Setting the Stage
This book is a study of creativity that considers it to be "the synergy of many forces" that influence the mind of an individual,. To understand the creative process requires first to accept that what seems like a sudden and instantaneous event in the mind of an individual is in reality a moment preceded by hears of hard work that occurs within a greater context.
Creativity is the source of meaning in our lives. It is a distinctly human activity. Our language, values, arts, and sciences are the result of an ingenuity that is not evident in lesser species.
When we are engaged in a creative activity we feel more distinctly alive than at any other time. The excitement and immersion of creation is stronger and provides a more profound sense of engagement with an entity larger than ourselves.
MC shares an anecdote from a research scientist: you spend years pursuing knowledge before making a discovery, and often no discovery is made at all. The risk that someone else may discover the very same thing and publish a month before you is significant because so many bright people are looking at the same information and seeking the same answer.
As a flow experience, creativity is not about the moment of discovery, but the process of discovering. Even without the moment of success, people who are creative find fulfillment in their work.
Evolution in Biology and Culture
For most of human history, creation was the work of the gods. Mortal men struggled merely to survive and lived in a constant state of confusion and fear. It is only recently that man began to understand nature, recognize their command of it, and came to regard the gods as figments of his imagination used to dismiss what he could not understand.
All of this has occurred in the last few centuries of the multi-million-year history of human beings. Throughout history man has been little better than animals in terms of being at the mercy of nature and forces he could not understand. During the brief period of ancient Greece and Rome, we began to explore the notion that the world operated on comprehensible principles. And only since the industrial revolution have we demonstrated much ability to take control.
As a result, man has recognized his own power to create and to destroy, and has clumsily learned to apply himself. And in so doing, he has begun to assume the power he once though was only accessible to the gods and taken his destiny into his own hands.
This book is an effort to explore the processes of discovery and invention, the means by which men come up with new ideas that change the process by which he interacts with the world and makes his way within it.
But creativity remains largely misunderstood, and instead of being the result of mystical external forces it is seen as the result of a mystical internal force - an unpredictable and wily spark of creation in the mind of a man, as if he were by possessed by angels and demons, as if creativity is something that is still a magical force.
MC's sties have led him to regard creativity as something that is not mystical, nor does it exist solely within the minds of creative people - it must take place in the context of a culture that is both the source and the benefactor of the act of creation. The individual mine is much like kindling, that needs spark, air, and fuel to build a fire.
He also maintains that creativity is not genetic. Though the mind is a biological organ, the thoughts within it come from the outside world. He suggests that the ability to create isn't something that evolved in men within the past few centuries, but an ability that has lain dormant for millions of years, unable to be practiced under man's unfortunate and hostile circumstances.
Creativity is a product of a culture. Cultures are open to new ideas, or they are hostile to them - and when they are hostile to them, man chooses (if he is wise) to keep his creative ideas to himself or suffer the most severe punishment his fellow men have to offer. Those who express different ideas within a hostile culture are called witches, heretics, and traitors and subjected to the most brutal and tortuous forms for execution that culture can provide.
Even cultures that are open to new ideas are restricted - they may accept some ideas and reject others. Certain ideas are accepted, promoted, passed from one person or generation to the next. Other ideas are rejected, discouraged, punished, and otherwise prevented to take root. Hence if an idea is acceptable to culture, it is creative; if it is not acceptable to culture, it is heresy. And if a man desires the company of his fellows, and wishes to avoid being shunned or punished, he will be careful about the ideas he expresses.
It is also insufficient to study creativity as an attribute of the individual - because the "eureka" moment is just a moment, and it occurs in a much longer process. Nothing is discovered except with proper knowledge, and what is discovered by one man might be discovered by another. It may in fact have been discovered long ago but ignored by or withheld from the culture of the time. Our fascination with inventors is largely hero-worship of those who happened to be in the right place at the right time to make a connection.
He also wishes to specify that creativity is about creating a change in culture. It is not the fascinating things that children say nor an interesting way to rearrange furniture. Proper capital-c Creativity is far more substantial and brings about changes on a significant scale.
That's not to say that small-c creativity has not value. It makes life interesting on a daily basis, and helps a few people to get more enjoyment and feel a small sense of accomplishment, but it pales in comparison to the effects of real creativity.
So creativity, in this book, is meant to indicate the process by which a symbolic domain is changed within the context of a culture. It is the discovery and acceptance of ideas that change traditions.
Creativity is neither free nor cheap, but comes at a heavy price. It takes enormous effort to effect a discovery and even more substantial effort and risk to introduce it to a culture that is probably happy with the way things are and correspondingly hostile to new ideas.
Attention and Creativity
To learn anything, we must first pay attention to the way things currently are rather than passively accepting established traditions and living on auto-pilot. To do nothing different and follow convention is always the easiest course, in that it requires the least effort and encounters the least resistance.
However, to undertake exploration we require leisure. Those who are struggling to survive cannot spare the time and energy to try something new along with the risk that it may not work out. It is no coincidence that the "golden ages" of invention, the arts, and other intellectual activities have only been achieved in cultures where the basic survival needs have been well met.
Discovery also requires having knowledge of what is already done, to enable a person to arrive at a conclusion that is truly novel rather than putting in the effort to "invent" something that already exists or is known to be less effective than current methods. To arrive at this point, a person must know their craft - and ideally, he has learned it efficiently from other practitioners rather than having to discover it for himself.
The requirement of expertise is also a reason that creativity occurs in explosions, when there are many creative minds benefitting form the same information, than in isolated individuals in societies that are deprived of knowledge and hostile to information. The culture must not only condone, but also support, the development of knowledge.
As the amount of knowledge grows, it becomes necessary to specialize by subdividing the various domains of knowledge and innovate in a very well defined space. One can only be so good at "art" in every form, but can develop great expertise by specializing in sculpting marble.
Being a "Renaissance Man" was valued during the Renaissance, but today is merely a person who has very shallow knowledge of a myriad of fields and is highly unlikely to contribute anything meaningful to society. Where little knowledge exists it is possible to know it all - and this is no longer possible given the breadth to which human knowledge has grown. A person has to know "it all" within a very well defined area.
Granted, the trend to specialize has its drawbacks. As knowledge becomes fragmented and the intellectuals become isolated from one another, delving into specialties of ever narrower scope, intellectuals become as the workers on the tower of Babel. Each one is too focused on his own specific domain, does not understand other domains, and there is no common language that allows them to communicate or work together.
Another drawback to this specialization is that intellectuals become eccentric and withdrawn - the subjects of their interest are too far removed from the experience of the common person. This causes their work to be ignored or dismissed by the culture whose acceptance is necessary for discoveries to have an impact on traditions.
Ultimately, a distinction must be drawn between knowledge and creativity - creativity must culminate in creation and is not done for its own sake. The "aloof and sequestered" scientists who never present their ideas to culture for consumption are not producing a change in culture, and because of that cannot be considered creativity because all their work effects no change in culture until it is unearthed by someone else at a later time.
What Good is Studying Creativity?
It is often argued that studying creativity or even exploring what it means to "be creative" is an effete distraction from the more important business of "getting things done" in the moment. This position is exceedingly ignorant and shortsighted. There is nothing meaningful to be done by practical men until creative ones have told them what to do.
Certainly, it is necessary to deal with routine sustenance tasks in a competent manner, but this is a negative goal. One may also focus on efficiency, but this accomplishes the same thing as before with fewer expenses. Efficiency is accomplished in paying close attention to the existing processes rather than considering whether there might be a far more efficient and effective method of accomplishing the same goals - or whether there might be better goals to pursue.
The result of creativity, however, are significant accomplishments that effect dramatic changes and entirely new processes. It seeks to solve, rather than perpetuate, the traditional methods of accomplishing goals that are laborious, tedious, and unfulfilling. What creativity creates, in effect, is greater satisfaction with less tedium.
There is a conflict in each person when confronted with the risk entailed in doing something new and different, and it is particularly tempting to flee when there is a known and reliable method of achieving a goal - however onerous and wasteful its methods. Creativity entails a much higher degree of risk than following conventions, and people differ greatly in the degree to which they are willing and able to tolerate that risk.
So in the current culture a great deal of empty praise is given to creativity and innovation while actual behavior favors traditional approaches that yield more immediate benefits with greater certainty. In business, managers promote the idea of innovation while discouraging any risk-taking, and the system of rewards and punishments is rigged to discourage creativity even in organizations that loudly proclaim its necessity. New ideas are actively discouraged in favor of business as usual, and even when they are adopted they are often mangled and stripped of their potential in sacrifice to the status quo.
The same occurs in academic situation where students are encouraged to think, but rewards are bestowed on those who toe the line and follow the canon. Professors and students who pursue unusual or disagreeable ideas are shunned and discredited by any means necessary. Students are not taught how to think, but told what to think, and are tested and graded on their ability to memorize and repeat traditional knowledge rather than using their minds in an original and creative manner.
Even the "creative" arts in the present day do not explore new ideas, but instead reproduce the ideas of the past. The most creative minds of our culture are not being creative at all- they are making sequels, remakes, and adaptations of the known. The "alternative" is become mainstream and feeds upon itself rather than continuing to challenge traditions and offer new ideas.
Methodology
The author mentions a series of interviews with "exceptional" people who had made significant contributions to a major domain of knowledge or culture - science, business, the arts, and other fields.
He contacted 275 people of a diverse range of professions, nationalities, cultures, races, and genders, of whom 91 agreed to be interviewed. The interviews were loosely structured "to gather data without prejudice" and analysis was done afterward.
(EN: Additional detail follows, but it is entirely about the process.)
Too Good to Be True?
The interviews depict creativity in an "upbeat and positive" manner. He remarks that people who are genuinely creative are surprisingly humble and have little need for self-aggrandizing fictions, which are more characteristic of pretenders.
He suggests that the misunderstanding of creativity is the result of misinterpretations and misunderstandings that stem largely from these pretenders, as there are many people who recognize that creative individuals command respect, and they wish to obtain that respect without doing anything particularly creative. Such people are regarded as a nuisance to creative, and they blame such pretenders for creating a culture that is suspicious of creativity in general.
It's also noted that mainstream culture regards creative ideas with a degree of fear and hatred of ideas because they challenge a comfortable status quo. There are routine reports of being shunned and demonized for simply creating a non-traditional idea, and personal attacks upon creative people are often made by the guardians of tradition to discredit them by whatever means necessary - if they cannot dispute the idea, they attack the person who spoke it.
For this very reason, many creative people choose to withdraw from the mainstream and shun public attention. They are not usually persecuted as witches and heretics, as was common in other ages, they are still shunned and excluded from society. Alcoholism, addiction, and psychological issues are evidence of their ostracism and banishment.
In spite of being thus alienated and misunderstood, many creative types remain happy and optimistic people. They recognize there is not much chance of financial reward of social recognition - but a truly creative person does not long for such things but is instead engaged in their creative work. Their work is a reward unto itself.
It also seems very likely that the most creative minds may be concealed, and their ideas remain unknown. In his study, he could include only those whose creativity had been recognized and embraced by out culture, and concedes that this or any other study of the subject excludes those creative who are "too creative" to be discovered. This is a necessary limitation of the investigation that may leave it blind to the true nature of creativity, but it is the best that can be done.