Propositions About Novelty

Ulrich Witt

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The emergence of novelty is a ubiquitous feature in science, technology, and economic life. It is the crucial input to the growth of human knowledge. At the same time, novelty is one of the most amorphous concepts in scientific thought. Theorizing about novelty and its emergence faces notorious problems. This paper explores why this is so and what can be done to deal in a more systematic fashion with novelty. The notion of degrees of novelty is introduced, and its relationship with the concept of uncertainty is discussed. The results of the inquiry are summarized by a number of hypotheses.

Keywords: D 80; D 83; O 30; O 31; novelty; creativity; evolution; uncertainty; probability; knowledge growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-04-17
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00688183
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2009, 70 (1-2), pp.311. ⟨10.1016/j.jebo.2009.01.008⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00688183/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Propositions about novelty (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00688183

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2009.01.008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().