff) and he said "All right

where did the camera come from? There were no cameras at one time.

Someone had to think about a camera.

it just doesn't come out of thin air!"

After doing a lot of work many years ago

in ancient Egypt

or if you have lived out in the country

if there was a hole in a barn wall

that was knocked out

the cows on the outside appeared on the wall of the barn upside down.

In Egypt, you went in this dome to see the upside down world.

There was a little hole here. Day light came in

and you saw people walking upside down on the wall.

How many of you have experienced that kind of phenomenon?

That is essentially the box hole camera.

A simple camera without a lens is just a little hole in a box.

Somebody said "How can I see that image?"

and they used a transparent membrane back here

and they could see the upside-down head, a person or cow

and they asked this question "If only I can retain that image."

That isn't the answer. That's just a question.

"I wonder how I could retain that image."

Years before that, the American Indians

and other primitives have taken tapper cloth

or they'd weave natural materials into a kind of fabric

and then they would take berry juices and dye it different colors.

Sometimes a leaf would fall upon that surface

and after the sun dried it, they had an image of the leaf.

So they began to use dyes from this background.

That all human beings, to understand me better

the first human being that jumped off a precipice with wings, he died.

His brother-in-law wrote "Next time, make the wings larger."

No one starts out right away and solves a problem

unless you have a tremendous background in many different areas.

The next guy that jumped off, he jumped off with larger wings.

He flew a little and then he went [wings collapse]

and the old fisherman said "You gotta brace them wings

like a boat, like a mast.

They're not going to hold! " So they braced them.

Then this individual jumped off the precipice.

He flew but hit a tree

and hurt his leg really badly.

His wife said "You know, John, a fish has a rudder."

Good point! And they stuck the rudder on the airplane.

No one ever sat down and invented a television set

an airplane, the electric light, wireless.

None of that came about by man walking in deep concentration

and then through some ethereal substance.

Bingo! The idea is formulated. It doesn't work that way.

It's hard work.

I make more mistakes than anybody I know

because I try more things.

There's nothing wrong with building something

and finding out that it doesn't work. This is where you get your experience.

There's nothing wrong with criticism.

I remember the first model airplanes I built

went nosing into the ground and I was ashamed of them

and a young engineer told me that my center of gravity had to be corrected;

that is, move the wing forward.

All of us stand on the shoulders of one another

and we shape the future.

Another question that was asked:

"Somebody had to invent the bow and arrow!

Somebody had to think of it! It didn't just come out of nowhere!"

I talked to many Indians and after talking to many Indians

this is what I found out:

Indians used to skin animals

(and this is a lousy drawing of the skin of an animal)

stretched out in the sun.

When the Indians got back

the skin was half the size. It shrunk and became thicker

and they didn't like that at all, so they cut leather into thin strips.

They took an existing frame and they tied that skin

to the frame (some of you may have seen this)

with lace of leather all around to prevent it from shrinking.

When they cut the strips of leather

and put them out in the sun, they shrunk and became fat and short