How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery

The story of the Wright brothers illustrates the book’s main theme of creation coming from hard work. It appears in the second chapter, entitled “Thinking Is Like Walking,” where Ashton uses it to show that the thought process in creating something follows a pattern that is the same for everyone. The Wright brothers were the first to successfully design and fly an airplane, but by no means were they the first to dream of human flight. Thus, Ashton examines why they succeeded when others failed. He begins with the tale of a precursor named Otto Lilienthal, who devised a glider that mastered flying but not balance. The lack of the latter caused him to crash during a test flight, killing him.

The Wright brothers, on the other hand, ran a bicycle shop, and they knew that flying, like cycling, involved the problem of staying balanced. Their solution was to emulate birds, who encountered the same problem in flight. They tried using metal rods and gears to maintain balance, but that was too heavy. Wilbur discovered an alternative when observing movements of a long, thin box. When he twisted it, one end rose while the other fell; this, he thought, might be the solution, so he devised prototypes to test in the form of kites, and it worked. Ashton’s point here is that the “Wright brothers’ great inventive leap was not a great mental leap. Despite its extraordinary outcome, their story is a litany of little steps” (54). Their experience relied on what all creators do: observe, meet a problem, fix it, and repeat.

Folkman was a surgeon who discovered a treatment for tumors that involved starving them of their blood supply. Medical researchers ignored and ridiculed him for years because they did not believe that blood had anything to do with the problem. Folkman persevered, however, and he later proved his assumption to be true. Ashton uses his story in the chapter entitled “Expect Adversity” to show that new ideas often find resistance at first. One must have faith in one’s work, in addition to the requisite evidence, and be able to meet failure head on. Ashton also uses this case, however, to point out why rejection is normal—and is even a good thing. Furthering the human species, he argues, requires both new and rejection of the new. Creation must solve problems and make progress, but if we accepted everything new right away, it would prove dangerous. Many new ideas are flawed, and skepticism provides the necessary safeguards to protect people.