How Creative Is Creativity?

[Sunstone]

Just how creative are humans, really? Some folks would point out that everything humans create has some precursor to it.

For instance, someone invents a plane. But the idea of flight, along with the notion that wings are needed for flight, comes from observing birds. Then too, the notion of a propeller for the plane comes from observing the use of propellers by ships. And so on and so forth. The point being that even something as apparently creative as creating an airplane has precursors to each idea, and hence, we are not really as creative as we might think we are.

But is this view true? Are humans always bound in their creations by the necessity of getting their ideas from somewhere, or can they be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors?

And if they can be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors, what then is the value of an education to someone who is creative?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

But is this view true? Are humans always bound in their creations by the necessity of getting their ideas from somewhere, or can they be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors?

When is the last time you stumbled across a fugue or sonnet?

 

[BrandonE]

No, I don't think that humans have ever created something with no precursors. I don't believe it's even possible. I think any idea that has ever occurred to anyone is a combination and extrapolation of things they have previously experienced.

I don't think, however, that this in any way minimizes the importance of creativity. Tapping into experience to present things in a novel way is still a challenging and valuable pursuit.

When is the last time you stumbled across a fugue or sonnet?

But surely those have precursors too.

The sonnet was surely not the first form of poetry. The iambic rhythm is a formalization of naturally occuring rhythms in speech. The form of a sonnet surely must be just an extrapolation of previsouly existing forms. Even the first poem is just a formalization of rhythms and rhymes that occur naturally in speech. Noticing those phenomena and formalizing them is no small feat though.

And surely the first person to write a fugue had heard music before, as well as birds songs in "rounds" in the forest. Again, though, formalizing this and turning it into composed music is not something to be taken lightly.

 

[nutshell]

Sunstone, just out of curiosity, what do you think the precursor to propellers on a ship was?

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Sunstone, just out of curiosity, what do you think the precursor to propellers on a ship was?

I forget which tree it is that has them, but ever seen those falling seeds with the twisted wing? They spin around and this slows down their descent. If the wind catches them they can spin so fast as to ascend into the sky. I'm not saying this was the precursor to propellers on a ship, but it might've been.

Our capacity to observe, imagine and experiment is pretty remarkable. Genetic cloning is an example of something that is not found to 'naturally' occur anywhere outside of a lab. We've been enabled to do through successive observation, inventive imagination and experimentation. There is also an apparently random element to creativity. We can't imagine the unimaginable (of course) but we can certainly get new ideas by accident.

 

[d.]

And surely the first person to write a fugue had heard music before, as well as birds songs in "rounds" in the forest. Again, though, formalizing this and turning it into composed music is not something to be taken lightly.

the fugue was the product of several centuries of polytonal evolution...hardly pulled out of somebody's magic hat, no.

anyway, in my view human evolution is more of a dialectic or more precisely a polylectic(is that even a word?) process between individuals and groups of individuals. we're very creative beings, but we're creative with what we have to work with. which i don't find depressing or discouraging at all, quite the opposite.

 

[Sunstone]

Sunstone, just out of curiosity, what do you think the precursor to propellers on a ship was?

Please recall how "The Turtle", a submarine used in the American Revolutionary War to attack a British warship, was propelled. It was pulled through the water by a forward facing screw that was hand cranked. If that's the earliest propeller, then the earliest propeller was basically a slight variation on a screw.

 

[michel]

Just how creative are humans, really? Some folks would point out that everything humans create has some precursor to it.

For instance, someone invents a plane. But the idea of flight, along with the notion that wings are needed for flight, comes from observing birds. Then too, the notion of a propeller for the plane comes from observing the use of propellers by ships. And so on and so forth. The point being that even something as apparently creative as creating an airplane has precursors to each idea, and hence, we are not really as creative as we might think we are.

But is this view true? Are humans always bound in their creations by the necessity of getting their ideas from somewhere, or can they be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors?

And if they can be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors, what then is the value of an education to someone who is creative?

I think some people are creative by nature - and then, in only some aspects.

I am not artistically creative; I am happy to produce a piece of work that is based on someone else's idea (and my older son, who is a wonderful cartoonist is very able to copy cartoons, but cannot design original ones -poor guy has my genes!)

But I (with very little education) - and I don't want this to sound like a boast - believe I do have a talent for creativity in problem solving mechanical or electrical problems.

Just one silly example; I had a car (a few years ago); on the dashboard, there was the fan on/off and different speed settings. It was one made with a plastic housing, with a lug on each side that held it tight agaist the dash.

|One day I noticed this swich was loose; of course, the lugs had been bent (or worn away). Being mean (I hate going to garages for repairs unless I rally have to do so), I thought for a bit, went to get a tennis ball, and jammed the ball behind the switch (so that the ball would stop the switch from falling back through behind the dash).

It worked, of course; I really would like to see the face of the mechanic who has to replace that part, at some time, when he sees my tennis ball...........

 

[nutshell]

Please recall how "The Turtle", a submarine used in the American Revolutionary War to attack a British warship, was propelled. It was pulled through the water by a forward facing screw that was hand cranked. If that's the earliest propeller, then the earliest propeller was basically a slight variation on a screw.

And what was the precursor to the screw?

 

[bigvindaloo]

And what was the precursor to the screw?

Dove-tail joints?

 

[bigvindaloo]

Just how creative are humans, really? Some folks would point out that everything humans create has some precursor to it.

For instance, someone invents a plane. But the idea of flight, along with the notion that wings are needed for flight, comes from observing birds. Then too, the notion of a propeller for the plane comes from observing the use of propellers by ships. And so on and so forth. The point being that even something as apparently creative as creating an airplane has precursors to each idea, and hence, we are not really as creative as we might think we are.

But is this view true? Are humans always bound in their creations by the necessity of getting their ideas from somewhere, or can they be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors?

And if they can be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors, what then is the value of an education to someone who is creative?

Good question. I dont think we can conjure something from nothing, so precursors are necessary. But creativity could be defined as a novel combination of precursors fullfilling a function, or a combination of precursors fulfilling a novel function. This seems to be conjuring up something from nothing.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

No, I don't think that humans have ever created something with no precursors.

I believe that to be a strawman argument. To equate creativity with creativity sans precursor is absurdly reductionist and dismisses a good deal of work centered around the concept of emergence.

 

[BrandonE]

I believe that to be a strawman argument. To equate creativity with creativity sans precursor is absurdly reductionist and dismisses a good deal of work centered around the concept of emergence.

Alright, I frankly have no idea what you mean by "work centered around the concept of emergence". I'd love to hear more about it though, especially if it shows some insight into the creative process that counters what I'm saying here. I was trying to answer the questions posed though.

Are humans always bound in their creations by the necessity of getting their ideas from somewhere, or can they be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors?

And if they can be so imaginative that they can conjur up ideas which have no precursors, what then is the value of an education to someone who is creative?

I think the answer to the first question is yes. Ideas come from somewhere, even if the creative process of transformation and extrapolation are amazingly complex and primarily unconscious. The answer to the second question is no IMO. They can not be so imaginative that their ideas have no precursors.

If you think that this is equating creativity with creativity sans precursors, then you have issue with the original questions, not my response to them, as I merely answered them as they were posed.

Finally, because I believe that there are no ideas without precursors, I think that the value of education in the creative process is inestimable. Note, however, that this does not necessarily mean formal education. Even if Motzart assimilated the music that he was exposed to at a mind-bending rate early in life, it is not as if he was kept in a box isolated from music and sprang forth able to play and compose.