Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

The keyword in the proverb is ‘mother’. It means source or starting point.

All inventions or discoveries came into being because of their immediate demand or necessity. For when there is an urgent pressing need we try hard to satisfy it. We devote all our energies to fulfil the demand and succeed in our efforts.

If one reads the story of discoveries and inventions one will come across numerous examples to prove the truth of this saying. The primitive man must have felt the need to keep himself warm and protect himself from wild animals. These needs must have driven him to discover fire and invent weapons. Similarly he would have invented the wheel to make he task of dragging huge weights easier.

It is only when we need something badly that we bend all our energies and channelise all our resources for finding, tracing or inventing. Radio, television, railway, aeroplane and telephone were all thought of when necessity for recreation, quick transport and immediate communication was felt.

When the Turks captured Constantinople (now Turkey) the land route to India was closed. The necessity to continue trade links with India arose and it resulted in the discovery of a sea route to India via Cape of Good Hope by Vasco-Da-Gama.

Man needed medicines to cure ailments and he found and made miraculous drugs like penicillin and streptomycin. Today man is busy finding alternate fuels to overcome oil shortage. He is using Genetics to discover ways and means to make life better.

In any field whenever need arises, man uses all his faculties to fulfil the necessity. The result is an invention or a discovery. Hence the proverb ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

This proverb just means that there is nothing like a pressing and urgent need for setting people to work to find a way of meeting it. If we could get all we want from nature we should not bother to invent anything; as we can’t, we are forced to find out ways and means to satisfy our needs.

In the early days of mankind, the necessity of communicating with one another led men to the invention of languages. Later, the necessity of keeping some record of what they did or said led to the invention of writing. Later still, the necessity of spreading news and knowledge led to the invention of printing.

These are only few illustrations to prove that from the very beginning of human life that man has been making inventions and discoveries out of sheer necessity. Hence we recognise “necessity” for the progress of the human race.