Two general conclusions can be drawn from the material presented in this and the preceding chapter.  First, there is no broad theory of technological innovation that includes a majority of the factors influencing the emergence of novelty.  There are good reasons for the absence of such a theory, because it would have to encompass the irrationality of the playful and the fantastic, the rationality of the scientific, the materialism of the economic, and the diversity of social and cultural.

                        The second conclusion is the lack of a satisfactory theoretical approach to novelty does not affect the evolutionary theory presented in this book.  That theory calls for an adequate supply of novel artifacts, or ideas of novel artifacts, from which a selection can be made.  Chapters III and IV have provided ample evidence for the existence of rich and varied sources of novelty.  They have demonstrated that novelty is presented wherever, whenever, and by whatever means human beings choose to make things                                       .

                                                                                    Basalla [1988, 134]

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