Creativity has been defined as the intersection of novelty with appropriateness.
The concept of “novelty” is relative: Things that are purely new often seem strange or out-of-place. For example, why would a chemist suddenly begin talking about snakes? But the chemist Kekule did just that, describing the ring structure of carbon atoms in the benzene molecule as “a snake biting its own tail.” Kekule said that this image came to him in a dream, as the solution to a problem that he had long been pondering. He knew from empirical research exactly how many carbon atoms and how many hydrogen atoms the molecule needed to contain, but he hadn’t previously been able to explain how they fit together. The “snake biting its tail” image provided an elegant solution to his problem.
Novelty may not be something one can consciously develop — just try sitting down with a blank piece of paper and making a deliberate effort to "be creative." Truly innovative ideas more often seem to emerge from the Intuitive System, what other theories of mind might describe as the “subconscious.” (We call the Intuitive System “non-conscious,” which seems more simple and descriptive). In Kekule’s example, the revelation in a dream suggests involvement of the Intuitive System, an insight arrived at when the conscious mind was literally sleeping. This was not a case of “pure” inspiration, however; Kekule’s conscious mind (the Narrative System) had been working extensively on the problem for some time beforehand. His non-conscious mind then assimilated those conscious thoughts, combined them with imagery from a completely different quarter, and provided him with the solution. Another well-known example is Coleridge's composition of the poem Kubla Khan in an opium-induced dream state, which broke off abruptly when a visitor came to his door. Creativity researchers talk about creative work done by the Intuitive System as an “incubation” of ideas.
The Intuitive System is no great genius; in creative thinking, as in most things, it operates in relatively small and simple ways. Robert Weisberg's book Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius presents evidence from multiple fields showing that novel ideas are generally built up by small steps from existing concepts and techniques. In Picasso's work, for instance, there are early instances of the painter presenting objects from multiple perspectives at once, which build and expand into his full-blown cubist works. Many of Shakespeare's plays draw their structure and characters from history or myth, with the playwright elaborating those situations in novel ways. And the Eiffel Tower was based on combining new steel girder capabilities with design concepts from an earlier lattice-work wooden tower at the 1853 New York World's Fair. Most apparent innovations are in fact minor variations and combinations of unrelated ideas, which come about through a perceptual process. The Intuitive System recognizes "these things are related" or "these things are the same," and suggests a way forward that was not previously apparent even to the person originating the idea.
The second concept involved in creativity, “appropriateness,” is more strongly connected to the Narrative System. Logical, sequential thought allows for comparison of new ideas to those that are already well-accepted, as well as discernment of errors in reasoning. The deliberate nature of Narrative thought can be seen in the analysis of themes or elements in a creative work, or in a discussion of where a new idea fits into the stream of previous ideas. Sometimes people with a very active Narrative System may be told that they are "over-thinking" their response to a work of art, because the (Intuitive-Level) aesthetic response to it takes place mainly outside language. But the Narrative System's response can also be part of the enjoyment, an intellectual or aesthetic response that complements and augments the first-glance emotional one.
The Narrative System plays an important role in producing creative works as well. The Intuitive System is the idea factory, but the Narrative System helps to sort the genuinely interesting products from the much more common defective ones. Another line of evidence in Weisberg's book on creativity demonstrates that highly creative individuals don't just produce major works, they produce many minor works as well. Without the Intuitive-level production of ideas nothing would happen, but without a second layer of Narrative-level analysis the truly novel ones might be lost in the shuffle.
A final note about the creative process is that it is often iterative. In the "marshmallow challenge" design task, for instance, teams compete to build a tower out of tape, string, and uncooked spaghetti noodles that can hold up a marshmallow without collapsing. The task's inventor, Tom Wujec, reports that the most common pattern is for teams to deliberate, identify a plan, build a tower, and in the last few seconds add the marshmallow -- which promptly destroys their effort with its weight. The most successful tower-creators, says Wujec, are kindergartners. Their method is to take a single strand of spaghetti and attempt to balance the marshmallow on it, then work their way gradually upward. The iterative process proceeds with idea, then test, then new idea, then another test, and so on until the time limit is reached. There is no initial planning phase, only a gradual development of newer and better ideas. All creators can draw a lesson from this: Let the Intuitive System do its best, and then use the Narrative System to identify flaws and weaknesses in your work. Then, if you can, sleep on it and give the Intuitive System time to propose another potential solution.
Comments
Post a Comment