It's finding a deeper impasse. I think. Many deep impasses are 'hidden in sight', and it takes an ability to stop and wonder about what everyone else is apparently skipping over to catch them, the ability to see things 'oddly' out of place is one way I see it. Like, why is everyone proposing new ways to accelerate resource consumption as the way to solve the accelerating shortfalls due to resource exhaustion? It's a kind of an obvious question, that apparently everyone thinks someone else must have answered so it can't be 'important' to ask themselves...
phil From: Orlando Leibovitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 9:36 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Brain and Creativity 2 Orlando here, I agree with the conclusions of the article and with your analysis. We all (most of us) have sudden insight from time to time. What I want to know is where the really original, genius type insight comes from. What is it that allows Newton or Einstein or Picasso to see something essential that no one has seen or understood before? O Phil Henshaw wrote: On reading Lehrer's article I'm impressed how far the neuroscience is getting, as well as pleased that the direct imaging of the physical process of 'sudden insight' seems to correspond so closely to what I described based on the necessities of developmental processes in general. That all reports seem to agree, as Lehrer described Jung-Beeman's observations, that the 'trick' to sudden insight seems to be to thoroughly explore a question and come to a real impasse in thinking first, reducing your question to a complete unknown, and then defocus your attention and let the parts of the brain that are more widely connected go to work on their own. The particular observation that a few seconds before the 'ah ha' moment there is a sharp increase in 'gamma rhythm', thought to indicate the 'binding' of neurons into a new network, and associated with a particular location. perfectly describes the emergence by developmental growth of a new complex system observable in the animated buzz of local neural activity required to create a MRI blood flow hot spot. Then. on making the missing cognitive connection across the impasse resolved, our mind says "Oh sure,.. that should have been obvious all along". What's so odd is that we should so depreciate the value of the major preceding effort and value of reducing the problem to an impasse in the first place, though. That's what seems to me to precisely locate where we then needed to switch to freely searching the universe of our experience in order to make the missing connections. and a perfectly good reason once resolved to suddenly make a huge amount of sense and give unusual immediate satisfaction. No if we could only do that with the glaring contradictions of the world around us. Phil From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Henshaw Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 8:24 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Brain and Creativity The study of individual events is of the accumulative creative processes of development. I'm not sure what makes us think creativity happens in a 'flash' without preceding and following long chains of accumulative development, but it's an illusion that it happens bye itself. Maybe the appearance that the flash of insight or creativity happens 'out of the blue' comes from how exploratory processes follow a path that then telegraph where they're headed once they take off, and then getting there is experienced as a sudden confirmation, having the whole path culminate in an instant, or something like that. There are moments where the excitement level rises sharply, for sure, but invariably that is based on a rather long accumulation of digression and digestion, to then also invariably be followed by a rather long accumulative process of completion and connection. There's no reason the middle point should get the credit in my book. The "ah ha" instant is only a little pleasant flashing thing in the middle of long and complex history of groping around and asking the unanswered questions. Without those fore and aft parts of the exploratory process there'd be nothing to "break through" and produce the "flash" as far as I can tell. As to the creative content that you see displayed in the culmination of works of genius, how a scientist's questions or a painter's every brush stroke vibrate with their whole way of seeing the world, you got me. I don't know how that works. Phil From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Orlando Leibovitz Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 11:04 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] The Brain and Creativity The July 28 2008 issue of the New Yorker contains an article titled The Eureka Hunt: Why Do Good Ideas Come To Us When They Do. See http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer for an abstract. Although the article talks about human insight I think it touches on human creativity. I am interested in anyone's description (definition) of creativity and a comparison of creativity in art and science. I would also appreciate any thoughts about the creative differences and/or similarities that may exist in different cultures. My own feeling is that creativity, for example, in visual art and in theoretical physics contains the same attributes. Einstein was as much an artist as a physicist. I realize theoretical physics must deal with the "real world" but the process of original discovery seems the same to me. O -- Orlando Leibovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.orlandoleibovitz.com Studio Telephone: 505-820-6183 _____ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- Orlando Leibovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.orlandoleibovitz.com Studio Telephone: 505-820-6183
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