Innovation Contested

Benoît Godin

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317928188
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

Innovation is everywhere. In the world of goods (technology), but also in the world of words: innovation is discussed in the scientific and technical literature, but also in the social sciences and humanities. Innovation is also a central idea in the popular imaginary, in the media and in public policy. Innovation has become the emblem of the modern society and a panacea for resolving many problems.

Today, innovation is spontaneously understood as technological innovation because of its contribution to economic "progress". Yet for 2, 500 years, innovation had nothing to do with economics in a positive sense. Innovation was pejorative and political. It was a contested idea in philosophy, religion, politics and social affairs. Innovation only got de-contested in the last century. This occurred gradually beginning after the French revolution. Innovation shifted from a vice to a virtue. Innovation became an instrument for achieving political and social goals.

In this book, Benoît Godin lucidly examines the representations and meaning(s) of innovation over time, its diverse uses, and the contexts in which the concept emerged and changed. This history is organized around three periods or episteme: the prohibition episteme, the instrument episteme, and the value episteme.

Part I
The Emergence of a Concept

1
Kainotomia and Conceptual Innovation in Ancient Greece

The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution.

(Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War I: 70: 2)

When the Greek physician Galen (129–99 CE), in On the Natural Faculties, attributed to Prodicus an “innovation” in nomenclature for having changed phlegma to blenna (mucus), he was without doubt one of the few ancient writers using innovation in a neutral sense. To be sure, novelty was everywhere and was defended by several authors in Greece. Novelty (kainon) in pleasure (arts) and knowledge (science) were accepted if they did not change the divine or natural order of things, so it is presumed. However, innovation (kainotomia) is not accepted under any circumstances.

The concept of innovation is of Greek origin (kainotomia; καινοτομία), from the fifth century BCE. The word is derived from kainos (new). Initially, kainotomia had nothing to do with our current or dominant meaning of innovation as commercialized technical invention. Innovation meant ‘cutting fresh into’. It was used in the context of concrete thinking (‘opening new mines’), as well as abstract thinking (‘making new’). Innovation acquired its current meaning as a metaphorical use of this word. In the hands of ancient philosophers and writers on political constitutions, innovation is “introducing change into the established order”.

This chapter is a study on the emergence of thoughts on innovation.¹ It looks at where the word innovation comes from and what the concept meant to the Ancients. The chapter is organized as follows. It starts by documenting the first full-length discussion of innovation, that of Xenophon. Xenophon’s use of innovation is literal, and the philosopher talks of innovation in a positive way. Yet among later Greek writers, innovation is used in a metaphorical sense and the meaning is essentially pejorative. To document the case, the use of the concept in Plato, Aristotle and Polybius, as well as the contribution each made to the concept, is studied. The chapter concludes with thoughts on these authors as (conceptual) innovators: coining new words, changing the meanings of words and using words in new ways in different contexts: political economy, culture, politics and history.

A note on translation issues: There is often ‘language inflation’ in translated works. One Greek author may have made no use of innovation, yet translators use the word nevertheless. This is often the case in seventeenth-century England (for Greek as well as Roman translators). Translators may deliberately aim to stress innovation because of the context of their times. On the other hand, innovation is also translated into English using other words, like revolution, or is not translated or used at all. In fact, translators have no interest in innovation per se. They do not feel it necessary to keep and translate the word literally. They rather work with the context of the text and uses whatever word seems appropriate to them. In contrast, in conducting intellectual history, one must then start with the Greek edition. Second, one needs to check translations against each other. I have compared both old and more recent translations, and I have cited the texts that translate the word literally, if they exist at all, or, if not, I have translated the Greek word as innovation myself (and placed the translator’s word in brackets).²

Xenophon: Innovation and Political Economy

Philosopher and historian Xenophon (430–355 BCE) is known mainly for his works on the history of his times. By contrast, Ways and Means, his last work, is a work on ‘political economy’ addressed to Athens’ Council of Five Hundred and intended to raise revenues for the city. Athens had just emerged from war in a disastrous financial situation. Xenophon’s proposal is to raise capital with an income tax to be expended on erecting facilities for merchants and visitors (accommodations and hotels) and on a fleet of state-owned merchant vessels.

Xenophon’s many works have attracted philosophers writing on political constitutions, including Aristotle and Polybius (but not Plato). Yet it is difficult to trace the real impact of a writer at the time. Ways and Means is considered by today’s philosophers a minor work in Xenophon’s output. Such a work is studied rarely today, if ever. However, for the purpose of this chapter it is an important work, for it contains the earliest step in the genealogy of innovation as a concept. In a chapter on mines, Xenophon uses innovation in a sense totally foreign to us. It is a metaphoric usage of this word that one finds among later Greek philosophers.

To Xenophon, Athens had ample resources. The city was a commercial center and had land, sea and, above all, resident aliens, “one of the best sources of revenue” (Ways and Means II: 1). Merchants and shipowners came and went at Athens. They rendered many services and paid taxes. Xenophon suggests that foreigners be offered some advantages in order that they “look on us as friends and hasten to visit us” (Ways and Means III: 4): seats in theatres, lodging and places of exchange (markets). Such facilities would contribute to expanding imports and exports, sales and rents. They “would be an ornament to the State and at the same time the source of considerable revenue” (Ways and Means III: 14). Xenophon goes as far as to suggest that Athens acquire a fleet of public merchant vessels and lease them, like other public property.

Next, Xenophon turns to silver mines and how, if properly managed, they could be a source of revenue too. Here, Xenophon claims to offer something entirely new. To Xenophon, there are few mining projects because the country is short on labour (Ways and Means IV: 5). Yet silver is in strong demand for arms, household implements and jewellery. Xenophon’s proposal, the one and only innovation he takes care to add—he does not use the word innovation to this end (“were my proposals adopted, the only novelty [καινόν, kainon], would be that …”)—is that the State possess public slaves, as private individuals do, and make them available for hire to entrepreneurs in the mines (Ways and Means IV: 17). This would raise revenues for the State and contribute to developing business. Xenophon develops the rationale for innovation as follows:

Why, it may be asked, are fewer new cuttings [mine galleries] made nowadays than formerly? Simply because those interested in the mines are poorer … A man who makes a new cutting incurs a serious risk … [and] people nowadays are very chary of taking such a risk.

However, I think I can meet this difficulty too, and suggest something good [, a scheme] that will make the opening of new cuttings a perfectly safe undertaking. (Ways and Means IV: 27–30)

Xenophon thinks here of private individuals combining and pooling their fortunes in order to diminish risks (Ways and Means IV: 31) and, as mentioned, involving the State in such affairs. All in all, to Xenophon the “scheme” would provide abundant revenue and make the city strong, with people happy and more physically trained, more obedient, better disciplined and more efficient (Ways and Means IV: 49–52). “We shall be regarded with more affection by the Greeks, shall live in greater security, and be more glorious”, and “we may come to see our city secure and prosperous” (Ways and Means VI: 1).

Where is innovation in this argument? To Xenophon, innovation (kainotomia) is ‘making new cuttings’. The word is a combination of καινός (new) and the radical τομ (cut, cutting).³ In Xenophon’s case, it means opening new galleries. To others writers, as we will see, it means opening new avenues, particularly new political dispositions. In one place, Xenophon uses kainotomia metaphorically but still within a ‘concrete’ (physical) connotation: “opening new veins” (Ways and Means IV: 27).

Xenophon is one of the (very few) writers to use kainotomia before Plato and Aristotle—at least according to ancient texts we possess that document the case. Before him, Aristophanes used the word too, in a metaphorical sense, in two comedies.⁴ In Wasps (875), a person addresses a prayer to God, which he says he is doing for the first time:

Oh! Powerful god, Apollo Aguieus, who watchest at the door of my entrance hall, accept this innovation [fresh sacrifice]; I offer it that you may deign to soften my father’s excessive severity; he is as hard as iron, his heart is like sour wine; do thou pour into it a little honey. Let him become gentle toward other men, let him take more interest in the accused than in the accusers, may he allow himself to be softened by entreaties; calm his acrid humour and deprive his irritable mind of all sting.

In Ecclesiazusae (583), Blepyrus responds to Praxagora’s fear that the participants in trials may be afraid of a new way of administering justice. Blepyrus replies that innovation is better than any other principle:

PRAXAGORA:	I believe my ideas are good, but what I fear is that the public will cling to the old customs and refuse to accept my innovations [reforms].
BLEPYRUS:	Have no fear about that. Love of innovation [novelty] and disdain for traditions, these are the dominating principles among us.

What distinguishes Xenophon from Aristophanes is an entire discourse on innovation and a consciousness of innovating. Three characteristics of Xenophon’s representation of innovation deserve mention. First, Xenophon’s “making new cuttings” refers to the new literally. Nothing peculiar here. Second—and here is the main point—this newness concerns the State. Xenophon’s proposal is a “scheme” or “project” (a plan of action), as he calls it, and his scheme is political. Such a scheme is, considering the context of the time, dangerous or risky, as Xenophon put it. The political economist proposes that the State itself take risks. In fact, to counter the opposition to, or fear of, the risky proposal, among other things, Xenophon explicitly suggests gradualism: The introduction of the proposal should “proceed gradually [rather] than to do everything at once” (Ways and Means IV: 36), a motto regularly echoed in Plato and Aristotle and by many others in the following centuries.

Xenophon’s representation would be picked up by later writers and would define innovation for centuries to come. Political change (risky) and (revolutionary) schemes became key connotations to or meanings of innovation. From then on, innovation shifted to take on a pejorative meaning: introducing change into the established order. New ideas and altering laws are “very risky” and may lead to “constitutional upheavals”, claimed Aristotle in Politics (II: viii, 1268b). While both Xenophon and Aristophanes use kainotomia in a neutral sense, the word becomes pejorative among later philosophers. Xenophon’s kainotomia, as revolutionary in the sense of radically different, is changed to revolutionary in the sense of subversive.

A word of caution is necessary here. As the texts analyzed in the following sections show, innovation (as well as change) is often translated as revolution...