Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Creativity
References: <791653454snz@chatham.demon.co.uk> <1995Feb6.205230.28261@il.us.swissbank.com>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
Reply-To: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.27
Lines: 91
X-Posting-Host: chatham.demon.co.uk
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 14:55:19 +0000
Message-ID: <792168919snz@chatham.demon.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk

In article <1995Feb6.205230.28261@il.us.swissbank.com>
           gerryg@il.us.swissbank.com "Gerald Gleason" writes:

 > The only thing I see wrong with what you label "the romantic view" is the  
 > idea that there is "a secret sign" marking those who engage in reality  
 > shifting creativity. 

Too much data compression implies data loss, I fear. Apologies.

When one looks at the processes which cause new things - capabilities, 
understanding, products, processes - to be injected into the world of affairs, 
one sees certain regularities. There are those processes which the Japanese 
have called "kaizen", accretional improvement in which the goals of the 
process are not changed by its successful conclusion. The development of a new 
model of car by Ford or a chocolate bar by Cadbury are unlikely to change the 
way in which their management think about the world, for example. 

By contrast, there is what has been called "saltatory" creativity, in which an 
activity changes the industrial dynamics (or the prevalent model) in a field. 
Henry Ford certainly made cars, but the *way* that he approached the issue 
changed the dynamics which had hitherto governed the industry. The game was no 
longer the same, or the Twentieth Century. One can note similar shifts in
intellectual affairs: in physics and physiology, politics and polymers; 
periods of accretion lead to saltatory leaps into new areana of capability.

What we have discovered (we in commerce, that is) is that both aspects of this 
can be managed, that these processes work better when teams apply themselves 
rather than when individuals burn midnight oil and, fiurther, that they  work 
best when driven by an understanding of the specific phases which are involved. 

There is, however, an important dimensionality which is in play. When I set out 
to assemble an oil rig (or develop a new chocolate bar) I have a reasonably 
clear view of the outcome and I harness a multidisciplinary team in its 
pursuit. One looks at geology, another at the weather; and both are tapped by 
the people concerned with engineering and safety... When an individual sets out 
to understand an element of exogenous reality, however, they fumble as one 
partially sighted with the invisible elephant with which they are engaged. A 
dozen physicists, slapping the flanks of the beats, come up with a rough model 
of what they are handling so as to be able to go forward with more 
discriminating tests. It only then that the "chocolate bar" vision becomes 
plain and teams can be harnessed in the pursuit of its realisation.

A fascinating field lies between these extremes. In this, the elephant exists 
to the degree to which it useful to think that it does. Much of the social 
sciences works in this manner: the symbols which are used are self-referential 
and the issues which they discuss are not reducible: they evaporate if one gets 
too close, as a newspaper photograph becomes dots when one gets too close to 
it. This is not to say thatthese features are "unreal", for plainly they effect 
every aspect of our waking life. Rather, it is a property of emergent systems 
that they are epiphemonena of *systems* and that they are not partitionable to 
the component parts of the system. 

People who work in this domain are vulnerable to self-deception, particularly 
in the way in which abstract or over-simplified models can take over the real 
complexity and lack of system which characterises real events. Political 
fanatics and other forms of monomania are guilty of this form of self-
deception. Such "fundamentalism" - insistence on teh ultimate validity of what 
are over-simplified constructs - is the death of creativity, as is the 
abrogation of all forms of structure in a welter of relativity. Balance, 
therefore, matters greatly, as does the mainentance of a degree of well-managed 
ambiguity. Premature closure, like premature ejaculation, is seldom a fertile 
experience.

The originator of this thread asked whether it was possible to offer some books 
on "aesthetics, ethics, diddy dum and diddly dee" which would help in 
understanding creativity. "Bah", I said, "and humbug". There is a case to be 
made that the plastic and - to a lesser extent - performing arts are not 
succeptible to team creativity, primarioly because only one hand can hold the 
brush. Has anyone genuinely tried to generate team results? Indeed: in the 
movies, in advertising, in the theatre and on the box. Games and 
journalism are almost entirely communal in their creation: the romantic 
individual (pursuing the invisible elephant) is confined to the garret, 
the paint brush and the score. How long their pay masters will tolerate
contemporary rate of diminishing success - or how long technology will allow 
this to be a satisfying way of proceeding for the bulk of these activities
- remains an open question.

{Flame on.}

   Whoever pointed this unfortunate in those directions is clearly teaching a 
   course about the content of which they have bother to acquaint themselves 
   not at all. It is infuriating when people who are supposed to look after the 
   underpinnings of society's intellectual framework seem to know less about 
   these than those on whose behalf they are supposed to be operating.

{Flame off}

_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
