Three Steps to Claim Legitimacy for Your Work
August 2nd, 2010 | 
Author: After I had read about a third of Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in History by Andrew Taylor, the light bulb
suddenly went on in my head. The book includes works from a variety of fields, and several of the 50 books mentioned were written by pioneers who were experimental thinkers. They were instrumental in starting a new field of study, and/or adding legitimacy to an existing field.
I noticed that they legitimized the field by adding information systems and processes. They did not always succeed in what they were trying to do, sometimes they strayed a bit, but the point is that they often turned things upside down and revolutionized the way things were done. Life isn’t about perfection, but doing your best and trying to move forward.
Herodotus who is considered the “Father of History,” in his work The Histories, was the first person who focused on what actually happened, why, then created a record. In the 5th Century BC, this was very revolutionary because he didn’t attribute what happened to miracles or godly intervention.
In Geographia, 100 – 170 AD, Ptolemy the ”Father of Geography,” attempted to accurately measure and record coastlines, rivers and mountains. It turns out that his calculations were off by about 25 percent, but his work was the foundation for others to move the field forward. Centuries later, 1585 – 95, Gerald Mercator who created an atlas of the world, spent many years compiling maps based on information from Ptolemy.
Avicenna produced Canon of Medicine in 1025, the first book of medicine that based “theories on evidence and objective experimentation.”
William Harvey’s 1628 An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals was a radical departure from the beliefs at the time, and his work was based on “careful reasoning and observations from his dissections of animals.”
There are many more examples in Books That Changed the World. I see a pattern emerging, how about you? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there are three steps to claim legitimacy in whatever you are doing.
- Gather information
- pull together what’s been done before
- rely on personal experience
- observe
- use practical experimentation
- Assess the information gathered
- Combine the information with what you already know
To become an experiment thinker requires taking risks and shifting your mindset. Sometimes these pioneers were ostracized, which often meant imprisonment or death, but we are living in different times and much has changed. So how can you use this information?
Take a look at the work you do, are there ways that you can add more rigor to the way that you do it? If you are working in a new field, how can you use the three steps above to legitimize what you do? In the examples above, these innovative thinkers took a chance, and departed from the status quo, and the result is that humankind benefited. How can you innovate or revolutionize your work? And more importantly, how can you radically change YOUR world?
Did you notice that the three steps to legitimacy are basic steps for innovation, creativity as well as mastering a subject? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.
Further Reading
How to Generate Creative Ideas
Image Credit: Fountain in St. Peter’s Square, Dimity B via Apture
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