If there were no birds, would humans ever fly? This question was posed by a
philosophy teacher asking if humans create or if humans imitate. Could humans actually create flight, or are we just imitating
birds.
The majority of inventions has been thought of because we needed an faster, easier, or better solution to a problem. If one considers travel being a problem and walking was the earliest solution, many faster solutions have been adapted. Humans rode on horses. There were models for faster travel. If humans couldn't keep up with horses they discovered that travelling on their backs would be faster. Would a human make the connection in travelling through the air being a faster method of transportation if there were no birds, no model to imitate?
If the twentieth century has taught us anything it is that the word impossible doesn't exist. If humans needed a faster mode of transportation, I'm sure the idea of flying would come up. People are constantly coming up with radical ideas to solve a problem, some ideas even seem ludicrious. Didn't the Wright Brother's, or da Vinci's, ideas seem outrageous at the time?
My thoughts are that we do have models that we follow. Most of what we build is modelled after something else, but with some little change to make it better. However, sometimes, ingenious steps are taken that break all models and molds. Sometimes, completely new ideas are thought up that follow nothing ever before seen. It is my belief that humans can create without a model.