We architects often labor under the conceit that what we do is the result of unique thought and brilliant inspiration. We are reluctant to accept that human endeavor is an ocean of collective thought and action, propelled by historical circumstances. Our personal achievements are incremental, and what we consider our own ideas have invariably been conceived by others at some point in the present or past. As much as we congratulate ourselves as original thinkers, we build gradually on precedents from the past, and the collective ideas take on a life of their own. Some of us are happy to lose ourselves in the ocean of ideas.