The best ideas arise from a passionate interest in commonplace things Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take In developing and supporting your

Are commonplace things too banal to get interested in? Or should human beings rather pay more attention to them? Would the latter choice be source of no ideas and discoveries? The issue, even though simple in appearance, is in fact, pretty thorny.

Many people hold that what is common is most of the time out of interest and perhaps sometimes repetitive. However, I personally think the opposite : even though the matter is very field-specific and varies from a domain of interest to another, I would say that on the whole, the banal appearance of commonplace assertions should not let us neglect their importance in some cases.

First if all, it should be borne in mind that in some domains, it is precisely the every day scences and phenomenons that trigger the action and/or spark a new idea. Typicall, in art, for instance, the artist finds his/her idea generally in a common situation. Take the example of a painter. He/She does not look for any weird or unreal scene to portray, but rather, tries to explore the uncommon that lies behind the common. Therefore, what we consider as being commonplace, is only so in appearance. A lot of situations are qualified this way, only because we have lived them several times, so at first glance we don't find anything interesting in them. However, I think that it's important not to get trapped by this appearnace and look for new things.

Of course, there are also opponents to this way of thinking. Most people would probably assert that banality does not let us discover any new thing. On the contrary, what strikes us most are more often than not, new and unexpected events. An example to illustarte this argument would be that of a scientific research. The scientific method begins, by defintion, by observation, before leading to hypothesis and then verification. Most often, the observation stage relies on a particular and, especially unexpected or singular phenomenon that draws the attention of the scientist.

Therefore, one might be tempted by claiming that actually, commonplace is already viewed and reviewed and there is no interest to spend time on it again since it contains no new ideas.

Nevertheless, to my viewpoint, event though in some fields of study or research, the banality seems unintersting, it can in fact, be a source of new ideas, by a mecanism of judgement. To make my point clearer, I will take the example of the discovery of the spherical shape of Earth. If people never took interest in what was commonly asserted and never thought of criticizing it, they would never find out that in fact they were mistaken. Thus, it is, to my mind, necessary to take a look back at what we assume as being true out of commonplace, just in order to get new ideas about why it might in fact not be as true as it seems to be.

In a nutshell, even though the subject can be viewed from different angles, since it varies a lot from a field of activty to another, I would claim that in general, the commonplace hides a lot of interesting and undiscovered things that would spark great ideas.