信息时代的牛顿——香农创造性思考的六个方法

当大家被问到谁是历史上最伟大的科学家的时候，大部分人都会想到牛顿和爱因斯坦，他们的工作推动了人类对物理世界的深层理解，把人类引入到了工业化和电气化时代。同样有一个人通过一己之力奠定了信息学的基础，通过天才的发挥和想象，把人类带进了当今的信息时代。他被誉为信息时代的牛顿。他的名字叫克劳德-香农（Claude Shannon）。

香农是公认的20世纪的天才数学家和工程师，他在麻省理工学院1937年的硕士学位论文“A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits”（继电器和开关电路的符号分析），将布尔代数应用于电子领域，能够构建并解决任何逻辑和数值关系，被誉为有史以来最重要的硕士论文，为之后计算机和数字电路设计打下了理论基础。他在贝尔实验室1948年发表了“A Mathematics Theory of Communication”（通信的数学理论），认为所有信息都可通过0和1进行编码，提出熵（entropy）和比特（bit）的概念，给出了可量化的信息的定义，把人类带进了信息时代。目前我们使用的电脑和互联网都可以归功于香农的贡献。

创造性思考

香农1952年在贝尔实验室进行了一次关于“创造性思考”(Creative Thinking) 的演讲，在一个著名的演讲中他分享了进行创造性思考的6个原则，至今被很多著名的企业家和科学家所引用。下面是对它们的总结，希望对大家都有裨益。

-- 简化 （simplification)

这个有点像马斯克的第一性思维方法，化繁为简，抓住事物本质。

“to eliminate everything from the problem except the essentials; that is, cut it down to size. Almost every problem that you come across is befuddled with all kinds of extraneous data of one sort or another; and if you can bring this problem down into the main issues, you can see more clearly what you’re trying to do and perhaps find a solution. “

-- 类比 （seeking similar known problems）

找到类似的问题，研究它的解决方法，并应用到新的问题上。

“You have a problem P here and there is a solution S which you do not know yet perhaps over here. If you have experience in the field represented, that you are working in, you may perhaps know of a somewhat similar problem, call it P', which has already been solved and which has a solution, S', all you need to do - all you may have to do is find the analogy from P' here to P and the same analogy from S' to S in order to get back to the solution of the given problem. ”

-- 重新定义（restate problems)

把问题重新定义，试着提出不同的但相关的问题。一般人都习惯了一些思维定式，努力打破它们，往往有柳暗花明的结果。

'try to restate it in just as many different forms as you can. Change the viewpoint. Look at it from every possible angle. It’s difficult really to do this, but it is important that you do. That is the reason why very frequently someone who is quite green to a problem will sometimes come in and look at it and find the solution like that, while you have been laboring for months over it. You’ve got set into some ruts here of mental thinking and someone else comes in and sees it from a fresh viewpoint.'

-- 总结推广(generalization)

这就是举一反三的能力吧。

“if somebody comes along with a clever way of doing something, one should ask oneself：Can I apply the same principle in more general ways? Can I use this same clever idea represented here to solve a larger class of problems? Is there any place else that I can use this particular thing?“

-- 分解问题（structure analysis)

把问题分解成若干小问题和容易解决的问题，一一攻克，这样你就逐渐趋近解决更难和更大的问题。

“Suppose you have your problem here and a solution here. You may have too big a jump to take. What you can try to do is to break down that jump into a large number of small jumps. If this were a set of mathematical axioms and this were a theorem or conclusion that you were trying to prove, it might be too much for me try to prove this thing in one fell swoop. But perhaps I can visualize a number of subsidiary theorems or propositions such that if I could prove those, in turn I would eventually arrive at this solution.”

-- 逆向思考（inversion of the problem）

不从众，通过逆向思考，你可能得到不一样的结论。

“The way of doing it was doing it by feedback; that is, you start with the required result and run it back until - run it through its value until it matches the given input.”