New ideas and inventions that affect social life cannot thrive unless they are somehow embedded in the society for which they are intended. Innovation will always be connected somehow—both in the ways it is communicated and perceived, and in terms of content—to what people know, believe, want, value, and can understand. This is true even of radical, path-breaking, ‘revolutionary’ ideas and insights. This phenomenon of ‘anchoring’ is central to the new research agenda of the Dutch classicists.
In Classical Antiquity, one way in which this ‘anchoring’ is realized is through narratives of inventors and inventions, a rich genre concerned with providing a social biography for the accoutrements of human life. Writing, seafaring, building houses, making sacrifice to the gods: there is a great concern with establishing the pedigree of these phenomena, which are often associated with specific ‘culture heroes’, gods, and other inventors. Sometimes we find ideas about collective invention, for instance of language and speech. There are also a few instances of women inventors. Stories of the prôtoi heuretai help to structure and anchor the past of a group.
Today we can still identify modern ‘myths of invention’, featuring for instance (stereotypical) inventors, lone wolves and geniuses, and epics of endurance, sudden insights and serendipity. Modern narratives of invention thus also have a recognizable discourse of their own.
We invite structured PhD proposals (title, research question, scholarly background, aims, method, corpus) with ideas on the discourse, themes, scenarios, and cognitive and social functioning of these stories of inventors and inventions of all kinds. It is not necessary to address all of these: a specific focus or your own framing of the question are welcome. We also suggest that you contact Ineke Sluiter (i.sluiter@hum.leidenuniv.nl) at an early stage of designing your own project in this area for feedback and help. We have purposely left a lot of time for the design of your own project.
More information about the Anchoring Innovation research agenda of OIKOS can be found on the OIKOS website (http://www.ru.nl/oikos/anchoring-innovation), including an article by Ineke Sluiter, entitled “Anchoring Innovation: a Classical Research Agenda”.