Preface
Introduction
STORIES:
Discoveries about Creativity
Laws Of Planetary Motion
Electricity From Clouds
Band-Aid
Pneumatic Tyres
Gummed Paper
The Trap Of Paradigm
Invention Of Sewing Machine
Just-In-Time System
Transmission of Nerve Impulses
Printing Press
Dangers Of Locomotives
Flashlight
Lawn Mower
Phonograph
Rubber Heels
The Periodic Table
Discovery Of Electromagnetic Fields
The Tao Of Physics
Congenital Impact of Rubella
Typewriter
The Theory Of Evolution
The Benzene Ring
The Wreck Of Titanic
Wagner's Rheingold
Underwater Construction
Search For The "Hidden Likeness"
Fermi & Nuclear Fission
Cash Register
Discovery Of Current Electricity
Cure Of Diabetes
Boolean Algebra
Principle Of Photosynthesis
Ball Point Pen
The X-Ray
The Fuschian Functions
Safety Glass
The Creative Triggers
Why Aeroplanes Cannot Fly
The "Brownies" Of Stevenson
The Blunder That Founded 3M
Invention Of AC Motor
Discovery Of Teflon
Toynbee's The Study Of History
Inventors' Blindness
The Excitement Of Creativity
Electric Fan
How Typhus Gets Transmitted
Proof Of The Big Bang
Mathematical Theory Of Chance
Coleridge's Kubla Khan
Vulcanisation Process
Structure Of The Crystals
The Compulsion To Create
3M's Post-It Note Pads
Ice Cream Cones
The Structural Theory Of Atom
IBM And Computers
Helicopter
How Experts Resist Ideas
Creative Reveries Of Enid Blyton
Predictions In Gulliver's Travels
Float Glass Technology
Principle Of Immunisation
Journey Into Unknown
The Genius Of Karl Fredrich Gauss
Jean Coceteau's The Knights Of The Round Table
Neon Light
Transistor Radios
Precocious Minds?
The Masterpiece Of Sir Walter Scott
The "Fraud" That Changed The World
The "99% Perspiration"
Xeroxing
The Poem Of Stephen Spender
The Anatomy Of Inspiration
Travellers' Cheques
Edison's Fraud
Awe, Wonder And Alienation
The Logic Of Irrational
Epilogue: Themes & Patterns
|
Discoveries about Creativity
One of the remarkable fact about creative discoveries and invention is (as we will see over and over again) that many of them were made by people not connected to the field. Nothing is truer of what we know about creativity. The seminal ideas about the What and How of creative processes did not come from studies conducted by psychologists. Rather they were documented by creative individuals from various fields, who were introspective about the nature of their own mental life.
- Graham Wallace, who for the first time proposed the four stages of creative process (Preparation, Incubation, Insight, and Verification) was a political scientist.
- Henre Poicare and Helmholtz, who highlighted the role of unconscious mechanisms in creativity were mathematician and physicist, respectively.
- J Hadamard's study of the non-rational ways in which mathematicians think, made a significant contribution to creativity studies. Hadamard, of course, himself was a mathematician.
- Brewster Ghiselin was a poet. His edited book The Creative Process, which documented the first-hand experience of creative people, established that the underlying mechanisms of creative thought are essentially same irrespective of the field of discovery.
- Arthur Koestler - whose book The Act of Creation proposed that "bisociation" i.e., the marriage of unrelated ideas, is the underlying principle of all creative thoughts - was a journalist, writer and a political activist.
- Osborne, whose book The Active Imagination laid down the principles of Brain Storming, was a marketing executive.
- One can, of course, add many other names to the list, e.g., Kekule (chemist), Louise Pasteur (crystallographer and physiologist), Keats (poet), Leowi (biologist), David Bohm (physicist) etc., who documented their personal insights about the nature of their own thinking, and thus provided useful ways of understanding creativity.
|
