The Earth is flat, and creativity can't be trained
| 25 May, 2011 | Morgan Giddings |
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Einstein, Edison and da Vinci were, simply put, lucky. They had the perfect combination of genetics and environment, not often duplicated, and certainly not intentionally so. That’s because creativity and innovation can’t be trained.
Or at least that is the view of more than one commenter on a recent blog post of mine about creativity.
One commenter said (paraphrasing): “You cannot train people to be creative, you can only train for critical thinking, so that’s why we don’t do anything to enhance creativity in grad school.”
Creativity is one of the least understood, yet most important, human attributes. It is what separates us from machines. It is the source of most great human discoveries.
Yet the sentiments expressed by our commenters emanate from a factory-like educational system that cranks out widgets (of the human variety), without any concern as to what happens to our precious creativity in the process.
It’s not that critical thinking does not matter. But all critical thinking is based on belief systems, i.e. the core propositions that we hold true about our world. Without those core beliefs (or axioms), critical thinking (aka deductive reasoning) isn’t possible.
But how reliable are those beliefs? Let’s consider a few belief systems that were held widely at one time or another:
- The world is flat
- The Earth is the center of the universe
- That Newtonian physics applies universally, and that there is only one fixed frame of reference
- That stomach ulcers are caused by excess acid and stress
- That proteins are the only true functional players in cells, and that RNA is only a messenger
- That 97% of the human genome is just “junk”
- That God created all life on Earth in 6 days
So then, you might ask, where do new belief systems come from (whether faulty or not)? They come from flashes of creative insight. And it is only after that flash of creative insight has been noted down in the storehouse of memory that it becomes time for the lens of critical thinking to kick in. Only then can we ask: is this new proposition about our world consistent with known facts and data? Is it more, or less, consistent than the old models?
Nearly all new ideas go through this process: 1) creative insight occurs; 2) critical assessment is made (i.e. is it worth pursuing?); 3) further data collection is performed to test consistency of new belief system with the world.
Each of these three steps is vital to any new and significant discovery.
The point of all of this is that creativity supersedes and underlies critical thinking. You cannot have critical thinking without a belief system, and the belief system comes from … creative thinking.
This brings us back to our graduate programs. In most of them – as reflected by the comments on that creativity post – we happily train students to strengthen critical thinking, but we pay no attention to the strength of the creative thinking.
There seems to be an assumption – a belief system – that we cannot train for creativity (or that it is not important). Where are the data that show that this is true?
Nearly every young school child is readily capable of creative activity. I recently attended an Art Night at the local elementary school, and all of the kids had created unique pieces of art. Yet as they age, many kids loose the ability. All the creativity gets squeezed out of them so that they can be another drone that fits into an industrial assembly line or cubicle farm.
I’ll admit: perhaps creativity can’t be trained. A better way of looking at it might be this: conformity and homogeneity that has been imposed by society shuts down the inherent creativity that was there from the beginning.
What we need to do, therefore, is remove the creativity-obscuring layers that have been unnecessarily piled on.
But our current graduate educational system often goes in the opposite direction. Rather than enhancing creativity, it adds on layer by layer to shut it down: facts, beliefs, fears, perfectionism, and knowledge. When the pile gets too thick, it obscures the creative process. Did you ever wonder why many of the transformational creative flashes come from those outside of a field? Those are people who aren’t weighed down by all the baggage.
In fact, if we were to take this seriously, training graduate students for creativity may not be very difficult at all. It could simply be training by omission. It would omit the loading down of the mind with excessive facts and theories based on current paradigms. It would instead encourage students to develop their own theories and ideas based only on the experimental data, and then to check them against current paradigms after they’ve done the creative part (rather than before). At that point, critical thinking can be used to assess the idea.
In this training paradigm, the difference is simply in the order of activity. It would encourage the creativity to come first, before indoctrination. Some of the best graduate trainers already do this. They encourage students to develop their own theories and ideas, first, before finding out what other more seasoned (and often more vociferous) colleagues think.
If creativity in all humans (and therefore, in scientists) is innate – and from watching kids, it is – then no special training is needed. Instead, we just have to get out of the way, and let the creativity take its course.
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And, finally, this just in: Grant funding rates at NIH and other agencies are at all time lows, but this book shows how to avoid becoming a rejection statistic.
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If you want to foster creativity, then one of the trade-offs is having to do something about the authoritarian framework most of us are trapped in. So long as we value control more highly than creativity, creativity will always get shortchanged – because creativity is inherently subversive.
I began early in my career reading books on creative thinking, lateral thinking, memory training, mental traps and snares… Its all about learning sets that help us avoid smash, dissolve, absorb carve and drill through over under around inside and outside obstacles, problems and opportunities. I teach creativity learning sets to my students. Its really a package of applications for innovation and imagination, some of which are ridiculously simple. So when a student bringsthe answer you asked for, you ask them… where are the other 10 solutions? Answers are walls. Or, given this frustrating problem… can you turn this liability into an asset? Many research problems represent phenomena more important than the original target of interest. Just two of many little things that make a big difference.
I was fascinated by your paper on creativity as a naturally occurring attribute in living organisms. Nature never produces duplicates in higher life forms, so each individual is indeed unique. Not every demonstration of this uniqueness is appealing and those that are not are often relegated to nurture, environment or a simple choice of that individual.
Einstein, Edison and da Vinci were, simply put, lucky. They had the perfect combination of genetics and environment, not often duplicated, and certainly not intentionally so. That’s because creativity and innovation can’t be trained.
I was primarily concerned as to the notion of the nature of a person not being “intentional”. I agree that such is never the case but instead, an individual discovers their attributes as they mature from infant to adult.
There, sadly, exceptions to this reality which are powerfully driven by societal/cultural beliefs. You shared a few, fairly harmless misconceptions:
The world is flat
The Earth is the center of the universe
That Newtonian physics applies universally, and that there is only one fixed frame of reference
That stomach ulcers are caused by excess acid and stress
That proteins are the only true functional players in cells, and that RNA is only a messenger
That 97% of the human genome is just “junk”
That God created all life on Earth in 6 days
Much more egregious misconceptions are associated with orientation and sexuality. Recently there has been progress, even tolerance. Yet the medieval beliefs still persist when describing persons afflicted with being Minor Attracted as a naturally occurring characteristic/nature. Minor Attracted Persons (MAP), like all others discover themselves in their uniqueness as they pass from infant to adult. Yet, for the unfortunate (MAP) person, such mechanisms do not exist.
If such concepts are reliably true, then the universal creative nature in your paper seems neither universal or with exceptions. I feel that all human behavior is predominately pre-ordained. How it plays out is certainly determined by environment/society.
Tragically, for some a discovered nature becomes not appealing or even chosen, but instead a life long nightmare.
I wrote this mainly because I have not really encountered any useful information on the nature/nurture issue that isn’t somehow biased. If it is to be criminalized, then it is a choice of the hapless individual. If it is productive, even appealing, then it is seen as prodigy or genius, or as mentioned “unintentional”.
Well, I don’t wish to dwell on this issue. I would however appreciate some insight as to the apparent “variations in the theme” as to universal application of genetic influences for all human beings.
I agree in every aspect of your paper. Wouldn’t be so much better to implement “critical thing” instead of critical inhibitions for each and every unique human being. After all, nature never makes duplicates, but instead originals. On earth this number of originals is massive, 6,000,000,000!
I wish you the very best in this wonderful and important paper. I hope to hear more about a shift in attitude where we as a people can begin to recognize and celebrate diversity…
Xaxnar touches on an important fact. If you examine the record of not only the best known of your creative examples, most of the truly inventive individuals who have contributed to society have met with considerable resistance to their ideas as the disrupted the status quo.
Edison is often quoted that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% persipiration. Much of it was likely spent pushing ideas that challenged what was considered to be fact at the time but turned out to be little more than dogma. The key the the success of Einstein, da Vinici, Edison and countless other creatives individuals was their ability to persist and perefct their ideas rather than give up in the face of criticism.
Artists understand this as they typically spent much of their time and energy mastering their craft. In the arts, there is no such thing as 95% confidence limits. Only perfection will do. It is for this reason I always want to know how much art training a perspective student of employee has had in their youth.
Hey xaxnar,
I’m not sure what you mean by “authoritarian framework most of us are trapped in.”
I assume that you’re not referring to the government (unless you’re writing from China), so maybe you are referring to an authoritarian educational system?
If that’s the case, then I agree – I think that our educational system is too authoritative – that was why I referred to it as “stamping out widgets.”
And, yes, creativity is subversive, but it has also led to nearly every major advance in human history, so the benefits can be argued along with the drawbacks.
As with anything in life, it’s all how you frame the debate.
Great thread! However, I think creativity has to be fostered in subtle ways; it is not enough to simply ‘get out of the way’. One way is structural changes to the curriculum. The “silo-ing” of the disciplines, which starts in elementary school and worsens the further you progress in the North American educational system, is a great contributor to the unlearning of creativity. Another easy change is to mark creativity or make it a part of an assignment. What about asking students in their candidacy to describe their research in 5 words or less (as the Ignoble Awards sometimes do) or to dance/sing their PhD dissertation? At my university, I’ve instituted a science citizenship project for 1st-year science students that has creativitiy as 20-25% of the mark. Whether this is creativity in the local solution they implement to a global problem or creativity in their presentation of the global problem and the science behind it, is the students’ choice. Many of the solutions and presentations have been amazing, blowing the socks off the expectations of most faculty that attend!
Dr. Giddings says that “all critical thinking is based on belief systems, i.e. the core propositions that we hold true about our world. Without those core beliefs (or axioms),: she continues, “critical thinking (aka deductive reasoning) isn’t possible.”
I choose to demur. To deduce from axioms is the very opposite of critical thinking. Deduction assumes universal truths which the so-called critical thinker applies to new situations. This is dogmatic, doctrinal and simplistically ideological thinking.
Critical thinking involves the relentless interrogation of axioms and their applications. It seeks to falsify, not apply, alleged truths. As for the methods of “graduate trainers,” I am very sceptical. We cab train dogs to salivate at the sound of bells. We can train dogs to roll over. Creativity and/or critical thinking is probably something a little more elaborate than a simple S>R sequence.
And, as for what critical thinking actually is, I must ask: What the heck is a “flash of insight?” You don’t have to be some sort of biological reductionist to know that “flashes” aren’t illuminating accidents or inspiration (supernaturally induced or not). They are the product of rigorous thinking, perhaps the product of conscious habit.
Creative people are taught that creativity is not valued. I’m talking about every part of our lives, not just school. Creatives are shunned socially in the workplace. In the lab, they are sidelined by managers and colleagues when they get too close to uncomfortable borders. Finding a supportive environment may be more difficult that finding a creative human.
Yes it can. I do quite a lot of clinical work using neurofeedback. This means one is training the brain to “inter-talk” among itself. The result is that not only the attentions are improved but also all the other cognitive processes like creativity. In fact this happens in all age groups. I had aged people who after a series of sessions feel want to go back to school to learn something they think is useful to them like computers, creative writing and so on. Creativity is nothing more than the neural networks of the brain to access the stored information and to arranged it in a different way. As one becomes conscious of this arrangement (the AhAh effect) one has creativity.
Creativity is actively suppressed from kindergarten onward. My son, who was reading at age four and finished his secondary-school education at a school for science- and math-oriented students, upset a teacher during his pre-kindergarten testing by insisting on drawing a computer when he was asked to draw a person. When I suggested to the teacher that he could have asked my son to draw a person using the computer, he huffed, “He was supposed to draw a person! He can’t follow directions!” (The purpose of the person-drawing test is to see how the child distinguishes parts of the body: Does he draw a head with arms and legs or a body with a head, arms and legs attached to it?) A friend’s child also was chastised for not following directions when he drew a vase containing a bouquet instead of the three flowers he was told to draw in the vase. That child was referred to a psychiatrist when he was told to draw a person and he did – including the internal organs. (He had a chronic health problem and had spent a lot of time in doctors’ examining rooms decorated with anatomical charts.) “Following directions” and thinking like “normal” people are encouraged; creativity is taboo.
I am perplexed. Conservatives (not all of whom are religious fundamentalists, right-wing bigots and so on) claim that the teaching profession has been in the hands of “progressive educators” since the 1920s and 1930s. The result, they say, is that academic standards have declined, discipline is absent, “cultural literacy” has been abandoned, etc. They commonly call for a return to educational “basics” and an end to the unearned sense of student entitlement. They lament the substitution of individual creativity for good old-fashioned achievement.
Having entered elementary school in 1951 and graduated from high school in 1963, I confess that, if my teachers were flakey progressives with a yen for student-centered education and a disdain for order, I must have missed something. At the same time, as I enter my 44th year as a postsecondary educator, I do notice that high school graduates seem to be increasingly “underprepared” for critical thinking, creativity or shoe-horning a verb into every sentence. (I’m happy to blame this and much else on “information technology” from tweets to PowerPoint, but I am a bit of a curmudgeon and a proud Luddite, so my perception might be biased.)
More seriouslty, have we (I almost fear to ask) come to experience the worst of both possible worlds. Just as the United States was said by one wag to be the only country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization,” have we jettisoned decent grammar, lost the capacity for hard work and tossed discipline aside without acquiring artistry, inspiration and creativity?
Or have we merely neglected Alfred North Whitehead’s sage advice: namely that wisdom requires both freedom and knowledge – liberty together with an informed intelligence. Freedom in the absence of understanding is chaos; understanding in the presence of rigidity is dogmatism. Are we becoming mindlessly dogmatic conformists, while deluding ourselves into imagining that we are free?
Hey Morgan Giddings,
By authoritarian frameworks I didn’t specifically mean government – though that can certainly be one example. I was thinking in more general terms. Humans tend to impose structure on themselves and their environment (social and otherwise) as a matter of both convenience and conformance. It’s a big time/energy saver if one can say “Well this person has a higher ranking than me so they must be right” by whatever criteria is important, or “Well that’s what the literature says.” and so on rather than having to consider everything that comes up on its own merits.
Creative insights are subversive in the sense that they can undermine that order. Even when it is encouraged, it still requires effort on the part of those who have to adjust their place in or perception of that order to accommdate that new insight – and that ain’t always easy. We humans like to maintain our comfort levels – and that can come too often at the cost of stifled creativity.
The late Robert A. Heinlein tossed off a line in one of his works that still stays with me: “Most scientists are more attached to their theories than their wives.” It’s a paradox of science. We pursue science to expand our understanding of the universe – but we do so at the constant risk of discovering something that will completely overturn that understanding.
To put it more succinctly, if I understand the concept of science correctly, every ‘real’ scientist should have as a fundamental assumption “Everything I know MAY be wrong.”
The corollaries to that assumption could easily spark many more commentaries.
@Howard – The institution of education is very conservative. It paints itself as progressive and holds politically progressive views, but it’s structure prevents creativity from taking hold instead of encouraging it. Take Beverly’s example. My own sun had a testing situation like that. If the examiner hadn’t asked him why he switched the nose and ear on the face, he wouldn’t have said “Well you TOLD me to finish the “funny” man.” The correct solution was to place the features in anatomically correct places.
Testing itself is horribly unfair but it’s the “best we’ve got” which doesn’t give me confidence in our system. Teacher accountability rating explanations work the same way. On one hand you have a worse than even chance of picking out a poor teacher, but because it’s the best you have, you impose the system anyway! Virtually every state legislature has a bill and most are going to pass.
Unfortunately it’s expensive to keep working till you have a good answer. What is true for research is true for nearly anything that involves a complex system.
Of course we can teach creativity. We are programmed to create… It’s called teenagers remolding their brains challenging orthodoxy. They all think they know all the answers. And believe it or not some will be right. Most great scientific discoveries are made by scientists younger than 30. Their brains have not yet become frozen in orthodoxy.
Take the cave teenager, chiseling a round thing with a hole in it. The ole man yells at him for loafing but he says, “Dad, I building a wheel.”
The inhibitor of creativity is “expert” knowledge… but we know that the history of science, false knowledge often inhibits new ideas… squashes young minds into submission. “A century old belief, “There are no bacteria in the stomach.” was challenged by a pathologist in the boondocks of Australia, countering the claim.
It is true that some people are naturally creative. I once went to my granddaughter’s nursery school, and observed 17 paintings on the black board. 15 were of only one color, one was two colors, and one five colors. But, with instructions, one can be educated to let loose and experiment with using different colors.
An acting teacher once told a class I took that “You either have it or you don’t.” by the third week most dropped out. Took another class and the teacher said, “Anybody can act. And I am going to teach you how.” And teach he did. He took a large group of non-actors and produced believable actors… Great article.
Ron Hansing
I definitely agree that creativity and critical thinking should go together. I think though, that for training purposes, one does not have to precede the other. Creativity is a monster and we tame it by our very own critical thinking. It’s perhaps good for new graduate students to get immersed in current paradigms and encouraged to be critical but they should also have the freedom to explore answers and theories on their own. Whether critical thinking goes first before creativity or creativity goes first before critical thinking won’t matter as long there is a healthy balance between the two.