By Michael I. Handel
, Author Master of War
Even the most creative theories in history were not conceived in a vacuum; one way or another, they owe something to the works of others. To
describe this intellectual and intuitive process, historian of science I. B. Cohen
has developed a concept called “the transformation of ideas,” which reveals how
great scientists have used the existing body of knowledge as a basis of or
catalyst for their own inspiration. Scientists such as Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, for
example, either synthesized and combined the work of others, while adding their
own ideas, or were heuristically stimulated by existing ideas to develop their
own original concepts. The same is true of those whose creative and analytical
thought processes have “transformed” the intricacies of strategy—in this case,
naval strategy—into an innovative theory or body of work. It is well known that
Alfred Thayer Mahan, as he himself made clear, was significantly influenced by
Baron de Jomini’s work and that Sir Julian Corbett was equally influenced by
Clausewitz’s On War.
