The Genealogy of Ideas

Just back from Dearborn, MI and a visit to “The Henry Ford.” Greenfield Village has long been on my places-to-visit radar, so I wasn’t prepared for the reaction I had to the place. Rather than getting a good sense of history, I really got a better idea of the acquisitive side of Henry Ford’s own nature.

Here we have important historical buildings—most ripped out of the places that gave rise to them and the marvelous ideas they represent. There are firsts (oldest) and lasts of their kinds… Edison’s home and lab, the Wright brothers’ house sit in the midst of streets nearly empty the day I was there, amid manicured lawns where almost no scrap is thoughtlessly tossed aside.

Ford obviously had an incredible drive to collect all these buildings and put them on display. Yes, many of the inventions represented fit together at the dawn of the new American age. The collection is marvelously preserved and kept up, has been open to the public for 80 years. But, there’s something about wrenching ideas, people and places from the environments that actually nourished them that makes them seem smaller than they really are. I think it’s the chaos of a person’s times, place and circumstances that lead to great ideas and innovations—the genealogy of the idea or innovation put in perspective. That’s what was missing for me.

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