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As a first clarification, it should be pointed out that we will not be concerned with artistic creativity. Though there are no doubt some close connections between creative art and creative thinking we will not investigating the abilities involved in playing the violin or painting a picture, but rather the abilities involved in thinking, creatively. What is thinking? A general definition is probably impossible, but three very broad cognitive processes which constitute the core of our ability to think can be identified fairly easily. The first is a perceptual or figural process which involves the ability to visualize geometric relations and properties, on the visual level, or to hear a piece of music in ones head, on the auditory Intel. Einstein was said to be very good at imagining spatial relationships and there are likely elements of this process involved when a chess player visualizes the board a few moves in advance.
The second process is symbolic, the ability to manipulate symbols, and there are two quite different abilities involved here. The first is a syntactic ability to manipulate symbols whose meaning is specified purely by a set of rules or axioms stating how a particular symbol is related to other symbols in the set. What the symbol means, in the sense of what it stands for, is irrelevant. This is the realm of logic and mathematics and maybe chess. Computers work on this level. The second is a semantic ability to understand what words and sentences stand for, how they relate to the world.
This ability manifests itself reading a newspaper or writing an essay. What is involved in being creative? There are many elements here, some of which are as follows. Wordfluency, a purely syntactic ability, involves being able to produce a number of words each having a specified combination of letters. Associational fluency is the kind of ability required to produce a variety of synonyms for a given word, and this is obviously a semantic ability. Expressional fluency, another semantic ability, figures in being able to produce phrases and sentences which adequately capture intended meaning.
Ideational fluency requires the ability to produce ideas to fulfill certain requirements. As an example, give as many uses as possible for a brick, or write appropriate titles for a short story. All of these creative abilities may be generalized as the ability to solve problems. It is here that creative thinking overlaps with critical thinking, the ability to spot defects in anything from a man-made tool to asocial institution. Problem-spotting ability may play no role in getting answers or generating solutions but itis an essential first step. Having some idea of what it is to think and what it is to be creative, we now ask what it is to think creatively.
What are the characteristics of the creative thinker? The creative thinker is primarily a problem solver, and the following traits are frequently seen in creative problem solving. Spontaneous flexibility involves the freedom to roam about in ones thinking even when it is not necessary to do so. In naming uses for a brick the creative thinker jumps from one category to another, the brick as building material, as a weight, as a missile. Rigid thinkers tend to stay in one or two categories.
Spontaneously flexible thinkers see rapid fluctuations in ambiguous figures such as the Necker cube. Adaptive flexibility is particularly useful in solving problems which require a most unusual type of solution. The problem may appear to be solvable by conventional methods, but these methods will not work. An example is the problem of connecting 9 dots arranged in 3 rows of three by means of four straight lines. A rigid thinker stays within the boundaries of the square, and the problem is not solvable. Adaptiveflexibility has achieved some spectacular results in science.
Kepler's attempt to determine the shape of the planetary orbits resulted in failure, despite the wealth of detailed observations of the positions of planets made by the astronomer Tycho Brahe. The observations were consistent with a large number of shapes. It was some time later, while he was working on a mathematical problem involving conic sections that Kepler got the idea that the orbits were elliptical. This ultimately led to his three laws of planetary motion, and a revolution in astronomy. An idea from one realm was adapted to solve a problem in a completely different realm. Similar thinking was involved in Ignaz Semmelweiss discovery of the cause of puerperal fever, and the birth of the modern theory of infection.
Seeing parallels is an important component of adaptive flexibility. Redefinition requires the ability to give up old interpretations of familiar objects in order to see them or their parts in new ways. As a simple example, which of the following objects or their parts could best be adapted to making a needle: pencil, radish, shoe, fish or carnation? The creative thinker sees that a fishbone would make a better needle than a pencil. Redefinition was used by the chemist, Kekule, in the discovery of the structure of the benzene molecule. Unable to find the structure using conventional means, Kekule applied what he saw in a dream!
In the dream a snake passed too close to a fire and, in pain, curled itself first into a circle and then into a hexagon. Awakening, Kekule had his answer. Redefinition is closely associated with adaptive flexibility and may indeed be a subspecies of it. To summarize, creative thinkers are flexible thinkers who readily desert old ways of thinking and strikeout in new directions. The interesting question for educators is this.
Can creative thinking be taught? At first glance the answer is no. How could one churn out dozens of Kepler's, Einsteins or even Bill Gates? As the old adage says, you cant get a silk purse out of a sows ear. However, as educators there is storeroom for optimism. On the theoretical level this was illustrated recently when the IBM computer, Deep Blue, beat the world chess champion, and arguably one of the best players ever, Gary Kasparov over arteries of games.
Some would argue that Deep Blue was not thinking creatively, that the computer was a classic example of rigid non-creative convergent thinking. Though the process may not qualify as creative the end result surely does. Any man or machine which can beat Kasparov at chess must be doing something which qualifies as creative. Note that this creativity was instilled in the computer by its teachers. Nor is this an isolated instance.
A few years ago a computer designed to solve geometry problems came up with a proof of one of Euclid's theorems that had never been thought of before. At the theoretical level these examples indicate that creative results can be achieved through a process of careful instruction. In more practical terms teachers can facilitate the generation of creative thinkers. This is best done at anally age.
Young children are not encumbered with preconceptions and rigid world views. They are naturally curious and natural problem solvers. This is fertile ground to encourage spontaneous and adaptive flexibility, foster originality and unconventional interpretations. There is a dilemma here. Recently my 5 year old son tried to spell afraid, a word I am sure he had never seen before.
The spelling came out as arcade. That gets zero on a spelling test yet it was difficult not to appreciate what was after all a small piece of creative thinking, adaptive flexibility. In this case the dilemma is easily solved; praise the childs creativity while pointing out the correct spelling. However therefore limits to this solution.
Creative thinking will frequently challenge conventional wisdom, and insisting that conventional wisdom must prevail, or you fail, will, no matter how much praise is offered, eventually kill off creative impulses. This problem is not new, nor is it restricted to Singapore. Creative thinkers often do not excel in traditional educational programs. Einstein was said to be a very average student initially, and Bill Gates dropped out university early on.
People with that level of creativity will likely succeed come what may. The same cannot be said of many others possessing merely average creative abilities. Perhaps the solution is the development of a two-track educational system, one in which afraid gets one mark in a Primary 3 spelling test in the traditional classroom and arcade gets credit on a Primary 1 essay in the creative classroom. The challenge for teachers is to find means of identifying and rewarding creative thinking, which so often contradicts conventional thinking, while at the same time requiring that conventional wisdom be absorbed and mastered. As existing systems play lip service to creative thinking, especially inthe all- important formative years, a two-track system, whatever its difficulties, may be worth a (creative) thought or two.
Wayne A. Patterson Department of Philosophy National University of Singapore 19 May 1997 REFERENCES 1. J. P. Guilford, Traits of Creativity, in Creativity, P. E.
Vernon, ed, Penguin Books, 1970.
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Research essay sample on Ability To Manipulate Conventional Wisdom
