Our creativity thrives on examples
This pulls into question our zeal for innovation. Most thought is created and honed against other pre-existing thought.
Some of the fun of note taking is not only rewriting an idea in one's own words for potential understanding, but expanding upon it to extend the ideas, sometimes based on our pre-existing world view and knowledge. The rest is linking this idea into place with our other knowledge and then combining an permuting it with that knowledge to create new knowledge.
This seems to be a building block of the broader idea of "combinatorial creativity".
link to: - Annie Murphy Paul's contention that imitation > innovation - Lee Vinsel's The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most
can imitation lead to innovation?
innovation is the use of combinatorial creativity to make new things... rarely, if ever?, is true innovation made from whole cloth, there is always(?) something used as a base which is extended.
early 19th century: from Greek eidōlon, from eidos ‘form’.