How Creativity can sometimes happen
1.
Create: To bring into being
or form out of nothing, bestow existence on; cause, bring about; produce or
make something new or original.
Creation: The act or process
of creating; thing created; universe; original invention, production.
Over 2000 years ago
Philosophers and theologians argued the creation was impossible even for God.
They concluded and claimed that the Universe
was made not only by God but also necessarily out of God.
2.
Inspirational View: Romantic
View:
Creativity is inspired by divine power Creativity is an exceptional
gift that others do not have
Mozart and his contemporary Salieri. Salieri was skilled and artful musician
with full knowledge of music but he achieved only human competence.
Mozart Had all that plus Divine inspiration. He was composing from the
age of 4 yrs. Old.
Romantic
View:
Leanardo, Galilio Michael Angelo etc were all gifted.
This gift could not be acquired or thought but it could be squandered.
3. Psychological
Creativity:
P. Creativity is individual or to many others individually.
People who are
considered brilliant / exceptionally creative by those who know them but who
never leave any accomplishment or trace of their existence.
More recent studies by Margaret Boden propose two forms of creativity,
P. Creativity: Local genius, exceptional shortbread, apple pies. Knows
everything about car engines or computers etc.
Historical Creativity:
H. Creativity is fundamentally novel (New) with respect to the whole of
humanity.
People who have the
greatest impact on history by the accomplishments they leave behind.
H. Creativity: People who have the greatest impact on history who do not
show any originality or brilliance in their behaviour, except for the
accomplishments they leave behind. Internet, Aeroplane, Penicillin, TV, etc
4
What makes the
difference between an outstandingly
creative person and a less creative
person?
It is not a special
power or divine inspiration.
It is the intense
interest and motivation to acquire a full/greater knowledge and expertise in
their chosen Domain; to develop an
appetite for exploration and risk and to use it.
5. What is a Domain and what is the Field?
Domain: A body of knowledge consisting of a set of symbolic rules and
procedures
For example: Mathematics,
Economics, music, Visual Arts, Architecture, Physics.
Field:
Consists of all the members of a Domain who act as gate-keepers of the domain
it is their job to decide whether a new idea, product/procedure should be
included in the domain. For example; Visual Arts field consists of Artists, Art
Teachers, Curators of Museums & Galleries, Art Collectors and Critics,
Foundation Administrators and Cultural Agencies of Government.
6. Why enter a Domain?
· To make a living!
Follow a parent! More travel! Vocation! More fun!
· Some people chose
certain Domains with passionate intention, a powerful
calling, a burning curiosity, interest and appetite for exploration and
risk in
their chosen domain.
· Creative people are
usually in this group.
7. In a Domain
For success in a chosen domain the rules,
symbols and procedures must be learnt in great depth.
The rules and constraints of a domain are not
the antithesis of creativity.
Constraints map out the territory of
structural possibilities which can be explored and when satisfied, perhaps lead
to the transformation of the territory.
Discoveries would be inconceivable without
prior knowledge.
· On Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. Louis Pasteur is reported as
commenting; “Fortune favours the prepared mind
· Without his breath of knowledge and experience in bacteriology,
Alexander Fleming would not have recognised his discovery of penicillin.
· A dish of agar-jelly (used to culture bacteria) had been left uncovered
on an open window sill. This allowed penicillium spores to enter, settle on the
jelly and grow. Fleming noticed and realised the significance of the clear
(bacteria free) area surrounding the green colony of mould.
· The development of modern antibiotics had begun.
8. Learning
·
To learn the rules, symbols and procedures of a chosen
domain in great depth requires attention.
·
We must pay attention to the information to be
learned.
·
Attention is a limited resource and there is a limit
to the amount of information
we can
process at any given time.
·
Surplus attention is a pre-requisite to achieving
creativity.
All available energy focused on the
domain
After Renaissance man, it
became impossible to learn enough about arts & Science than to become
expert in a fraction of such domains.
As culture evolved specialised
knowledge became favoured over generalised knowledge.
Creativity generally involves
crossing the boundaries of domains which are sometimes connected by adjacent
areas of knowledge.
9.
The 4 Phases of Creativity
Graham Wallis ‘The Art of Thought, 1926 London, Jonathon Cape. Proposes one of the first models
on the creative process
1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination (inspiration)
4. Verification
10.
Preparation:
·
Having recognised that there is a problem, or
identified an area to explore.
·
Preparation requires full familiarisation with the
problem to be solved, the idea to be explored, the question to be answered
(why, what if).
·
This involves exploring the problem space. Through
trial & error analysis, testing alternative hypotheses in exploring the
problem space we can develop a conceptual space.
·
Such constraints will emerge that all effort at this
stage will appear fruitless and leading nowhere.
11.
Incubation:
·
Anecdotal evidence shows that at this stage if the
problem is set aside and left alone that later at some unguarded moment the
solution pops into ones head.
·
During this period the sub-conscious/unconscious
allows the free entry of elements from different domains.
·
This period of unconscious work must be preceded by a
period of conscious work (Preparation).
·
Creative, Insightful, analogical thinking tends to
involve breaking free of current representations and seeing things in a new
light.
·
Periods of incubation can vary in length.
In everyday life we have heard the expression to sleep on a problem, or
of not taking a decision until morning.
Koestler: “The most fertile region seems to be the marshy shore, the
borderline between sleep and full waking, where the matrices of disciplined
thought are already operating but have not yet sufficiently hardened to
obstruct the dream like fluidity of imagination”
During this period elements (thoughts) from different domains form new
associations and patterns, most will be frivolous junk but some will be useful
and the rare one very pertinent.
In these relaxed, unguarded moments ideas continually combine with a
freedom denied in waking rational thought.
12. Illumination/Inspiration:
Again anecdotal evidence
shows that people were dozing, getting into a bath, drawing, writing,
travelling on a bus, sitting by the fire, etc. when the answer to a problem
dawned on them.
They
were in a relaxed mood, not consciously thinking of the problem, an unguarded
moment when illumination/inspiration happened
Example,
1
Samuel
Coleridge: prior to falling into an opium-induced reverie Coleridge had been
reading the following lines in Samuel Purchas's Pilgrimage. " In Xamdu did Cublai Can built a statley Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plain ground with a
wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant springs, delightful Streames, and all sorts of beasts of
chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be
removed from place to place".
In
the opium-induced reverie he formulates the lines of Kubla Khan.
"In
Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A
stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where
Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through
caverns measureless to man
Down
to a sunless see.
So
twice five miles of fertile ground
With
walls and towers were girdled round:
And
there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where
blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
Enfolding
sunny spots of greenery.
Example 2
Archimedes
had been pondering for some days on how to measure the volume of an irregularly
shaped object, a gold crown.
When
having a bath he observed the rise and fall of the waterline caused by the displacement
of water by his own body and immediately sees the solution to the problem.
Friedrich
August Von Kekulé a Chemist,
while on a bus daydreamed of dancing atoms and molecules let to his theory on
the internal structure of molecules and subsequently suggested that organic
molecules were based on strings of carbon atoms. Seven years later while dozing
imagined an Ouroboros
(snake seizing its own tail) which lead
to visualising the ring shape structure of the Benzene Molecule
Example 3
Astronomer Vera Rubin's interest in observing detail activities
in galaxies led her to notice differences between two spectra taken a year
apart (1989-1990) of a galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. At first she did not
understand what was interesting and different until deciding that some stars
appeared to be going clockwise while others were going counter clockwise. Her
doubts and uncertainties caused her to book a main telescope for spring (1992)
to get a third spectrum for comparison.
Meantime one evening she made sketches from the existing spectra and in
doing so it became exquisitely clear and understandable to her. The third
spectrum confirmed her hypothesis, which in 1993 she included in a lecture at
Harvard. Within days other astronomers who had spectra of this galaxy but had
not analysed them in detail confirmed her discovery.
13. Verification:
Conscious
thinking (deliberate problem solving) now takes over the process.
The
insights must be verified or as in the case of the Arts, evaluated.
The
individual must evidence the proof of their hypothesis and present, publish or
display the evidence to the Field.
The
discovery is only considered valuable when it has passed social evaluation and
is included in the cultural domain to which it belongs.
Creativity
does not happen in isolation inside people’s heads, but in the interaction
between a person’s thoughts and a socio-cultural context.
Occasionally creativity involves establishing a new domain,
Galileo: Experimental Physics.
Max Planck / Albert Einstein: Quantum Theory/Physics
Albert Einstein: Theory of General Relativity.
Alan Turing: Computer Science.
References:
Rossetti,
William M. The Poetical Works of Samuel T. Coleridge London Moxon & Son 1900 approx
Boden,
Margaret The Creative Mind London Abacus 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Creativity New York
HarperCollins 1997
De
Bono, Edward Lateral Thinking London Penguin 1970
Koestler,
Arthur. The Act of Creation London Picador 1964 1975
Robertson,
Ian Types of Thinking London/New York Routledge 1999
Judkins, Rod The Art of Creative
Thinking, Sceptre, London 2015
Ashton,
Kevin. How to Fly a Horse, William Heinmann London, 2015
Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup, Penguin 2015
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