A Report On the Lecture by Professor Martin L.Perl

Luckily,we had the chance to listen to the lecture on Developing Creativity and Innovation in Engineering and Science delivered by Professor Martin L.Perl.Now I would like to share my ideas and experience on this lecture and topic with you.

First,I fully agree with Professor Martin L.Perl on the viewpoint that "Creativity is sought everywhere".Of course you can seek creativity in arts,entertainment and so on,but also you can seek creativity in daily common activities.Please don't look down upon small things,which actually reflect your wisdom and character.In my view,it is really necessary to spend some time thinking about small daily things to live and work efficiently,such as how to get to a place in a short time by shortcut,how to buy everyday supplies to save money.Why spend time on small things?Because I think it is a good way to put our ideas into practise and check them.Even if our thoughts are wrong,they won't bring big loses to us.In many cases,big discoveries come from small ones.Creativity is a combination of ideas and actions.Only vague ideas are of little use.

Secondly,Professor Martin L.Perl. says,"A creative idea in science or engineering must conform to the law of conservation of energy."I have to admit I have doubts about this statement.Quite often,especially in physics,it is hard to decide whether a theory is right or not.As you know,a theory is true only under certain conditions while the conditions change,the theory may be wrong.The problem is that we can't provide all kinds of conditions to examine the theory.Each time we apply the theory,we are examining it.If the predictions made by using the theory are often quite faraway from the experiment results,the theory can be depended on.Well,some theories are always tested true so people make them truth.These theories become fundamental.Another theory against the fundamental theories,e.g. the law of conservation of energy,is quickly decided wrong by people.That's the problem!The fundamental theories that are always tested true may become unavailable as society advances and people can handle more powerful methods to create extraordinary conditions to test these theories.So I suppose arbitrarily killing a new-born theory is the enemy to creativity.Though the new-born theory is wrong,we can still learn from it.

Finally,I want to talk about bad and good ideas.Bad ideas may lead to failure but failure is also a kind of success,successful to point out to you which way you shouldn't go and what you can improve.