"Necessity is the mother ofinvention" is an English-language proverb. It means, roughly, that the primary driving force for most new inventions is a need.
Meaning
On Lexico, the proverb has been defined as "When the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it."
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, this is "an expression that means that if you really need to do something, you will think of a way of doing it."
Longman dictionary has defined the proverb as: "if someone really needs to do something, they will find a way of doing it."
History
The author of this proverb is unknown. Plato's Republic says "our need will be the real creator", which Jowett's 1894 translation rendered loosely as "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." The connection of mother and necessity is documented in Latin and in English in the 16th century: William Horman quoted the Latin phraseMater artium necessitas in 1519; Roger Ascham said "Necessitie, the inventour of all goodnesse" in 1545. In 1608, George Chapman, in his two-part play The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, used a very similar phrase: "The great Mother / Of all productions, grave Necessity." And the exact phrase is used by Richard Franck in 1658. The phrase was also used in medieval French. It is found in a collection of proverbs dating to 1485-1490, and is included with another saying, "Hunger makes people resourceful," and an illustration of one man eating a carrot and another man eating grass.
Danish economist Ester Boserup believed "necessity is the mother of invention" and this was a major point in her bookThe Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure.
Criticism
In an address to the Mathematical Association of England on the importance of education in 1917, Alfred North Whitehead argued that "the basis of invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity." and in contrast to the old proverb "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer to the truth.
