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Curriculum / 02 · First principles

Theme 02 · Lessons

First principles

Strip problems to what is true. Rebuild from axioms. Separate nature’s limits from culture’s habits — including jobs and money.

Lessons

Work through them in order

Each lesson is a Concept Development Study taught Socratically. Keep a notebook; answer every pause before you read on.

  1. 1

    Strip it to what is true

    Judge what is possible from what a thing is made of and what physics charges — not from habit or analogy. Build an energy floor for a kettle and for aluminium, test it against real figures, and read the gap above it as nature’s limit or ours. Includes an Occam note on the emperor’s cutlery and a kettle audit you can do at home.

    Start Lesson 1 →
  2. 2

    Frame the problem, then invent

    When machines generate ideas cheaply, what stays human is choosing the problem, framing it as a function with its physical floor, and judging the answers. Then invent on purpose with TRIZ — contradiction, Ideal Final Result, resources, separation — through the ice trade to Calcutta, the Gossamer Condor, the Thames Barrier, and the clay matka.

    Start Lesson 2 →

Go further The TRIZ refresher in Skills & resources: contradictions, the 40 inventive principles, and why no inventive trick beats a physical floor.

More lessons in this theme are in preparation.

Method adapted from John S. Hutchinson, Concept Development Studies in Chemistry (Connexions / Rice, CC BY 2.0).