So I though about "we can only recombine concepts that exist in nature - never invent truly new ones".
The best counterexample I could come up with was lasers. Yeah, all the pieces are there in quantum mechanics, but so far as I know, nothing in nature lases.
Semiconductor chips. Again, yes, all the physics is there, but you're going to be reaching pretty far to find something in nature that's like a CPU chip.
Dyson spheres.
Interrupt vector tables.
Riemannian geometry.
Databases.
I'm sure that people can poke holes in some of these (with varying degrees of far-fetchedness as to how directly the same concept is in nature). But I think there are enough counterexamples, where nature's "prior art" is indirect enough, to make the absolute version of the statement false.
"Humans rarely discover something that doesn't already exist somewhere in nature"? Yeah, that's probably true.
The best counterexample I could come up with was lasers. Yeah, all the pieces are there in quantum mechanics, but so far as I know, nothing in nature lases.
Semiconductor chips. Again, yes, all the physics is there, but you're going to be reaching pretty far to find something in nature that's like a CPU chip.
Dyson spheres.
Interrupt vector tables.
Riemannian geometry.
Databases.
I'm sure that people can poke holes in some of these (with varying degrees of far-fetchedness as to how directly the same concept is in nature). But I think there are enough counterexamples, where nature's "prior art" is indirect enough, to make the absolute version of the statement false.
"Humans rarely discover something that doesn't already exist somewhere in nature"? Yeah, that's probably true.