Ideas are most fruitful when heirs transform them beyond recognition

Evidence

In a famous passage inscribed in his diary at the end of his life he wrote: “I know that I shall die without intellectual heirs, and that is as it should be. My legacy will be like cash, distributed to many heirs, each transforming his part into use according to his nature—a use which will no longer reveal its indebtedness to this heritage.” — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 16

Categorization

• SHARE: File this for a colleague who works on intellectual genealogy or citation studies—Simmel’s cash metaphor is a perfect epigraph for how ideas propagate untraceably.
• XREF: connects to: Trust is won by a transformative rather than conforming response to expectations

Broader Connections

• Trust is won by a transformative rather than conforming response to expectations #expands (0.75)