Introduction: Understanding the Creative Process
Understanding the Creative Process From Quotations of Creative Individuals
Walter H. Pierce
Foreward
Originally I began this project as a compilation of quotations designed to help young geologists define oil and gas prospects. You will see a few quotes from Geoscientists remaining. There is another collection devote entirely to Geoscience which can be accessed here. Recently I have finished classifying a collection of music related quote-posters, here. My Art related classified collection can be seen here. As my collections grew and as I refined my classification system, the project shifted to general Creativity. I began to make posters. The posters helped me dwell on each quote longer, helping me to sleuth out the meaning and classification. I have tried to fit the classification into the structure of the Scientific Method (See table 1). At the same time my thinking has evolved to believe that new and important Problems are the crux of Creativity. Although many of the quotes come from scientists I have sought out Artists, Poets, Writers, Composers, Song-Writers, Singers, Musicians, Politicians and others because just like scientists they are confronted with new important problems to solve. I have three hopes for this work. 1) to increase the understanding of Creativity. 2) to point out to educators the talents that need to be developed to engender a creative future for our young, and 3) to be a sort of check list for those attempting to solve problems that need a creative solutions.
My goal is that this work will help people work through problems that require creative solutions. I have gathered and studied a large number of quotes from a large number of individuals. Most of these individuals have a productive records in the areas of Technology, Arts, Science, and Business. Here quotes are classified into phases.
In my imagination, an individual might find themselves in the midst of a problem. That individual, could use this report by fitting their work into the scheme of phases that I have listed below, and then focus on a specific phase studying quotations of people that have previously worked through that phase of the problem.
To reach a creative solution all phases may not be required. The order of phases may also be followed, but nothing is rigid about problem-solving. My plan is that educators might be able to use the phases as a way of focusing on skills that may be required for creative problem-solving. In the following table, you will find related to one another the Scientific Method and my Phases of the Creative process. The two are closely related. Good science is a creative process.
Table 1: List of the Phases and Topics correlated to the Steps in the Scientific Method. These phases and topics have been derived from study of quotations from many creative individual from many fields of endeavor.
Note that below each set of type quotations a blue button is place which takes one to greater depth of discussion, and more quotes, and more posters on each of the phases and topics (A - W).
TYPE QUOTES
A) Importance of Creativity
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
-Marie Curie
Imagination governs the world.
-Disraeli
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
-Victor Hugo
B) Dreams and Desire
To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great dream.
-Dr. Hans Selye
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
-Willa Cather
Passion is the genesis of genius.
-Galileo Galilei
C) Problem Observation, Listening, and Curiosity
Tranio is advising his master Lucentio on the best way to go about his programme of self improvement. “The jewel that we find, we stoop and take't Because we see it: but what we do not see We tread upon, and never think of it......”
-William Shakespeare
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
-Ernest Hemingway
I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
D) Problem Recognition and Questions
Recognizing a problem doesn’t always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.
-James Baldwin
Everything we know has its origin in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings. Then how is it possible that no more than one in one hundred students has ever been exposed to an extended and systematic study of the art and science of question-asking?
Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.
always the beautiful answer who ask a more beautiful question
-e. e. cummings
E) Problem Definition, Focusing, and Simplicity
A problem well stated is half solved.
-John Dewey
The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world.
-C. P. Snow
Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.
-George Sand
F) Experience, Preparation and Planning
In the field of observation, chance only favors those minds which have been prepared.
-Louis Pasteur
Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure.
-Abigail Adams
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
G) Investigation, Analysis, and Persistence
I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.
-Marquis de Lafayette
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish
-John Quincy Adams
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men without talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
-Calvin Coolidge
H) Judgment, Balancing, and Objectivity
In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.
-Euripides
But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
-Thomas Paine
I) Synthesis, Connections, Patterns, and Classification
Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful combinations which are in the infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to choose.
-Jules Henri Poincare
The idea that in order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces and build new castles.
-Maria Popova
We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
-Steve Jobs
J) Hypothesis Formation, Ideas, and Models
The great investigator is primarily and preeminently the man who is rich in hypotheses. ..... The man who can produce but one, cherishes and champions that one as his own, and is blind to its faults.
-G. K. Gilbert
Knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
-Albert Einstein
The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas
- Linus Pauling
..essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful
-George Box
K) Fear, Courage and Action
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old condition, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
-N. Machiavelli, Il. Principe
Creativity takes courage.
-Henri Matisse
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
-Leonardo da Vinci
L) Blockbusting, Doubt, and The Impossible
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.
-Antistenes
Doubt is not to be feared but welcomed.
-Richard Feynman
If there's something you really want to believe, That's what you should question the most.
-Penn Jillette
Some of us just go along . . . until that marvelous day people stop intimidating us -- or should I say we refuse to let them intimidate us.
– Peggy Lee
M) Muddle, Error, and Failure
The state of Imaginative muddled suspense which precedes successful inductive generalization.
-Alfred North Whitehead
Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries.
-Benjamin Franklin
“We learn from failure, not from success!”
-Bram Stoker
Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.
-Edith Hamilton
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
-Thomas A. Edison
N) Eureka Moment and Discovery
I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.
-Charles Darwin
The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
-Albert Einstein
The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.
John Locke
O) Serendipity and Opportunity
Court serendipity by being eccentric. Your probability of inventing something different increases as your experience, hobbies, skills, knowledge, philosophy, and goals become increasingly unusual.
-Benjamin Disraeli
One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.
-Alexander Fleming
Teflon, Kevlar and the Post-it Note are all examples of useful things developed by people looking for something completely different.
-Matt Ridley
With a problem you search for the solution, with an opportunity you search for the benefit.
-Edward De Bono
P) Obvious Now
It is characteristic of insight solutions and new ideas, that they should be obvious after they have been found. In itself this shows how insufficient logic is in practice, otherwise such simple solutions must have occurred much earlier.
-Edward De Bono
After the event, even a fool is wise.
-Homer
Every scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.
- Louis Agassiz
Q) Clear Communication
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
-John Ruskin
To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well
-John Marshall
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.
-William Zinsser
Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.
-William Jennings Bryan
R) Testing, Verification, and Experimentation
The demolition of hypotheses, instead to testifying to the futility of research, is the method and condition of progress.
-G. K. Gilbert (Geologist)
The point is that, whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it. Few of us, unfortunately, practice this precept; but other people, fortunately, will supply the criticism for us if we fail to supply it ourselves.
-Karl R. Popper
Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.
-Issac Asimov
S) Utilization and Innovation
Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.
-James Russell Lowell
You need to have an idea of those who are going to buy your products/services
-Raphael
If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
-Benjamin Franklin
T) Education and Creativity
The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.
-Jean Piaget
The mere imparting of information is not education.
-Carter G. Woodson
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
-Will Durant
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
-William Butler Yeats
U) Definition of Creativity
It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.
-Richard Feynman
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
-Mary Lou Cook
A creative idea will be defined simply as one that is both novel and useful (or influential) in a particular social setting.
– Alice Flaherty
T) The Need for Tension
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
-Horace
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
-Samuel Johnson
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
-Walt Disney
U) Management and Leadership
The way I see it, my job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it. I believe, to my core, that everybody has the potential to be creative—whatever form that creativity takes—and that to encourage such development is a noble thing.
-Ed Catmull
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
-Peter F. Drucker
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it..
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Selected References
Adams, James L., 1986, Conceptual Blockbusting, A Guide to Better Ideas, Reading, Massachusets: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. 161 p.
Beaumont, Edward A., 1982, Creating Successful New Play Concepts, Houston, Texas: Course and Book - Houston Geological Society, 179 p.
Berkun, Scott, 2010, The Myths of Innovation, O'Reilly Books, 176 p.
Chamberlin, T. C., 1965, The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses, from reprinted article by T. C. Chamberlin, 1965, “The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses”, Science, Volume 142, pp. 754-759.
De Bono, Edward, 1978, Opportunities, London, England: Penguin Group, 252 p.
De Bono, Edward, 1970, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, New York, New York: Harper and Row, 300 p.
De Bono, Edward, 1992, Serious Creativity, Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas, New York, New York, HarperCollins, 338 p.
Edwards, Betty, 1989, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence, Los Angeles, California: Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. 254 p.
Edwards, Betty, 1986, Drawing on the Artist Within, New York, New York: A Fireside Book, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 240 p.
Elam, Jack G., 1984, Creativity in Oil Exploration, Midland, Texas: Permian Basin Graduate Center, 79 p.
Foster, Norman H., and Edward A Beaumont, 1992, Oil if First Found in the Mind: The Philosophy of Exploration, Compilation, Tulsa, Oklahoma, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Treatise of Petroleum Geology, Reprint Series, No. 20. 340 p.
Johnson, Steven, 2010, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Riverhead Books, 302 p.
Koestler, Arthur, 1989 ,The Act of Creation, London, England: Arkana Penguin Group, 751 p.
Mackay, Alan L., 1991, A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, Bristol, England: Institute of Physics Publishing, 297 p.
Masters, John A.,1980, The Hunters, Searching for Oil, and gas in Western Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia: Evergreen Press Limited, 106 p.
Montgomery, Scott, 1986, Language and Creativity: Some Hints from History, R & D Innovator # 205, Vol. 5, Num. 3, March.
Oliver, Jack E.,1991 , The Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery, New York, New Your: Columbia University Press, 208 p.
Osborn, Alex, 1953, Applied Imagination: The principles and procedures of Creative Thinking, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Osborn, Alex, 1991, Your Creative Power: How to use your Imagination to brighten live, to get ahead,, Schaumburg, Illinois: Motorola University Press, 182 p.
Paolini, Marco, and Gabriele Vacis, Translation by Thomas Simpson, The Story of Vajont, Boco Raton, Florida: Bordighera Press, 116 p.
Ray, Michael and Rochelle Myers, 1986, Creativity in Business, New York, New York: Doubleday, 222 p.
Rhodes, Frank H. T., and Richard O. Stone, , Language of the Earth, 1981, New York, New York: Pergamon Press, Inc. 417 p.
Scott Root-Berstein, Robert, 1989, Discovering, Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 501 p.