"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."
I think this creative content emerges from two interacting "facts" qualities of their experience: 1. Some people come to such an acceptance and trust in their own sensibility, you might say their unique or individual sensibility, that they use it every day and in everything they do. It becomes the primary means of problem solving, exploring and celebrating life. 2. They receive enough positive acceptance and reinforcement from some others, even a few, even one other in the world. Many people who achieve these two qualities of experience are still ignored and lost to history. The thing many of us have been missing all along is that genius is not the exception but the rule of all life.maybe especially, although I am not sure of that, human life. I think it is genius to survive each and every time it happens and not a lack of genius but a tragedy when one doesn't survive. While it is genius and creative to survive most of us are not valued or respected for our accomplishment. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Henshaw Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 6:24 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
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