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The Creative Muse: Stories of Creativity & Innovation

Madhukar Shukla


  • 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

    • The Compulsion to Create


    One of the mysteries of creativity is that at some point the creative process almost acquires a personality of its own, quite independent of the will of the person. A number of creative people in different fields of endeavour, have noted this force of creative compulsion, in which the person's individuality is subsumed. Some examples:

    • Commenting on the characters of his stories, William Makepeace Thackeray once said: "I don't control my characters; I am in their hands and they take me where they please."

    • Once when Balzac was criticised for producing a hero who went from tragic end to another, he answered: "Don't bother me... these people have no backbones. What happens to them is inevitable."

    • According to painter Ben Shahn: "There arrives a period during the painting when the painting itself makes certain demands... and if you are not hypersensitive to it... you're going to lose a good quality of painting. It definitely becomes a living thing."

    • According to physicist Nobel Laureate Szent-Gyorgyi: "...In a way, it is a passive thing, like catching cold. Somehow, problems get into my blood and they don't give me peace, they torture me. I have to get them out of my system, and there is but one way to get them out - by solving them."

    • Fredrick Neitzsche received his inspiration to write Thus Spake Zarathustra almost as a divine revelation. Relating this experience, he wrote: "...one can hardly reject completely the idea that one is the mere incarnation, or mouthpiece, medium of some almighty power... something profoundly convulsive and disturbing suddenly becomes visible and audible with indescribable definiteness and exactness. One hears - one does not seek; one takes - one does not ask who gives... I have never had any choice about it... There is a feeling that one is utterly out of hand... Everything occurs quite without volition, as if in an eruption of freedom, independence, power and dignity."

    • Writing about his work, Max Planck once commented: "...some problems are very stubborn; they just refuse to let us in peace." Similarly, describing how he solved one of the problems, he noted: "I had no other alternative than to tackle the problem once again."

    • Poet Lord Tennyson found that when in grip of creative inspiration "the individuality seems to dissolve and fade away into boundless being."


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