Interesting article. this bit: "The concepts involved in a creative project are often domain-specific, and research has shown knowledge of a domain is a prerequisite to creativity."
Western people often criticize the way of teaching art in China , claiming it is "not creative", yet the Chinese perspective is to teach the tools first. Teach the way great artists painted to become familiar with the tools (calligraphy brush, ink etc) and then find your own style. In other words, know your domain and be creative once you know your domain. That style certainly fits that sentence above.
So basically… creativity is just having a brain that’s a messy, over-connected filing cabinet and the judgment to know when to pull “Space Sharks” instead of “Shark Filing Cabinets.”
Love how you make the science feel like the story it actually is.
Your terms of divergent and convergent thinking are new to me, but they seem to map fairly well to what I call inventive-creative and adaptive-creative.
Steve Jobs was basically a tinkerer, not really an inventor of anything. Everything Jobs got famous for at Apple had already been developed to an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) level by someone else. Jobs made improvements at the margins in ways that resonated with lots of people.
My creativity isn't very inventive at all. I'm not an "idea guy," but I can tinker with things that already exist in a functional form and maybe find ways to adapt them to an adjacent use.
Absolutely! Great piece! The capacity of breaking the axioms requires being at a meta level of the current paradigm. And this is often something you can’t do with the language of the current paradigm.
I tried to explain this concept here with the classical example of why “17” is returned by most AI when asked a random number between 1 and 25 and what Plato has to say about it! I’d love to hear your thoughts 😊
That was useful. Also suggests how the phrase "thinking outside the box" came to be. We all need more boxes to think out of. Especially in this political environment. :-))
Interestingly the "think outside the box" phrase was for a long time associated (and maybe took on new popularity due to) another problem solving task I almost talked about here, the nine dots problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_dots_puzzle
I've run into this one before. I'm old so there have been lots of opportunities to encounter it. I think it revolves around the human proclivity to put edges on everything even when there is no need.
My summary isn't a word for word match for the instructions participants received. In the original experiment participants were told they were to put candles at eye level for visual experiments.
Great, creative piece. Thank you.
Interesting article. this bit: "The concepts involved in a creative project are often domain-specific, and research has shown knowledge of a domain is a prerequisite to creativity."
Western people often criticize the way of teaching art in China , claiming it is "not creative", yet the Chinese perspective is to teach the tools first. Teach the way great artists painted to become familiar with the tools (calligraphy brush, ink etc) and then find your own style. In other words, know your domain and be creative once you know your domain. That style certainly fits that sentence above.
So basically… creativity is just having a brain that’s a messy, over-connected filing cabinet and the judgment to know when to pull “Space Sharks” instead of “Shark Filing Cabinets.”
Love how you make the science feel like the story it actually is.
I love articles like this one.
Your terms of divergent and convergent thinking are new to me, but they seem to map fairly well to what I call inventive-creative and adaptive-creative.
Steve Jobs was basically a tinkerer, not really an inventor of anything. Everything Jobs got famous for at Apple had already been developed to an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) level by someone else. Jobs made improvements at the margins in ways that resonated with lots of people.
My creativity isn't very inventive at all. I'm not an "idea guy," but I can tinker with things that already exist in a functional form and maybe find ways to adapt them to an adjacent use.
Have you heard of the Visionary-Integrator combination in entrepreneurship? It seems that could also map mostly onto divergent and convergent. https://rocketfueluniversity.com/rocket-fuel-book/
I haven't heard of the visionary-imtegeator thing, thanks for pointing me to it! Interesting
Absolutely! Great piece! The capacity of breaking the axioms requires being at a meta level of the current paradigm. And this is often something you can’t do with the language of the current paradigm.
I tried to explain this concept here with the classical example of why “17” is returned by most AI when asked a random number between 1 and 25 and what Plato has to say about it! I’d love to hear your thoughts 😊
https://open.substack.com/pub/antoninorau/p/from-eikasia-to-noesis-what-plato
That was useful. Also suggests how the phrase "thinking outside the box" came to be. We all need more boxes to think out of. Especially in this political environment. :-))
Interestingly the "think outside the box" phrase was for a long time associated (and maybe took on new popularity due to) another problem solving task I almost talked about here, the nine dots problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_dots_puzzle
I've run into this one before. I'm old so there have been lots of opportunities to encounter it. I think it revolves around the human proclivity to put edges on everything even when there is no need.
“The real solution? Empty out the box, use the tacks to hold up the box, and use the box as a platform to hold the candle…”
Except the candle is not affixed to the wall, the box containing the candle is. Awful example of creativity.
“What are we to make of this?”
It’s more about interpreting syntax than finding a unique solution.
My summary isn't a word for word match for the instructions participants received. In the original experiment participants were told they were to put candles at eye level for visual experiments.