New Books in Science, Technology, and Society Douglas H. Erwin, "The Origins of the New: Novelty and Innovation in the History of Life, Culture, and Technology" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Apr 6, 2026
Douglas H. Erwin, retired Smithsonian paleobiologist and Santa Fe Institute researcher, explores how novelty arises and when it becomes lasting innovation. He contrasts origin versus success, presents a four-phase model (potentiation, novelty, refinement, innovation), and applies it to biology, culture, and technology. He also discusses contingency, network restructuring, and the role of public goods in creating new opportunity spaces.
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Separate Novelty From Innovation
- Novelties and innovations are distinct processes, often separated by long lags in the fossil and cultural records.
- Examples: the turtle carapace originated long before turtles became ecologically successful, and grasses existed tens of millions of years prior to grassland dominance.
Economic Ideas Help Explain Biological Change
- Schumpeter's invention/innovation distinction from economics applies across biology, culture, and technology.
- Erwin uses this cross-domain view to ask whether a unified theory of novelty and innovation is possible.
Four Phase Model Of How New Things Arise
- Erwin's four-phase model: potentiation, novelty, refinement, innovation explains how new features arise and later succeed.
- Potentiation involves prior changes (e.g., limb-development genes predate tetrapods); refinement improves imperfect first versions like early turtles.
