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That personal dislike may be due to my discipline. It is important to recognise that some disciplines require their students to exhibit creativity, originality (even if in fact they don't really have any): to be different from the student next to them. Others require their students to conceal it, even if in fact they are creative; and to make it look as if their suggestions proceed from evidence or authority, not from themselves. There is no a priori reason to assume there will be or can be any agreement about creativity; not even about whether it is a good thing. The phrase "creative accounting" in fact illustrates that creativity can be criminal, and is certainly NOT a core disciplinary value in some areas e.g. those which stress reliablity, safety, accuracy.
Definitions of creativity: (N.B. should we be defining novelty, originality, or creativity?)
My summary (much like Boden's) would be that creativity must have:
Boden's view, and mine too, is that creativity consists of generating a new combination of old elements.
Note too that creativity generally refers to the idea or design, rather than to the material object created or manufactured to embody it. (A foundry worker may produce a bronze statue, but we attribute creativity to the sculptor, even though the word "create / creativity" seems to imply physical bringing into existence.)
The 0th dimension: Human agency as the origin of the product or idea
Creativity vs. discovery: if a surprising and valued thing has not been
created by humans, then we say it is discovered.
In current English usage, even those who speak (religiously) of a creator, do
not seem to say that God is creative. (It would be odd to say that an
omniscient, omnipotent being surprised herself.)
We use "creative" to discuss human production, not natural or supernatural
creation. Similarly, if something is plagiarised, it might be novel to its
readers but not to the plagiariser. All this suggests that "creativity" is
about how minds surprise themselves and each other.
The 1st dimension: Utility (or goal, or value)
It is presupposed, required, that anything that is called creative is somehow
useful practically or "interesting" i.e. of value intellectually (or
aesthetically).
However it is hard to define this simply because discussions of creativity are
frequently about things whose value is only recognised, at least by most
people, later. Faraday is famously said to have replied to the question of
what good electricity was by "Madam, what good is a baby?". It illustrates
that at that time ordinary people couldn't see any application for electricity:
but he had faith in it. Conversely, many artifacts are invented and sold,
only for their users to develop new uses (new value) undreamt of by the
"inventor".
However value is not only tricky to perceive for the future, it is often different for the individual and for the group. That is, there are things that are useful and interesting to me, but not to others (my family history, my "piling system" -- my arrangement of work in superficially disorganised piles). Conversely, things of quite low quality are often very important as a whole just because so many people want them a bit that economics makes them cheap and plentiful e.g. air travel, soap operas.
In fact value is not quite independent of agency ...
Thus value is relative to the person or group, but can in principle be
objectively measured by a third party.
The 2nd dimension: Novelty
It is not straightforward to define the group that shares it, since different
kinds of knowledge spread in different virtual groups; and none of them are
well defined by national state boundaries. Current British English is
influenced by African American slang, but not by Indian speakers of English,
nor by French speakers. The Vikings reached North America, yet that knowledge
did not spread throughout Europe; and a different way of sailing there had to
be discovered about 600 years later.
This dimension, generating the two types above, is important to
cognitive models of how a person can generate new ideas. A cognitive model
needs to be of P-creativity; and then we can explain H-creativity as
caused by the P-creativity of the first person to have that idea.
This distinction is also of great importance to education. Constructivism
asserts that all significant learning is P-creative: requiring re-construction
inside the learner's mind. And to a great extent, in our culture at least, we
define learning in terms of "transfer": i.e. the capability of doing something
with a new idea that is more than a tape recorder can: of applying it in a new
context we haven't previously considered. This has a significant element of
creativity: of being able to put the old idea and new context together in a
combination (and with consequences) that is new to the learner i.e. is
P-creative.
Thus novelty too is relative to a person or group (society), but can in
principle be objectively measured by a third party.
Social credit. An important mechanism?
Boden's analysis and dimensions are essentially individualistic, and attempt
to be objectively factual: something either is new or not (a historical fact),
even if it has to apply twice, once to the individual and once to society or
some group. Even surprise (below) is treated as a fact about individuals'
state of mind: their expectations. However as this page/essay develops, it
looks more and more like a big part of our interest in creativity is really
essentially a social question of to whom are going to give credit? The words
"original" and "creative" seem mostly to be used only to denote this kind of
social credit.
In other words, we have moved from discussing attributes of an act or action;
to attributes (traits, characterisitics) of a human agent.
And not even that: it is about who should get the credit.
And like money: that is not a factual matter, but one of social convention
and practice. And this is no a matter of truth but of deciding how we choose
to do it.
In fact this is also true of attributing causation.
The 3rd dimension: Surprise
Boden's two types assume a godlike, hindsight view of whether something is
novel (to the person or mankind respectively). However also interesting and
important is whether a person perceives something they do as creative.
This is often unrelated to the actual case. For instance research in AI and
linguistics shows that many, perhaps most, sentences a person utters are new:
that person has never uttered them before. However no-one feels that this is
creative, perhaps because essentially everyone not only can do it, but does it
every day. On the other hand, feeling original ("creative") is often important
to people. What it is that determines whether people feel, i.e. judge
themselves to be, creative is an additional important topic we need to study.
This is analogous to metamemory: people's considerable, though imperfect,
ability to know whether they know something before and without actually
recalling it.
Although intuitively we associate surprise with suddenness, in reality that
is irrelevant. What defines surprise is violation of expectancy. An ambush,
no matter how suddenly fighting bursts out, is not a surprise if superior
reconnaissance has warned the intended victims. Conversely, people may be
very slow to adjust their expectations but we would still say an act was
creative even if it took years for many to accept it.
Judging whether something is creative is important to us. So
there are two more types of creativity that are subjective.
[3] SP-creativity: self-perceived creativity.
This relates to self-actualisation: when a person feels they are being
creative, creating a way of doing something that is new to them. Maslow's
notion of self-actualisation, and the use in Positive Psychology of
"creativity" as one of 24 strengths a human may have are indicators of how
important this is. Thus whether a person feels they are creative seems to be
linked to their well-being. As we have seen, this is a perception,
and has no clear relationship to available objective measures of creativity.
[4] GP-creativity: group-perceived creativity.
Group acclaim. This is when other people, one's peers, one's society
perceive you as having done something creative: i.e. novel to them and useful.
While in some respects contemptible ("just fashion"), this valuing is built on
the fundamental implicit values of all communication: to only say things that
are relevant, and a major necessary condition of relevance is that the Hearers
do not already know what you are saying. Thus (perceived) novelty is in fact
absolutely necessary to communication (otherwise we would be stalled,
repeating the endless number of things the other person already knows).
Surprise is about a clash between something we encounter and our
meta-memory-like sense of what to expect. We run our lives, not by
having exhaustive plans for everything, but by having a good estimate of the
things we need to prepare for and the things we can expect to deal with as and
when they come up. For example, many people expect to go abroad for a holiday
once a year, but probably only have plans about one year ahead: they just
assume they will be able to plan and achieve further holidays beyond that.
You can see in the press how this applies to other things. We tend to feel
that an effective flu vaccine is to be expected, and are critical when one is
not available; but we don't expect a machine that stops earthquakes to be
invented. This dimension of surprise is about not having predicted the
existence of a solution to a problem, or about the revelation of unintended
consequences (good, bad, or mixed) of some invention.
The point is that there are often some relatively short duration moments when
new implications come into view during the process of developing an idea,
rather like the way a dozen steps, out of the thousands it takes to climb a
hill, sometimes uncover (or hide) a large vista.
In design, this might be a new use (application), or perhaps realising for the
first time that there is an application at all. These estimates (surprises)
are what make it so hard both to foresee the future and to decide how much to
worry about identified problems. Surprise is a sudden shift in our
(meta-memory type) estimate of what can be developed, be expected to be doable.
See also
Rob Saunders.
He has a computational model of creativity; and it employs a kind of (a
simulation of) peer evaluation of proposed ideas that is in effect a judgement
procedure for GP-creativity (Blay Whitby says).
It seems obviously absurd to say "Columbus discovered America", not only
because Columbus died still believing he had reached Asia and never knew it
was a continent new to him, but because the continent had been there for tens
or hundreds of millions of years before humans, and humans had lived there for
thousands of years before Columbus stumbled on it, and even among Europeans
the Vikings had preceded him. But it does illustrate how important it is for
a social group, when it learns something new (cf. H-creativity); and also
that the "group" that seems important here is not a political group but in
some functional sense a community of knowledge (in this case, Europe rather than
Spain, or the profession of navigators, or ...). It also shows how creativity
is relative to a wider group: is about the entrance of knowledge to this
wider group.
In fact this case illustrates that the social group concerned must be about
sharing knowledge. Vikings seem not to have passed on their knowledge of
America effectively, and it had been forgotten.
The Chinese had in fact also sailed to America shortly before; and sent back
written accounts; but this knowledge had been suppressed in China.
Thus surprise is relative to a person or group; but it is doubtful if
it can be objectively measured by a third party because it is a subjective
feeling or perception, albeit with considerable consensus among people in many
cases.
You can't have surprise without novelty, but surprise adds an additional
requirement to novelty. So should I use surprise but drop novelty as a
distinct defining condition for creativity? Novelty can in principle be
established objectively by historical data, but surprise is defined by
expectations: essentially a subjective measure of mental attitudes not of
observable behaviour. Thus they bring out different aspects of our concept of
creativity.
Of the four defining properties of creativity, three were seen as describing
the product and dealt with above. This section addresses the remaining
property of creativity: the "zero-th" dimension of human agency.
This has two aspects: the human (who or where do the ideas come from; and what
are the relevant connections between creativity and being human),
and agency (is it a purposeful process or not; or can it be accidental).
This leads to broadening the discussion at times beyond creativity (just as
not everything surprising is creative, so not everything with human agency
counts as creative). However what defines the theme of this section is process
as opposed to the product (the result of a creative act) which was the focus
of the previous section. This section develops a set of dimensions or
attributes of processes. The aim is that all creative processes can be
compared and contrasted by these attributes, although other processes,
especially those leading to products called "discoveries" rather than
"creative", can also be compared here.
By the end of the whole section, we can return to summarise what we have
uncovered about the relationship of agency or purposefulness to the process of
creativity, and the connection of humans to it (as opposed, say, to a machine
for creativity).
It is clear from everyday usage of the term "creativity" that it is only
applied to human actions, but this is so entirely taken for granted that it is
not mentioned in the definitions of creativity that I've come across.
However it seems clear, if implicit, from Aristotle's classification of types
of cause that we can find a way to see almost anything both as caused by a
person, and as caused by non-human factors. Blame games (and praise games)
focus on human agents as the cause and are derided for wishing to ignore
non-human causes that may be more sensible. Similarly modern psychology
documents "attribution biasses": tendencies to attribute causes that, because
of their assymmetries, cannot be rational e.g. people tend to explain their
own actions as due to external pressures, but others' actions as due to their
inherent traits. Thus there is generally a huge middle ground in which,
without being grossly irrational, we may either choose a perspective that
explains events as due to human intentional action, or alternatively another
perspective that explains them as due to non-human, material causes. Even
though the simple analysis of everyday uses of "creativity" shows that it is
generally a label emphasising human intention as the central driving cause,
any attempt to deal with creativity from a third party perspective (e.g.
assessing students for creativity) probably needs to recognise that a product
that could count as creative could often alternatively be seen as a
non-creative consequence of other factors.
These are issues of the process of creativity, rather than the product.
They raise issues of who or what the driving force for the process is,
what they already had and what they seek out, ....
Why should we need humans' (rather than a machine's) creativity?
Gradualism vs. catastrophism
Gradualism vs. catastrophism have been important rival schools of explanation
in Geology in the past; and later (today) in Evolution theory.
In both fields, the eventual view seems to be that there are cases of both,
and this is probably true of creativity.
However we should note the metaphor sketched earlier, of how most
steps up a mountain make only gradual changes to the vista, but a few steps
are associated with rapid, even dramatic, shifts in what is in view. Since
surprise is an essential aspect of creativity, we should perhaps expect that
creativity often feels as if it is a sudden (catastrophic) process, yet is
actually an outcome of generally much slower processes.
This time scale dimension, or choice of perspective, is independent of the
other issues of agency.
The gradual vs. sudden timescale of the process of creativity seems related to
the surprise dimension of the product. However the argument above about the
surprise dimension is that that is essentially about a readjustment of
expectations, rather than the shortness of the period in which this is done.
For example, the Sydney opera house took over 14 years to construct, yet
everyone regards it as creative and in large part because it was so markedly
different from what, up till then, you might expect of an opera house.
The source: Where does the information used in creativity come from?
This is the first aspect of the issue of whether an innovation "comes from" a
person: the inventor. In some cases and senses it does. But it seems clear
that in others, the director / inventor may also obtain vital information from
other people. The types of source of information that may be important to feed
creative outputs are:
Thus even if we require a human agent for creativity, the process more often
than not involves seeking out information from other things or other people, and
doesn't just emerge from inside the inventor's mind.
If the search depends on other people or things, why attribute its value to
the director?
Search, and Purposefulness (Agency)
Thus items may be discovered accidentally. We should however note that even
then it may only be noticed, observed, and reported by a trained observer, and
not by other people. When Fleming discovered penicillin, a non-biologist
would have been unlikely to recognise that the absence of bacteria was an active
sign of death, the sign of the presence of an invisible antibiotic substance.
Considering the gradual nature of some creative processes, extended over
time, and how information sources other than the inventor's own mind are
frequently central, both demonstrate the role of purposefulness or agency.
The agent manages a search for answers, and may use the answers obtained in ways
different from any of the people who may have provided the answer.
This is not like a Eureka moment, but it is like an artist endlessly
"oversketching" (drawing many versions of the same line in a sketch to see
which looks best or right), a poet repeatedly changing this or that word, an
engineer trying different materials or shapes for their new device.
The process of searching for answers has several contrasting types, depending
on the question.
One type of search is to answer a specific closed question e.g. looking up
someone's email address. The other extreme is an open-ended question such as
"What is over the next hill?", what happens when you mix these two substances?
etc.
And furthermore, even when there is no active search, it still takes an
important mental property to recognise something important when you come
across it by accident (like Fleming). The unprepared mind tends not to notice
and does not act on it; the prepared one does.
On the whole, though you may discover something by accident, you don't say
something was created by accident.
Purposeful (2)? Was there any purpose at all behind the invention?
Invention, creativity is more about putting the two parts together; and also
thereby solving a problem. Creativity is about something human: a problem that
is solved; not a dispassionate description of the world.
There are two (at least) opposing accounts of innovation: one is the Eureka
one, attributing it to creativity: to mental creation by an individual with no
antecedants we are aware of. The other is of correcting the bad practices of
the past in order to do it right: which is not being creative but seeing how
to do it the Lord's way / the scientific way i.e. learning from an external
source whether authority or observation. Different disciplines have different
preferences for these two accounts. If the external source is observation,
then we might call it "external context"; if it is other people ....
The two parts of a creative idea.
(If there is a purposeful search) What is sought?
Creativity as project management and purposefulness
Given that there are two parts, then an inventor is someone who puts them
together but may not have invented both or either part in themselves.
Frequently they begin with one and search for something that can play the part
of the other. All find a way to fill the role of the other part. That means
the essential creative act may be one of directing, managing the search,
rather than supplying the parts.
We can then subcategorise creative acts depending on which parts were there
from the start, which found later; which were accidentally "found", which
searched for. For example professional inventors may decide on the need for a
new mousetrap or a videophone, and seek for a solution. Others however have
stumbled on (discovered) a surprising feature and searched for a goal, for
what it could be useful for. Post-it notes were invented when a glue firm
accidentally invented one of the weakest glues ever seen, and wondered how
that could possibly have a use. Similarly, SMS mobile phone texting was a
function engineers realised was "there" anyway in the system they had built
for voice, and could be offered to customers with little investment or
running expense: but it was a great surprise when it was seen as so useful by
customers.
Put another way, two things are needed for a creation: a purpose or goal or
identified value; and a solution or method for satisfying it.
The 4 possibilities for a purposeful agent then are:
If it is sought, then is it only discovered?
So perhaps the inventor, the creative person, is the one who directs the
search, rather than who generates the idea from nothing alone. This is also
about whether the innovation "comes from" a person; and specifically about the
project director role, distinct from who discovers the ideas about the parts.
The above implies that there are not one but two things, bits of information,
ideas to acquire in any invention, plus the idea of combining them.
But it also implies that there is an essential role for a director in putting
them together, distinct from being the source of the parts.
This is a definition of a creator: the person who manages the process, and
brings about the putting together of the two parts.
Perhaps, if we maintain that human agency must be behind anything creative,
there are 2 roles for the creative: a) putting the two parts (value and
method) together; b) actively searching for one or both of the parts.
You can discover facts / things; but creativity requires a problem, goal, need.
In essence, discovery is a one part process, while creativity is defined by
combining two parts.
Discovery vs. creativity
However for cases which qualify for creativity as well as discovery on all the
above issues, there may remain a different kind of ambiguity about which it
is. "Discovery" implies it is about external facts, not human wishes.
However, as illustrated by Aristotle's ideas of causes, and by the
psychological theory of attribution error, there is in many cases an ambiguity
in how you interpret any one case.
There is latitude in whether we attribute a discovery to creativity or not.
The element Radium was isolated by Curie after much effort: it does occur in
nature, but no-one knew it was there and it isn't easy to get hold of.
Plutonium owes the possibility of its existence and its nature and properties
to the same laws of physics as Radium, but in contrast does not occur in
nature but is physically created (manufactured) in nuclear reactors. BUT the
idea is not manufactured, so it's not creative.
Yet no doubt many things get reinvented: perhaps this is P-creativity.
The problems with drawing a clear line between discovery and creativity are,
or include:
Thus in part the distinction between discovery and creativity is not a matter
of definition but of the perspective adopted by those selecting the term.
If your attribution is focussed on what is different about the human involved,
then "creativity" is the term. If it focussed on the world, on the non-human
factors, then "discovery" feels more appropriate.
Gradualism: makes the need for purposeful mgt more evident.
There are two distinct needs for purposefulness in creativity:
There are three distinct roles for human involvement:
Creativity must have:
Most importantly, each of the necessary condition is relativised to either an
individual or the group, and typically the relevant groups are different for
each condition even for the same invention.
Insight learning is the term from Köhler to denote essentially "Eureka"
ideas: when there is no progressive gradual shaping of behaviour in the
Behaviorist way, but nothing apparent and then suddenly the creature puts
together several things (actions) in a way entirely novel to them, to
successfully solve a puzzle. Humans do it sometimes; Köhler described it
in apes; an ex-colleague of mine (Bob Boakes) showed it can happen in pigeons
(though you have to wait a really long time and have a lucky pigeon).
Its defining feature seems to be suddenness, as opposed to gradual
construction of the idea or behaviour; i.e. no trial and error.
Originality is (roughly) novelty: but usually relative to a group rather than
to the inventor. (H-creativity)
"Original" just means H-creative; but in terms of this page's
analysis, the originality may be about the means rather then the end/value of
the new idea.
Or perhaps, for me: "original" means surprising; while "creative" may mean
novel but not surprising.
Another way of mapping the words is on to the goal (value) vs. means
distinction. So to be original, the conclusion has to be novel; while to be
creative, the means of arguing or supporting the conclusion has to be novel.
(Yet I could say "original argument"; "creative conclusion" .)
To be original it must also be true and so useful (cf. insight learning);
while to be "creative" is neutral on truth, and merely attest to novelty?
Another way is to think about the distinction we feel about the scope of the
novelty / innovation.
If we think about walking across a shallow valley without paths, there are
many variations on the line we might pick, but which all do the same job.
Similarly, there are many ways to express even a simple given thought in
English, which is why it is rare for people to use the same sentence more than
once. A contrasting case is when a path takes us up over the side of a valley
and suddenly we can see wholly new vistas. Technically, the novelty is equal,
but we feel the latter kind is much more important. Sometimes people use
"transformational" in an attempt to denote which innovations matter most.
This may be important too in pure vs. applied cases. It is easy for a pure
researcher to feel they "had" an idea, but not mention it; or not bring it to a
usefully applied conclusion. Certainly true of Fleming and penicillin.
The key here is that "utility / value" IS different to the two types
of researcher.
Again, the cases of "finding" something but not recognising what you have.
Credit goes to the person who does recognise it.
Hence Pasteur's dictum that "chance favours the prepared mind", applied to
seeing the importance of what you see.
Whose idea was it?
who practically worked on estabishing the discovery?
Gratitude or historical novelty?
Giving credit to who writes it up, not who collected the data etc.
Credit for agency?
I claim that these dimensions apply equally to technology (product design),
Art, and also to entrepreneurial design of services, and to pure science.
(Although I am personally more familiar with cases from technological
creativity.)
Firstly, the question of whether there is an inventor acting as manager at
all: in other words, whether the case satisfies the necessary condition ("0th
dimension") for creativity of being due to human agency.
Cases that do not nevertheless help by giving us a perspective on those that
do, so a few are included as examples.
Examples where an invention is just noticed, and so arguably cannot qualify as
creative, are where both value and solution are noticed together. One case is
noticing that sunken ships in some locations have functioned to begin a new
reef: and now some ships have been placed and sunk deliberately for that
purpose. Another might be noticing that cigarette smoke tends to repel
midges, then smoking for that purpose.
I.e. is there an active manager, or was the "creation" just observed and
adopted?
Secondly, since (according to the argument here) there are always 2 parts
to any creativity which consists precisely of joining them, and the inventor's
job is that of a manager who searches for the missing part, then we can
classify each case by which of the two parts was "given" (there already), and
which was searched for. If both are given then it is a case of no creativity
(discovering something useful, as above). If neither are given, then it is a
case of a professional inventor setting out to do invention by simultaneously
looking for unsatisifed needs (functions) and for solutions that match them.
Thirdly are the dimensions of information source: for each of value and
solution, who or what supplied the information?
The basic idea is whether it comes out of the "director's" head (as in
painting and maths) or from testing the world, or asking other people.
However a major reason for not having a single clear answer to this in many
cases is that often, there may be a demonstrated key element that should make
a solution possible, yet there also needs to be a substantial development
process to establish how the solution can be reliably and economically
produced. Penicillin is an example of how crucial this step is. In fact the
same applies to the "value" element as well: managers may hit on a use they
believe in, but only much further work and rolling it out will in fact prove
whether or not there is real demand for it. This leads to ambiguity in how to
describe each case and fill in entries to the table.
Fourthly is the issue of whether the process is perceived as sudden or
gradual, and by each of the inventor and the surrounding social group.
Additionally is the contrast between pure science and saleable
technology. Both are creative in these terms, but a science goal concerns
the value of knowledge.
In fact in both cases, the value is only really known (established) after the
creation is fully delivered, and even then changes in time as the context
changes.
This table illustrates how either part may come first (be a "given") or second
(be sought by the inventor).
A creative design has:
I shall here discuss each case, and the problems I have in filling in the
table for it.
PostIt: the research group discovered the weak glue accidentally, then
searched for a use for it purposefully, and found it. They played the
Director (manager) role; they also acted as the information sources.
SMS (phone texting). The engineering group had already to implement the
channel that would be used for it as the "control" channel by which mobile
phones liase with stationary masts, and are handed off between them.
They saw that this channel could also be used for carrying user messages with
no new hardware, and no difficult extra software to write, and no costs to the
supplier provided delivery time wasn't guaranteed. They imagined it would
have some value, but probably hugely underestimated how much: this was later
"discovered" by observing actual customer use.
Penicillin: Fleming noticed an unusual pattern of bacterial growth in a dish;
inferred that this was due to a fungus which he was able to identify and
culture; isolated the substance it secreted and speculated that it would be
useful medically. Florey decided to attempt to work at developing an
anti-bacterial drug; chose penicillin (he presumably would have gone on to try
others if this was not successful); developed ways of manufacturing it in
usable quantities; and ran medical trials to establish whether it was useful.
If you regard Fleming as the discoverer of pencillin in the sense of someone
who created a drug hospitals could order and use, then Florey did nothing more
important than a foundry worker producing a bronze sculpture. But Fleming
completely failed to develop a production process and so could not treat let
alone cure any human. This led to the deaths of millions of people in the
years between his observation and the development of Florey's drug supply. We
could thus see Florey, but not Fleming, as creative: managing a purposeful
process that verified and connected a value with a working solution for
delivering that value.
Columbus had a purposeful project of discovery. He didn't discover what he
had planned to, so his actual discovery was accidental; and he never correctly
understood what he had discovered. He wasn't the first human to discover it
(that would be the people already living there); he wasn't the first European
to reach the continent (that was the Vikings) but he did discover / establish
a quite different method of sailing there (at the time, much more crucial than
just knowing the geographical coordinates); but most importantly, his
discovery became disseminated throughout the European world. Although he
probably had various utilities in mind, what has proved useful was the
knowledge of his discovery, not particular planned material advantages (gold,
...).
Marie Curie discovered the element Radium after a planned search and heroic
labour, isolating a few grams from tons of pitchblende (Uranium ore).
It was the first knowledge of its existence, and measurement of its
properties. Its human applications were invented later and by others.
Thus from an engineering viewpoint, this was discovery not creativity because
it had no human utility; while later people who developed applications (e.g.
using it to create glow-in-the-dark paint for watches) were creative.
However from the viewpoint of creative science, the value was the
identification of a new element and its properties, especially radioactive
properties. In effect there was a puzzle (accounting in detail for the
radioactivity of pitchblende) and both the method for answering it and the
answer itself had to be pursued.
Kissograms: an example of entrepreneurial creativity, where a new value
(utility) is imagined, verified, and a means developed to supply it. I.e.
creativity needn't be to do with either science, technology, nor art.
In fact, the means (solution) could be viewed as given and the creativity was
in recognising that people might use it and pay for it.
DNA fingerprinting is essentially like PostIt notes: an unexpected property was
observed; and then a use for it was thought up. This brings up a common
ambiguity: although it started with a surprising discovery that would become
the essential part of the "solution", even after inventing the application
(utility), the solution had to be developed into a practicable and reliable
procedure: reworking the solution from feasibility study to tested solution.
Discovering a new species (whether fossilised or living in the wild):
biologists go out to look, say, for new beetles. By examining every one they
find they will recognise a new species. The value is given, and obvious:
zoology is still interested in new species, though the amount of scientific
value of each new one is only known after discovery and depends on how
unexpected it is. Scientists would normally call this "discovery", yet it has
all the attributes of creativity.
Perkins examined the sludge from a failed experiment in organic chemistry and
observed a strong mauve colour. He then thought of the application of fabric
dyeing and established it as practicable.
The 4 colour theorem was a long standing conjecture in maths: i.e. everyone
thought it was true, but couldn't find a way to prove it. So the utility was
long established, and concerted efforts to find the "solution" were made,
eventually successful after a very long time.
Similarly for malaria vaccine, and fusion as a practicable power source, except
that success even after all this time is still at best partial, and it is
still not known whether they will ever be really successful.
Perspective painting: a story we might tell is that artists wished to create
a stronger impression of visual realism and sought, then developed, the system
of perspective.
With Jackson Pollock he developed both novel ways of painting (no brushes,
horizontal canvases to take liquid paint), and an aspect of visual experience
that his pictures isolated and brought out. If that story is correct, then
w.r.t. creativity he (and no doubt numerous other major painters such as
Picasso) developed novelty simultaneously in both parts (aim, method):
as professional inventors do for product design.
Firstly, all assessment tests require "transfer": using what was learned in a
new context. The question is, how far is the transfer? Reciting a poem
learned by heart is transfering only to another time and place, but using
identical words (very near transfer). A test on fractions might vary the
actual digits each time, but the method would be identical. Another step up,
would give the numbers in words not digits; a further step might ask about
proportions or percentages rather than using the word "fraction": and not all
children have grasped the connections. All tests test transfer; and some test
ability to transfer the knowledge to significantly distant cases and contexts:
and so are testing one important kind of creativity. (See here Table 8, which relates
creativity to the spectrum of learning transfer.)
Another kind of creativity assessment is the exam essay e.g. in History.
While essays sometimes only elicit direct recall and reproduction,
they are also often used to confront students with an unexpected proposition,
and the learner is required to construct a critical thinking argument for
and/or against the proposition, recruiting what they know and re-using it for
this discussion. This is creative in the classic sense: uses old elements,
but re-configuring them into a novel combination for a new purpose. In modern
educational terms, it might be boasted of as testing critical thinking or
higher-order Bloom goal types. The students who do this certainly feel an
engagement and elation that indicates that it is experienced as creative (and
self-actualising) by them.
The third familiar assessment method concerns problem-solving tasks, and in
particular Johnstone's analysis of designing creative problem solving tasks for learners.
Open-ended problems require the learner to decide on the goal (what will count
as a solution), other problems require finding new methods, some will have
incomplete information given. Thus such problems have more than one right
answer; but probably only a few judgement criteria (metrics of goodness of a
solution) which are largely agreed in advance.
Finally: we could view assessing creativity (e.g. of painters or designers)
as an expansion of this, but where the learner probably must add their own
judgement criteria, and where there are probably a very large number of
predicates that are relevant (even if the designer in practice picks just a
few to focus on). Thus if the task is to design a coffee mug, some of the
obvious goals include: holding liquid, tolerating freezing and boiling
temperatures, insulating it so hot coffee doesn't burn the user's hand and
doesn't cool too quickly, being easily washable, not containing steel armature
wires so it can be used in microwaves, etc. Designs will generally address
some of these better than others, so no two designs will be the same even in
intention, let alone in solution. On this perspective, designs could be
assessed firstly (1) for which predicates (design goals) were addressed vs.
forgotten (identifying value), and secondly (2) on how well the design
addresses each one (identifying solutions). And then further assessed for
novelty for the student (3) (was it a solution not mentioned in the textbook
or lectures); (4) novelty for everyone (the solution has not been seen
anywhere before); and (5) for surprise: a subjective judgement about how
striking the solution seems (as the Sydney Opera house is novel).
A slightly different thought is explored in the 2015 film "Mistress America"
(dir. Noah Baumbach).
It is that a very few people brim with original ideas (often wrong ones), and
the rest of us love this and depend upon this. Only when given an original
idea, or prompted by reacting to one, can we be either happy or productive.
And the creative person may be hopeless at carrying them through to fruition:
but is still really important socially.
If this is right, then it would modify Boden's criterion of utility from the
idea describing a useful artifact, to the idea prompting thoughts which
others importantly modify but then carry through to useful artifacts.
It covered these aspects which are potentially relevant:
When humans do it, this is typically experienced as a "Eureka" or "Ah ha"
moment. There has been some recent work by Horizon in humans.
Thus it looks as if there is recent work on "creativity" in psychology;
whether good or bad. Here are some critical thoughts:
"The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates."
Oscar Wilde
"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where
you heard it." - Laurence J. Peter
Web site logical path:
[www.psy.gla.ac.uk]
[~steve]
[best]
[this page]
[?] POP-creativity: popular/populist value. Here value is defined by
the group, not the individual. Where mass market appeal means large numbers
value the product, even if only a little bit. Soap operas, cheap air flights
are examples of this, because the mass market makes it economical to satisfy
demand for quite low-utility things.
Maggie Boden distinguishes:
[1] P-creativity ("Person")
[2] H-creativity ("Historical").
The former is something new to the individual person who creates it; the
latter is new to the human race, or at least to their "culture": the group
that shares this kind of knowledge.
Obviously a person may re-invent something so
it is a creative mental act for them, but not a contribution to human culture
unless no-one else has done it already. Conversely, as discussed in a moment
below, we may be completely unaware of the source of our thought i.e. feel it
is an original, creative insight, yet it could be obviously (to others)
derived from someone else.
Note however that it is just our current culture (society) that makes much
of creative artists, engineers, and scientists. Medieval cathedrals, in
contrast, were designed and built by individuals we know almost nothing of: no
such social value was then put on celebrating those responsible for
"creativity". So H-creativity is not equally interesting in all societies.
And note too that our culture doesn't apply it to all things: new words are
coined all the time, but credit is not given to the originators. In fact most
people don't even know that many of our words were coined by Shakespeare: we
credit him with other kinds of creativity.
Surprise ≈ a shift in expectations more than in reality or achievement.
Summary table: types of creativity product
Types of creativity (product)
As judged by: ↓
Relative to the: →
Individual
Group
Utility
Useful / interesting as judged by whom? →
I-creativity
Idiosyncratic needs,
convenience,
curiosity
(learning) POP-creativity
Mass market appeal
e.g.cheap air travel
(teaching)
Novelty
Novel to whom? →
Objective;
Actual novelty P-creativity
A first for that person H-creativity
A first for humanity
Originality
Surprise
Surprising to whom? →
Subjective;
perceived novelty SP-creativity
Self-actualisation GP-creativity
Group acclaim, relevancePart B: Agency, and types of process for creativity
(See also Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink.)
Why should we need purposefulness (agency) for creativity?
While a favourite type of story is of Eureka moments, where an original insight
appears in a flash, this "catastrophism" is distorting as an
account of creativity since slow, incremental, trial and
error improvements are far more common; whether of a design for a toaster, a new
jet aircraft, or a piece of writing. "Step by tedious step, we stumble away
from abject failure. And that's on a good day." [Barth Netterfield] Slow
incremental evolution ("gradualism") is a process where P-creativity, and
SP-creativity, are much less than H-creativity: the former diminishes to a
tiny value as the inventor gets sick of endless little changes, while the
H-creativity slowly goes up as the value which the product will have when the
public finally gets to see it increases. Another argument against
catastrophism as the usual mechanism of creativity are the many cases where
artifacts are used for purposes the inventor did not envisage: and so could
not possibly have "been creative" about.
I.e. this is H-creativity without P-creativity; and where the users discover
uses for the invention which the "inventor" did not know or value. It may be
that the construction of solutions is gradual, yet the experience of surprise
sudden. And/ or that creativity seems or is gradual for the individual
inventor, but sudden for society.
Help from whom or what?
As soon as you realise that creativity might not be instantaneous but iterative,
stepwise, then the question arises as to whether the inventor gets help
(information) during the creative process. They might not: some things are just
worked out in the head yet take a long time. But they might: they might get
information from experiments and observations on inanimate things. Or from a
human authority; or a collaborator; or from feedback from user testing.
In which case, should the search-director get the credit or the source of the
information? Do you own your own
genes, or do they belong to the biologist who sequences them?
Was there any intentional, directed human effort behind a new idea, or piece
of it, at all?
The main alternatives may be:
We tend to use the term "discovery" in science and geography, and to use it
for the parts separately. Also, discovery may be purposeful (searching for an
answer), intentional, and human. Yet we don't say "creative" about such
things. That may be because there is no surprise: if the question is precise
and formulated, then the existence of an answer is not surprising.
(Meta-memory again.) Climbing Everest for the first time was not surprising
for the spectators, though enough for the news.
An important point to recognise here is that all inventions or creative ideas
are in fact the mating of two parts: a) the value, purpose, function, utility:
what it is for, what problem it solves; with b) the solution, method,
device, painting that illustrates and embodies it.
This is obvious in product design, but applies equally to a poem or painting:
what distinguishes them from random noise is that some people see them as
valuable, novel, and unexpected (even though articulating that value in
descriptive language is not required and usually not done.)
In some cases it is hard to identify why we would call a case discovery rather
than creativity. In many cases however it is easy.
Part C: Pausing to take stock
Summary 1 (abandoned)
My overall arg. structure for the summary
Entailment of this:
Summary of possible aspects of human
Could it be a machine agent?
If software can surprise humans?
Simulations do.
Text of the section
An essential feature of creativity with significant consequences for the
process of creativity is that the essential role is not the physical
production but intellectual production, and that it is not the production of
the intellectual elements, but the fitting together of two parts (the function
or value, and the solution or method).
Thus it is the role of director or manager that is essential, not the role of
information source.
It also follows that creative processes could be classified depending on which
of the two elements came first and was the starting point for a search for the
second.
It also leads to a distinction between creativity and discovery, which is the
production of one element and without any assumption of purpose.
Summary 2
There are three main ideas developed above.
Frequently one of these is known and shared in advance, the other is the new
bit; and there are many cases of each kind (and indeed some cases of both parts
being novel). I.e. there are new creative solutions to old problems, and new
uses for old methods (and machines and objects). Original vs. creative: a note
Some people use the words "original" and "creative" as constrasting, although
I myself do not usually see any reliable difference between them. (However
there are certainly important distinctions to be made: the main content of
this document is trying to identify them.)
I saw a competition which had both originality and creativity as criteria,
as if independent.
Example of originality and no creativity: accidental selection from
things, objets trouvés.
Example of creativity and no originality: P-creativity.
So this note tries to map the two words on to personal creativity vs.
culture-wide originality. Attribution of social credit
Lev Landau's [a great Russian physicist] group was discussing a bright new
theory, and one of his junior colleagues bragged that he had independently
discovered the theory a couple of years ago, but did not bother to publish his
finding.
"I would not repeat this claim if I were you," Landau replied: "There is
nothing wrong if one has not found a solution to a particular problem.
However, if one has found it but does not publish it, he shows a poor
judgment and inability to understand what is important in modern physics".
When do we see a person as crucial to the effort?
Why not give credit to electricity generating staff; little research happens
without that today.
Or to the mothers of the researcher? without whom they would not exist?
Part D: Classifying types of creativity
The dimensions (variable properties) of the creativity process
notes (1)
The original dimensions give rise, not simply to binary present/absent
properties, but to ways in which cases of creativity vary from each other.
notes (2)
In summary, I propose the following dimensions of the process of creativity,
which are explored in the following tables.
The first is one of the necessary defining conditions for creativity (human
agency), while the others are dimensions on which the process of creativity
varies between instances.
An active director?
I.e. which was given, and which sought?
Where did the information (the discovery) come from: the active
director or inventor himself? or from others? or from researching
the world?
Illustrative tables of the attributes of the process
This table illustrates how creations may be sudden or gradual; and how the
perception of this is different from the viewpoints of the inventor or of
others (the group).
Perceived suddenness of the creativity process
Perceived by others (group)
Sudden
Gradual
Perceived by inventor (individual)
Sudden
Find a new species, SMS
[Neither function nor solution anticipated] NW passage, cure ulcers, 4-colour theorem proof
[Sudden solutions to long standing goals]
Gradual
Aniline dyes, PostIt
[Slow development for unanticipated utility] Fusion power, maleria vaccine
[Gradual progress on longstanding goals]
Which of the 2 parts came first?
Utility / goal / value
Utility given
Utility sought
Solution
Given
Use sunken ships to create a reef
[Discovery not creativity] Aniline dyes, PostIt notes
[Novel uses]
Sought
Zero resistance electrical wire, HIV vaccine, Green automobiles, Penicillin-Florey
[New solutions to pressing needs] Jackson Pollock, Radium
[Professional inventors]Summary table: cases with the attributes of the creativity process for
each
This table compares and classifies different cases of creativity by these
process properties.
Dimensions of the creativity process
Active director?
Which part sought?
Info source?
Time
If no=> not creative
Value
Solution
Value
Solution
Inventor
Social group
Yes/No
given/sought
given/sought
Dir/Others/World
Dir/Others/World
Sudden/Gradual
Sudden/Gradual
SMS phone texting
Yes
Sought
Given
Dir/Others
Dir
Sudden
Sudden
Penicillin,Fleming
No
Given
Given
Dir
world
Sudden
-
Penicillin,Florey
Yes
Given
Sought
world
world
Gradual
Sudden
PostIt notes
Yes
Sought
Given
Dir
Dir
Gradual
Sudden
DNA fingerprinting
Yes
Sought
Given
Dir
Dir
Gradual
Sudden
Perkins' aniline dye
Yes
Sought
Given
Dir
Dir
Sudden
Sudden
Sunken ships to initiate reefs
No
Given
Given
world
world
Sudden
Sudden
Columbus
Yes
-
Dir
-
World
Gradual?
Sudden
Radium (for sci)
Yes
Sought
Sought
Dir
world/Dir
Gradual
Sudden
Painting (perspective)
Yes
Sought
Given
Dir
Others/Dir
Gradual
Gradual
JacksonPollock
Yes
Sought
Sought
Dir
Dir
Gradual
Gradual
A new species
Yes
Given
Sought
Others
World
Sudden
Sudden
Plutonium for bombs
Yes
Given
Sought
Others
world
Gradual
Sudden
Kissograms
Yes
Sought
Given
Dir
Others/Dir
Gradual
Sudden
Proof of the 4 colour theorem
Yes
Given
Sought
Others
Dir
Gradual
Gradual
Vaccine for HIV
Yes
Given
Sought
Others
Dir
Not yet achieved
Not yet achieved
Zero electrical resistance wire
?
Given
Sought
Others
World
?
gradual Part E: Assessing students on creativity
There are three ways in which we could say that creativity is already commonly
assessed in various academic disciplines, without calling it that. Some links on assessing creativity
Part F: The social importance of creativity
Obviously the framework of the above assumes that society needs one person to
be creative, and the rest of us benefit by using their ideas.
A supplement to that, is that it may well be good for us individually to
re-invent things: as constructivism expects. Part G: Creativity, and the feeling of insight
There was a Horizon TV programme on creativity, currently (Sept 2015) on
iPlayer, but repeated from two years ago:
here.
BBC2: Horizon 2012-2013: 8.
"The Creative Brain: How Insight Works"
(?Boakes, R. A. (1984) From Darwin to behaviourism: Psychology and the
minds of animals (Cambridge University press)
Opezzo, M. & Schwartz,F.L. (2014)
"Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking"
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Vol.40 no.4 Jul 2014 pp.1142-1152
doi:10.1037/a0036577
Hailman, J.P. (1967) "The ontogeny of an instinct"
Behavior Supplement 15.
Hailman, J.P. (1969) "How an instinct is learned"
Scientific American vol.221 no.6 pp.98-106
Links / References
Boden, Margaret A. (1990) The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson).
Boden, Margaret A. (1994) "Précis of The Creative Mind: Myths and
Mechanisms" Behavioural and Brain Sciences vol.17 no.3 pp.519-570
Boden, Margaret A. (1995). Creativity and Unpredictability.
Stanford Education and Humanities Review vol.4 no.2
Nutshell: a 10 page summary of her book.
Acknowledgements
This page was prompted by an invitation to talk from
eSharp,
by conversations with
Marianne Patera, and with
Blay Whitby.
To be included
"It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create." John Saxe ToDo
I'm weakest on the dim. of info source. Does this matter?
And I have commented on, but perhaps not resolved, the issue of the
difference between the first glimmer of each element of a creation, and
establishing a reliable procedure (not the promise of one that will work
sometimes).
Social accounting
E.g.s of task-artifact cycle: of users find new apps
Anagrams? fit in somewhere?
This needs e.g.s from:
Humanities.
Art
non-techno entrepreneurship
geography or biology
Problems
Insight learning ??
Reprise / Conclusion. If any final conclusion needed.
Actually: this sketch is a half-assed attempt at a snazzy conclusion.
Why human?
Why agency?
Creativity =~= p-solving, not all discovery. Must have surprise (not too much purpose?)
Aristotle again for creativity -> do need a purpose = telos (utility); and
that is a human need.
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