It is important to recognise that what drives invention is necessity. Where coal or metals were mined, the miners needed a continuous supply of energy powerful enough to pump out flood water faster than it entered their mines. The inventors and engineers who built and installed the first steam engines were inspired in their designs by intuition and common sense. Some of them, like Robert Boyle and James Watt, were indeed scientists, but their inspiration came as much from the prospects of the steam engine as a good investment as from their academic qualifications as scientists. The pure science of steam engines did not emerge until the nineteenth century. [Long after Newcomen’s steam engine in the early eighteenth century and Watt’s in 1776.]
James Lovelock, 1919-2022
scientist and inventor, creator of the theory of Gaia.
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