AN ASSOCIATIVE THEORY OF CREATIVITY BASED ON
NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES T^^ND ITS
APPLICATION TO ARCHITECTURAL
DESIGN AND EDUCATION
by
REX HUGH REYNOLDS
A CAPSTONE PROJECT
in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE
MICHAEL A. .J^ONES, Ph.D.
AHYisor
Approved by
^^^ES E. WHITE, M.S.
Dean of the College of Architecture
May 2000
© 2001, Rex Hugh Reynolds
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I must acknowledge the Texas Tech University
College of Architecture for their forbearance in allowing
me to work on this degree in a decidedly idiosyncratic
fashion.
Next, I must acknowledge Dr. Michael Jones for his
interest, encouragement and enthusiasm as well as his
friendship.
Finally, I must acknowledge my wife, Cheryl, and my
children, Harrison, Christopher and Kaitlin, who sacrificed
not only in obvious ways but in innumerable small ways I'm
sure I'll never know while I pursued this passion.
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
ABSTRACT
vi
CHAPTER
I.
II.
INTRODUCTION
1
A Theory of Creativity
1
An Architectural Theory of Creativity
3
A Theory of Architectural Creativity
5
DEFINITIONS
9
Definition of Creativity
The Ancient View of Creativity
9
17
The Muses
18
Creativity versus Skill
20
The Enlightenment
27
The Modern View of Creativity
29
Stages
31
Originality and Utility
35
Novelty versus Familiarity
37
Heuristic versus Algorithmic
38
Subjectivity
40
The Creative Personality
43
What a Theory of Creativity Should Do
111
53
III.
IV.
THE THEORY
55
BRAIN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
58
Structure
58
Function
60
Memory
63
Storage of Information
64
Retrieval of Information
67
Neural Nests
V.
71
Definition
71
Properties
74
Proof
82
DISCUSSION OF CREATIVITY IN
NEUROPHYSIOLOGIC TERMS
88
Nature versus Nurture
88
An Associative Theory of Creativity
92
Stages
94
Preparation
94
Incubation
95
Illumination
98
Verification
104
Novelty versus Familiarity
105
Heuristic versus Algorithmic
Subjectivity
106
107
IV
Motivation
108
The Unique Nature of Artistic Creativity ... 109
VI.
ARCHITECTURAL CREATIVITY
Ill
Definition of Architecture
Ill
Architectural Design
118
Symmetry
119
Ambiguity
136
Preparation and Verification
137
Subjectivity
138
Architectural Education
139
Academic versus Vocational
139
Importance of a Broad
Based Education
VII.
CONCLUSIONS
146
152
REFERENCES CITED
155
OTHER REFERENCES
162
V
ABSTRACT
To construct a theory of creativity, a review of the
current beliefs concerning the structure and function of
the cerebral cortex is presented.
From this, several
principles or characteristics suggested by this review are
developed.
The modern concept of creativity is then
addressed and elaborated on using these principles.
Finally, artistic creativity with an emphasis on
architectural creativity as it relates to architectural
design and education is discussed.
VI
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A Theory of Creativity
Dr. Endel Tulving has studied human memory throughout
his professional career.
He is a cognitive psychologist at
the Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre at the
University of Toronto and many consider him the world's
authority on memory.
He once was asked, "What does it mean
to have a theory of human memory?" His response was:
I trust that you are talking about theories
about human memory rather than theories of memory
as such. A theory of memory would be something
like a theory of light, or a theory of evolution,
that tells you what it (light, evolution) is, and
how its phenomena must be what they are because
of what the theory says they should be, or how it
is perfectly sensible that they are what they
are. There have not been any theories of memory
of this kind, and it is a reasonably safe bet
that there never will be any."*"
Although this statement refers specifically to memory, it
clearly describes what we expect of a theory.
Notwithstanding Dr. Tulving's skepticism, this is a theory
of and not a theory about
creativity.
It will state what
-^Michael S. Gazzaniga, ed.. Conversations
in the
Cognitive
Neurosciences
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT
Press, 1997), 92.
creativity is, how its phenomena must be what they are
because of what the theory says they should be, and how it
is perfectly sensible that they are what they are.
Formally, a theory is,
[A] scheme or system of ideas or statements held
as an explanation or account of a group of facts
or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been
confirmed or established by observation or
experiment, and is propounded or accepted as
accounting for the known facts; a statement of
what are held to be the general laws, principles,
or causes of something known or observed.^
This theory is a system of ideas presented as an
explanation of a group of facts established by observation
and propounded to account for the known facts concerning
creativity.
Informally, a theory is "a hypothesis proposed
as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis, speculation,
conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something; an
individual view or notion."'^ Even if this theory does not
qualify for the formal definition, it will certainly fit
the informal one.
Theories, by their nature, are not entirely provable.
If they were, they would be facts. Below the level of
•The Oxford
^Ibid.
English
Dictionary^
2nd ed., s. v. "theory.
proof required for a fact lie the scientist's hypothesis,
the philosopher's speculation and the psychotic's
confabulation.
All involve taking what is known, or
believed to be known, and filling in the gaps.
It is hoped
that this theory will fall somewhere between the
scientist's hypothesis and the philosopher's speculation
and not venture too frequently into the third category.
An Architectural Theory of Creativity
"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with
stones.
But a collection of facts is no more a science
than a heap of stones is a house."^
Theories are like architecture with ideas and
principles serving as the materials of construction.
A
theory is made aesthetically pleasing by the quality of the
ideas and the care by which they are fitted.
They must
rest on solid foundations and their walls must support
their roofs, that is, the individual pieces must support
the whole.
•^Jules Henri Poincar§, Science and Method (1913), quoted
in John Bartlett, Bartletfs
Familiar Quotations,
16th ed.,
ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: Little, Brown and Company,
1992), 565.
This is, of course, not an original observation.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson note in Metaphors
We Live
By
that "metaphors partially structure our everyday concepts
and that this structure is reflected in our literal
language."^
For examples that "theories (and arguments) are
buildings" they offer:
Is that the foundation
for your theory? The
theory needs more support.
The argument is
shaky.
We need some more facts or the argument
will fall
apart.
We need to construct
a
strong
argument for that. I haven't figured out yet
what the form of the argument will be. Here are
some more facts to shore up the theory. We need
to buttress
the theory with solid
arg\iinents. The
theory will stand or fall
on the strength
of that
argument. The argument collapsed.
They
exploded
his latest theory- We will show that theory to
be without foundation.
So far we have put
together only the framework
of the theory.^
The American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce also
recognized the relationship of theories to architecture in
his essay entitled, "The Architecture of Theories."
He
wrote:
When a man is about to build a house, what
a power of thinking he has to do before he can
safely break ground! With what pains he has to
excogitate the precise wants that are to be
^George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors
We Live By
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 46.
^Ibid.
supplied! What a study to ascertain the most
available and suitable materials, to determine
the mode of construction to which those materials
are best adapted, and answer a hundred such
questions! Now without riding the metaphor too
far, I think we may safely say that the studies
preliminary to the building of a great theory
should be at least as deliberate and as thorough
as those that are preliminary to the building of
a dwelling house.^
This thesis will present a deliberate and thorough
review of the structure and function of the cerebral
cortex.
These concepts will form the materials with which
to construct a theory of creativity.
Just as a house made
of sound materials fitted well is more than the sum of its
parts, a proper theory suggests things far beyond the mere
statement of facts.
A Theory of Architectural Creativity
The consideration that architecture is the product of
creative activity is not without foundation.
In 1896, Otto
Wagner, as the newly appointed Imperial Professor of
Architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, described
architecture as follows:
^Charles Sanders Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories,
in Philosophical
Writings
of Peirce,
ed. Justus Buchler
(New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955), 315.
Among the fine arts (as difficult as it is
for me to speak of arts, for there is only one
art), architecture alone is truly creative and
productive; in fact, it alone is able to make
forms that have no model in nature yet appear
beautiful to man. Even if these forms have their
source in natural structures and their origin in
the material, the result is so far removed from
the starting point that it must be considered a
completely new creation. It therefore cannot be
surprising to hear that we should see in
architecture the highest expression of man's
ability bordering on the divine. And rightly so!
Proof of this lies in the mysterious and
overwhelming power that architectural works have
on man, practically forcing him to contemplate.
Architecture must therefore be described as the
most powerful expression of art.^
It, of course, comes as no surprise that an architect
would think that architecture represents the ultimate
creative activity.
However, researchers in the field of
creativity also share this sentiment.
Donald MacKinnon
studied creative work and creative workers in the arts,
sciences and professions at the Institute of Personality
Assessment and Research on the Berkley campus of the
University of California.
Since he studied many
professions, including research scientists, inventors.
®Otto Wagner, Modern
Students
to this
Field
Architecture:
A Guidebook
for
His
of Art,
1902 edition, trans. Harry
Francis Mallgrave (Santa Monica, California: The Getty
Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1988),
62.
artists, mathematicians and writers, his comments
concerning architects are well-considered and, in this
context, particularly noteworthy.
The decision to include architects among the
professions to be studied was based upon the
assumption that they might as a group reveal that
which is most generally characteristic of
creativity and the creative person. Grossly
over-simplifying the profoundly complex one
might, as has often been done, entertain the
notion that there are at least two kinds of
creativity—artistic and scientific—and that
those who practice and excel in one of these are,
at least in some respects, different from those
who labor in the other. Yet it is clear that
there are certain domains of creative endeavor
which require that the successful practitioner be
both artist and scientist. Surely architecture
is such a field, with its requirements that its
designs meet the demands, as described by Ruskin,
of firmness, delight, and commodity, or in more
modern language, the demands of technology,
visual form, and planning. Yet surely the
requirements of effective architecture are not
limited to these three. One who studies a
successfully practicing architect will soon be
impressed by his juggler-like ability to combine,
reconcile, and exercise the diverse skills of
businessman, lawyer, artist, engineer, and
advertising man, to say nothing of authorjournalist, psychiatrist, educator, and
psychologist. In what other profession could one
better observe the multifarious expressions of
creativity?^
^Donald W. MacKinnon, "The Personality Correlates of
Creativity: A Study of American Architects," in
Proceedings
of the XIV International
Congress of Applied
Psychology
held in Copenhagen 13-19 August 1961, ed. Gerhard S.
Nielsen, vol. 2, Personality
Research,
ed. Stanley
Coopersmith (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962), 11.
That architecture requires creativity is undisputed.
Arguably, creativity is the criterion by which we
distinguish architecture from building.
As the Swiss born
architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as
Le Corbusier, wrote:
The Architect, by his arrangement of forms,
realizes an order which is a pure creation of his
spirit; by forms and shapes he affects our senses
to an acute degree and provokes plastic emotions;
by the relationships which he creates he wakes
profound echoes in us, he gives us the measure of
an order which we feel to be in accordance with
that of our world, he determines the various
movements of our heart and of our understanding;
it is then that we experience the sense of
beauty.^°
A theory does more than just explain.
Theories are
useful models to predict what might occur given certain
variables in a domain.
Theories also suggest what might
influence its subject.
This theory of architectural
creativity has obvious applications to architectural design
and architectural education.
-^"Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,
trans.
Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,
1986), 1.
CHAPTER II
DEFINITIONS
Definition of Creativity
A discussion of creativity logically begins with its
definition.
In 1933, the English Philological Society
published their first complete compendium of lexicographic
work on the English language.
This twelve-volume edition.
The Oxford
English
A New English
Historical
Principles,
creativity.
Dictionary,
Dictionary:
Dictionary
of
has no entry for the word
In A Supplement
to the Oxford
English
a four-volume edition published in 1972, the
following uncharacteristically brief entry first appears
and it remains, unchanged, in the 198 9 twenty-volume
Edition
Second
of the OED:
creativity (kri : e'tiviti, kri:ei-) . [f. CREATIVE +
-ITY. ]
Creative power or faculty; ability to create.
1875 A. W. WARD Eng. Dram. Lit.
I. 506 The spontaneous
flow of his [sc. Shakespeare's] poetic creativity. 1926 A.
N. WHITEHEAD Relig.
in Making iii. 90 The creativity whereby
the actual world has its character of temporal passage to
novelty. Ibid.
152 Unlimited possibility and abstract
creativity can procure nothing. 1959 Radio Times 23 Jan. 3/1
He [sc. Burns] was a man of overflowing creativity—in so
far as the phrase applies to his poetry.
The adjective, creative, does appear in the 1933 OED.
Creative (kri, e^ • tiv) , a. [f. CREATE V.
+ -IVE.]
1. Having the q u a l i t y of c r e a t i n g , given to
c r e a t i n g ; of or p e r t a i n i n g to c r e a t i o n ;
originative.
1678 CUDWORTH Intell.
Syst.
(1808) I I . 317 This Divine,
m i r a c u l o u s , c r e a t i v e power. 1745 W. THOMPSON Sickness
i. (R.)
C r e a t i v e bard [Spenser] . . expand thy f a i r y s c e n e s . ci750
SHENSTONE .Ruin'd Abbey 332 H e a v ' n ' s c r e a t i v e hand. 1874 GREEN
Short Hist. i v . 164 There i s no t r a c e of c r e a t i v e genius or
o r i g i n a l i t y in his character.
2. Affording the cause or occasion
productive of.
of,
1803 Med. Jrnl. IX. 272 I n j u r i e s . . unattended by any
symptoms c r e a t i v e of alarm. 1837 HT. MARTINEAU SOC. Amer. I I I .
130 Laws and customs cannot be c r e a t i v e of v i r t u e : they may
encourage and help t o p r e s e r v e i t ; but they cannot
originate i t .
The 1972 Supplement
to the OED expands t h i s
definition.
creative, a. Add: 1. b. Spec, of l i t e r a t u r e and
a r t , thus also of a w r i t e r or a r t i s t : inventive
(cf. INVENTION 3 b) , imaginative; exhibiting
imagination as well as i n t e l l e c t , and thus
d i f f e r e n t i a t e d from the merely c r i t i c a l ,
'academic', j o u r n a l i s t i c , professional,
mechanical, e t c . , in l i t e r a r y or a r t i s t i c
production. So creative writing, such writing;
also freq. in the U.S. as a course of study.
1816 WORDSWORTH Thanksgiving
Ode 30 C r e a t i v e a r t . .
Demands t h e s e r v i c e of a mind and h e a r t . . H e r o i c a l l y
fashioned, 1876 GEO. ELIOT Dan. Der. I I . i i i . x x i i . 73 A
c r e a t i v e a r t i s t i s no more a mere musician than a g r e a t
statesman i s a mere p o l i t i c i a n . i9oo W. B. WORSFOLD Judgement
in Lit. i i i . 25 A r i s t o t l e has once and for a l l
c h a r a c t e r i s e d t h e method of c r e a t i v e l i t e r a t u r e , and
d i s t i n g u i s h e d such l i t e r a t u r e from a l l o t h e r branches of
l e t t e r s . 1903 A. BENNETT Truth about Author i i i . 29 I t was
e i g h t y e a r s s i n c e I s a t down as a c r e a t i v e a r t i s t . 1907 G.
K. CHESTERTON i n Dickens Pickw. p . v i i i . In c r e a t i v e a r t , t h e
essence of a book e x i s t s before t h e b o o k . . . The c r e a t i v e
w r i t e r laughs a t h i s comedy b e f o r e he c r e a t e s i t . 1917 J . E.
SPINGARN [title)
C r e a t i v e c r i t i c i s m . 1923 HOLLIDAY & VAN
RENSSELAER Business
of Writing 100 Then, a c t u a l l y , t h e r e i s
c o m p a r a t i v e l y small demand for c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . 1930
English Jrnl. XIX. 635 Courses i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . 1934 New
Republic 29 Aug. 84/2 Conrad Aiken, who r e c e i v e d a P u l i t z e r
award i n p o e t r y and holds a Guggenheim fellowship i n
c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g , i s now i n England. 1938 W. S. MAUGHAM
Summing Up 232 One of t h e reasons why c u r r e n t c r i t i c i s m i s
so u s e l e s s i s t h a t i t i s done as a s i d e - i s s u e by c r e a t i v e
w r i t e r s , 1942 Times Lit. Suppl. 29 Aug, 427/1 C r e a t i v e
10
literature deals directly with life. 1958 Oxf. Mag. 4 Dec
164/2 In America . , established, or at any rate committed,
writers have been absorbed, permanently or temporarily,
into the apparatus of creative writing workshops, i960 C. H.
DoDD Authority
of Bible
(ed. 2) i. 32 The creative artist,
who would scorn slavish imitation, yet finds inspiration
and direction in the masters,
G. creative
evolution
[tr. Fr. L'Evolution
creatrice
(H. L. Bergson 1907)]: in Bergson's
philosophy, the process of evolution of new forms
regarded as not taking place according to natural
laws but giving rise to genuine novelty; hence
creative
evolutionist.
Also creative
synthesis.
1909 Proc. Arist.
Soc. IX. 41 The special title of the
book 'Creative Evolution' . 1918 G. B. SHAW Doctors'
Delusions
(1932) 312 The Creative Evolutionists, with Butler and
Bergson for their prophets. 1921
Back to Methus.
p.
Ixxviii, Creative Evolution is already a religion, and is
indeed now unmistakably the religion of the twentieth
century, 1934
Prefaces
362/2 Myself , . who believe in
the religion of Creative Evolution, i94i Mind L. 397 The
concept of creative synthesis, according to which by the
interaction of parts in a whole, there emerge 'new
properties' qualifying the whole, which were not present in
the constituent parts.
d. Extended uses (chiefly of *b).
1930 Monotype Recorder
XXIX, 39 The fear that prices
will drop still lower when trade in general seems to be
poor can no longer have power over the creative salesman,
because he realizes that salesmanship definitely stimulates
and helps to stabilize
trade. Ibid.,
The remainder . , fail
to see the vital necessity for advertising and establishing
a creative sales policy, 1933 Dylan Thomas Let. Oct, (1966)
45 Aren't any of the Creative Lifers men of action? 1936
Word Study Sept, 1/2 At a recent 'panel discussion' in one
of our great universities several speakers aired their
views on '"creative education' , 1937 'G. ORWELL' Road to Wigan
Pier xii. 230 In my spare time I want to do something
'creative', so I choose to do a bit of carpentering. i94i
Time (Air Exp. Ed,) 14 July 2/1 The creative pauses of
Adolf Hitler, 1942 Sphere 27 June 409/1 The sub-editors here
[at the B,B,C] need to be more creative than in Fleet
Street. 1958 Spectator
14 Feb, 197/1 'Creative commercial
jobs, such as advertising, designing, modelling, public
relations, TV production, or on a 'glossy' news-magazine.
1969 Times 23 Dec, 9/7 Middleclass mothers who leave a child
alone with a roomful of creative toys all day may produce
'C stream children as often as the working mother.
The Second
Edition
of the OED completes the definition of
creative by adding:
11
e. Applied to financial or other strategies
which are imaginative or ingenious, esp. in a
misleading fashion, creative
accountancy,
accounting,
the modification of accounts to
achieve a desired end; falsification of accounts
that is misleading but not illegal; also
creative
accountant.
1973 Harper's
Mag. Aug. 72/2 The extent to which
Equity Funding's earnings before 1970 were the result of
'creative accounting' is still unclear. 1973 New Yorker 20
Aug 39/3 Losses, then, of three hundred billion dollars in
a year or a half, spread over more than thirty million
investors—such were the bitter fruits . . of the works of
corporate fiction written by the 'creative' accountants,
who found ways of justifying fanciful figures on their
clients' earnings statements. 1979 Economist
1 July 91/2 The
purpose of unitary taxation is ostensibly to capture income
which might otherwise, through creative transfer pricing,
go untaxed or undertaxed in other jurisdictions. 1982 Times
12 July 11/8 Creative accounting may pretty up the books.
But the stark reality is that an airline suffering losses
of over £450m in the past 2 years and hard pressed to earn
a profit this time, is hardly a fund manager's dream, 198S
Times 27 July 2/4 Because of 'creative accountancy', used
by high-spending boroughs, the GLC failed to take into
account about £140 million, 1986 Tribune
12 Sept, 3/2 The
working party on local government finance will look first
at the extent of creative accounting, particularly deferred
purchase schemes, which councils have used to get round
government restrictions.
The d e f i n i t i o n s of both c r e a t i v i t y , the noun, and c r e a t i v e ,
the a d j e c t i v e , r e f e r to the verb create which the 1933 OED
defines a s :
Create ( k r i . e ^ - t ) , v. Also 6-7 c r e a t ; pa. t. 5-6
c r e a t ( e , 6 Sc. c r e a t t ; pa. ppl. 4-6 c r e a t ( e . [f.
c r e a t - p p l . stem of L. creare; see prec.
The e a r l y i n s t a n c e s a r e a l l of t h e pa.
c r e a t u s . I t , creato),
or t h e pa. t , ; creat(e
t r u e p p l e , t o cl600, but a l r e a d y i n 15th c,
created,
and i n 16th c. we f i n d t h e p r e s e n t
p p l e , creating,
etc]
pple (= L,
continued a
i t v a r i e d with
create,
with
1. trans. Said of the divine agent: To bring
into being, cause to e x i s t ; esp. to produce where
nothing was before, ' t o form out of nothing'
(J.) .
12
C1386 CHAUCER Pars.
T. f 144 Al be it that God hath
creat [3 MSS. created] al thing in right ordre. i398 TREVISA
Barth.
De P. R. i. (1945) 6 The creatour . . fro the
begynnynge of tyme creat . , the creature . , of no thynge,
or of no matere precedent, 1432-so tr, Higden
(Rolls) I. 189
Wherefore poetes feyne hym . , to haue create men of
stones, 1483 CAXTON Gold. Leg. 133/2 [He] that had created
alle the world. 1926 Pilgr.
Perf.
(W. de W. 1531) 201 b. He
create & infuded that noble soule. 1535 COVERDALE Gen. i, i In
y^ begynnynge God created heauen and earth. I59i JAS. I Poet.
Exerc,
L iij b. Praise him for that he creat hath The
heauen, the earth, and all. leii BIBLE PS. 11, lo Create in
mee a cleane heart, 0 God, i644 MILTON Areop.
(Arb,) 52
wherefore did he creat passions within us? I65i HOBBES
Leviath.
11, xxxi, 190 To say the World was not Created , .
is to deny there is a God, 1862 MAX MULLER Sel. Ess. (1881)
II, XX, 395 And the gods consulted a second time how to
create beings that should adore them.
b. with complemental extension.
1590 SHAKS, Com. Err. iii. ii. 39 Are you a god? would
you create me new? I6ii BIBLE Isa. Ixv. 18, I create
lerulalem a reioycing, and her people a ioy. 1732 POPE ESS.
Man 1. 148 And what created perfect? 1862 F, HALL Hindu
Philos.
Syst.
143 God created man a moral creature.
c. ajbsol,
1592 DAVIES Immort.
Soul,
vii, (1714) 46 To create, to
God alone pertains, 1667 MILTON P. L. vii. 606 To create Is
greater then created to destroy, issi RUSKIN Stones
Ven,
(1874) I, App, 38i It is only for God to create without
toil,
2. gen. To make, form, constitute, or bring
into legal existence (an institution, condition,
action, mental product, or form, not existing
before). Sometimes of material works as fig. of
I.
1592 WEST 1st Ft. Symbol.
§ 46 D, A constitutiue
Instrument creating . . whereby any estate, propertie,
power or obligation, not hauing any essence or being
before, is newely raysed and created, I612 DAVIES Why
Ireland,
etc. (J.), With power to create a manor, and hold
a court-baron. 1679 DRYDEN Troilus
5 Cr. Prol. 8, I found
not, but created first the stage. 1697
Virg. George, iv.
295 Thus make they Kings to fill the Regal Seat; And thus
their little Citizens create. 18I8 CRUISE Digest
(ed, 2) IV,
336 The word heirs is not necessary to create a fee simple,
1848 MACAULAY Hist.
Eng. I, 345 Those towns where wealth is
created and accumulated. 1854 RONALDS Chem. Technol.
(ed. 2)
I. 225 It is always necessary, before lighting the fire in
the stove, to create a draught by heating the chimney.
b.
absol.
1775 SHERIDAN Rivals Pref., The imagination . . becomes
suspicious of i t s offspring, and doubts whether i t has
created or adopted, 1831 BREWSTER iVeti/ton (1855) I I , x x v i i , 400
13
The inspired genius which creates, 1852 ROBERTSON Serm. 3rd
Ser, xii, 147 The mason makes,
the architect creates,
c. Of an actor: To be the first to represent
(a part or role), and so to give it its
character. [F. creer un role: see Littre,
Hatzfeld.]
1882 STEVENSON New Arab. Nts.
(1884) 314, I have created
. . more than one important role.
1882 Standard
24 May,
Madame Christine Nilsson . , at the Royal Italian Opera . .
when she will create Boito's Opera Mefistofele.
3. To constitute (a personage of rank or
dignity); to invest with rank, title, etc.
Constr. to create a peer, to create a man a peer.
C1460 FoRTEscuE Ab. & Lim. Mon. ix, Hugh Capite . . wich
tho was the myghtieste subgett off Ffraunce, and therfore
create and callid Dux Ffrancias.
1495 Act ii Hen. VII, c. 35
Preamb., The Kyngis Grace . , created hym Duke. 1568 GRAFTON
Chron. II. 347 During the which [Parliament] he created two
Dukes, a Marques and five Erles. 1611 SHAKS. Cymb. v. v. 20
Arise my Knights o' th' Battell, I create you Companions to
our person. 1655-60 STANLEY Hist. Philos.
(1701) 34/i The
Ephori were first Created about the sixth Olympiad. ci670
WOOD Life
(1848) 51 He was , . created bach, of arts. 1771
GoLDSM. Hist.
Eng. III. 374 Edward Hyde . . was now created
a peer by the title of lord Clarendon. 1874 GREEN Short
Hist.
ii. 103 Opposition came from the very prelate whom Henry
had created to enforce his will.
4. To cause, occasion, produce, give rise to
(a condition or set of circumstances).
1599 SHAKS. Hen. V, iv. i. 2 64 O Ceremonie . . Art thou
ought else but Place, Degree, and Forme, Creating awe and
feare in other men? 1667 Decay Chr. Piety
(J. ) , Difficulties
of their own creating, 1709 HEARNE Collect.
(Oxf. Hist. Soc.)
II. 185 'Tis only fit to create Mirth. 1873 BLACK Pr.
Thule
xii. 190 She failed to create any profound impression. 1876
J. H, NEWMAN Hist.
Sk. 1. I. i. ii Position and climate
create habits.
The Supplement
expands the listing, which then becomes the
Second
definition without further additions:
Edition
create, v. Add: 2. d. To design (a costume): see
^CREATION 5 c. Also, to design and execute a scheme
of interior decoration.
1930 Daily Tel. 7 Apr. 7/7 A brown mixture tweed s u i t
. . c r e a t e d by S c h i a p a r e l l i . 1957 New Yorker 5 Oct. 33/3 The
i n t e r i o r - d e c o r a t i n g firm t h a t c r e a t e d t h e foyer.
5 . intr.
To make a f u s s , grumble,
about ( s o m e t h i n g ) .
slang.
14
'go on'
1919 Athen^um 8 Aug. 729/1 ' C r e a t i n g ' i s presumably an
a b b r e v i a t i o n of ' c r e a t i n g (or making) a f u s s ' . 1932 S.
GIBBONS Cold Comfort Farm x v i i i . 250 C r e a t e !
I thought ' e ' d
'ave t o be picked off t h e c e i l i n g . Ibid. 251 'E always
c r e a t e s a t me something awful when I ' v e f i n i s h e d t e l l i n g
'im a n y t h i n g s p i t e f u l . 1955 'E, C. R. LORAC Ask a Policeman
v i i i , 92 The old l a d y came and c r e a t e d about her nephew
l i v i n g h e r e . 1956 K. FARRELL Cost of Living i i . 44 I f my old
man d o e s n ' t g e t ' i s b i t of f i s h a t one, and t h a t means one,
h e ' l l c r e a t e , 1959 M. Hastings Hour-Glass to Eternity
1.
i i i , 87 What does he do but come aboard and s t a r t c r e a t i n g
about t h e l o s s of t i m e !
A l i s t i n g for c r e a t i v i t y i s likewise notably absent
from Noah Webster's An American Dictionary
Language published in 1828.
of the
English
The l i s t i n g s for c r e a t e and
c r e a t i v e are as follows:
CREA'TE, V. t. [Fr. creer; I t . creare; Sp. and
Port, criar; L. creo; Arm. croui; Corn.
gurei. In W. cr^u s i g n i f i e s to c r e a t e , and
creu, to cry, to crave, to caw, to beg. W.
creth and crez, c o n s t i t u t i o n , temper; a l s o ,
a trembling or shivering with cold. I r .
croth or cruth, form, shape; cruthaighim,
to
c r e a t e , to prove, a s s e r t , maintain. From the
C e l t i c then i t appears t h a t the L. creo i s
contracted by the loss of a d or th. The
Welsh has also cri, a cry, and criaw, to
cry, both deduced by Owen from ere; but ere
i s a contraction of crevu, to cry, or of
gryd, a crying or whooping, or cryd, a
shaking. In Welsh also cri s i g n i f i e s rough,
raw, crude; a l l which unite in the root of
cry, cradle, L. rudo, to bray- The primary
sense of c r e a t e and of cry i s the same, to
throw or drive out, to produce, to bring
forth, p r e c i s e l y as in the Shemetic Nin. But
the Welsh creu and creu may perhaps be from
d i f f e r e n t r o o t s , both however with the same
primary sense.]
1.
To produce; to bring into being from
nothing; to cause to e x i s t .
In t h e b e g i n n i n g , God created
the earth.
15
t h e heaven and
Gen, i .
2.
To make or form, by investing with a new
c h a r a c t e r ; as, to create one a peer or
baron; to create a manor.
I create you
Companions t o our p e r s o n .
3.
Shak.
To produce; to cause; to be the occasion of.
Your eye i n Scotland
Would create s o l d i e r s , and make women f i g h t .
Shak.
Long a b s t i n e n c e creates u n e a s i n e s s i n t h e
stomach; confusion i s created by h u r r y .
4.
To beget; to generate; to bring forth.
The people which s h a l l be created,
t h e Lord,
shall praise
Ps. c i i ,
5.
To make or produce, by new combinations of
matter already created, and by investing
these combinations with new forms,
c o n s t i t u t i o n s and q u a l i t i e s ; to shape and
organize.
6.
To form anew; to change the s t a t e or
character; to renew.
God created
man i n h i s own image.
Create i n me a clean h e a r t .
We a r e h i s workmanship, created
Jesus.
Gen. i ,
Ps. I i .
in Christ
Eph. i i ,
CREA'TIVE, a. Having the power to c r e a t e , or
exerting the act of c r e a t i o n ; as creative
fancy; creative power.
F i n a l l y , the most recent comprehensive English
d i c t i o n a r y , Microsoft's World English Dictionary,
defines
creativity as:
cre»a»tiv«i»ty [kree ay t i v v i t e e ] noun
1. being creative: the q u a l i t y of being c r e a t i v e
2. imaginative a b i l i t y : the a b i l i t y to use the
imagination to develop new and o r i g i n a l ideas or
t h i n g s , e s p e c i a l l y in an a r t i s t i c context.^^
^^Encarta World English Dictionary,
s. v. " c r e a t i v i t y '
[CD-ROM] (Redmond: Microsoft Press, 2000).
It is apparent from the definitions above that
creativity, the noun, is a recent consideration.
Note that
the first written use of the word creativity did not occur
until 1875—if the OED lexicographer responsible for the
citation was thorough—and that the other two citations for
creativity are from the 20th century.
It is also evident
that the definitions of the adjective, creative, and the
verb, create, evolved over time.
The initial definitions
of these words describe divine creativity, whereas the
expanded definitions in the 1972 Supplement
Edition
and the Second
of the OED add the concept of artistic creativity.
In like fashion, the early exemplary citations refer to
divine creation while later citations refer more often to
artistic endeavors and individual creativity-
Finally, the
most recent English language dictionary defines creativity
completely in artistic terms. As should be expected, the
evolution of these definitions reflects the development of
historical concepts regarding creativity.
The Ancient View of Creativity
From the earliest times to the Renaissance, people
believed the gods or God inspired all desirable
innovations.
Creativity, as we understand it, did not
17
exist.
In The Origin
the Bicameral
of Consciousness
in the Breakdown
of
Mind, Julian Jaynes describes a society of
individuals that exhibit no creativity in the modern sense.
To these ancients, the mind was comprised of two chambers,
one to receive ideas and the other to express them.^^ The
ideas came from the gods and man was responsible only for
their expression.
Dr. Jaynes convincingly argues that
audible voices guided bicameral men--voices these men
believed were the voices of gods.
Jaynes further
attributes the voices to the right hemisphere of the brain,
a concept not at odds with current theories of brain
function and this theory of creativity.
The Muses
The ancient Greeks received inspiration from the
Muses.
The word inspiration derives from inspire, to
"breathe into," and the Greeks believed the Muses were
goddesses who breathed into the minds of artists and
^^The word 'chamber' derives from the Latin camera, "vault
or room," and the Greek kamara, "vault, something with an
arched cover."
artisans.
They were the daughters of Zeus
and
Mnemosyne,
the goddess of memory."
Initially there was one Muse and later three.
commonly, there is mention of nine.
Mythologists assigned
to each a particular area of expertise.
poetry—Calliope
Polyhymnia
Melpomene
comedy.
(epic poetry), Erato
(sacred poetry).
Euterpe
Three inspired
(love poetry) and
was the Muse of music.
inspired dramatic tragedy while Thalia
Clio,
Terpsichore
and Urania
dancing and astronomy, respectively.
Most
inspired
inspired history,
Note that the Greeks
recognized the importance of inspiration to the sciences,
although astronomy was much more than mere science to these
people.
The names of the Muses first appeared in the writings
of the 8th Century B.C. Greek poet Hesiod who proclaimed
Calliope
the chief among them.
alludes to Erato,
Polyhymnia,
Modern literature rarely
Urania
and Calliope.
This is
likely because their areas of inspiration are no longer
areas of active artistic endeavor.
^^emory as the mother of creativity is a remarkably
prescient belief and the importance of memory to creativity
will be addressed in detail later.
The absence of a Muse for architecture or sculpture is
surprising considering the importance of Greek architecture
and sculpture to modern cultures.
The Renaissance
architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, however, not only addressed
this "oversight," he deemed Lady Architecture the mother of
all the Muses. As noted by Marco Frascari in Monsters
of
Architecture:
Architecture is a chief/mistress who lives
among the arts and knows how to judge and arrange
them in an eloquent and sensible environment. A
vignette marking the opening of the first chapter
of the first book of the treatise written by
Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552-1616), a Palladian pupil
who completed many of the buildings of his
master, is a clear representation of this image
of architecture as chief/mistress. In the
vignette, Lady Architecture is sitting enthroned
among the arts—three on her right and four on
her left—and the title Domi[na] Artium (Lady of
the Arts) is carved on the predella....The
iconographical composition of the vignette
presents the traditional representation of
Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, sitting among
her daughters (the result of nine nights the
goddess spent in the bed of Zeus) .^'''
Creativity versus Skill
During this period, creativeness referred to skill and
artisanship rather than the modern concept of creativity
^^Marco Frascari, Monsters of
Architecture:
Anthropomorphism
in Architectural
Theory (Savage, Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1991), 6.
20
and the definitions presented so far in this discussion,
unless referring to divine creation, can just as easily
describe the skillful production of something as they can
the products arising through the process this modern
concept describes.
This is a subtle but important
distinction.
The etymology of create, as outlined in Webster's
definition, emphasizes the production of something but does
not distinguish between the production of something
original in a creative sense and the production of
something by a skilled artisan.
create
"The primary sense of
and of cry is the same, to throw or drive out, to
produce, to bring forth. "^^
The early twentieth century German philosopher Martin
Heidegger recognized this difficultyWe think of creation as a bringing forth.
But the making of equipment, too, is a bringing
forth. Handicraft—a remarkable play of
language—does not, to be sure, create works, not
even when we contrast, as we must, the handmade
with the factory product. But what is it that
distinguishes bringing forth as creation from
bringing forth in the mode of making? It is as
difficult to track down the essential features of
the creation of works and the making of equipment
^^Noah Webster, An American
Language, s.v. "create."
Dictionary
21
of the
English
as it is easy to distinguish verbally between the
two modes of bringing forth. Going along with
first appearances, we find the same procedure in
the activity of potter and sculptor, of joiner
and painter. The creation of a work requires
craftsmanship. Great artists prize craftsmanship
most highly- They are the first to call for its
painstaking cultivation based on complete
mastery. They above all others constantly strive
to educate themselves ever anew in thorough
craftsmanship. It has often enough been pointed
out that the Greeks, who know quite a bit about
works of art, use the same word techne for craft
and art and call the craftsman and the artist by
the same name:
technites.'^^
Heidegger goes on to explain this lack of distinction
between skill and creativity.
It thus seems advisable to define the nature
of creative work in terms of its craft aspect.
But reference to the linguistic usage of the
Greeks, with their experience of the facts, must
give us pause. However usual and convincing the
reference may be to the Greek practice of naming
craft and art by the same name, teciine, it
nevertheless remains oblique and superficial; for
techne signifies neither craft not art, and not
at all the technical in our present-day sense; it
never means a kind of practical performance.
The word techne denotes rather a mode of
knowing. To know means to have seen, in the
widest sense of seeing, which means to apprehend
what is present, as such. For Greek thought the
nature of knowing consists in aletheia,
that is,
in the uncovering of beings. It supports and
guides all comportment toward beings. Techne, as
^^artin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art
(Extracts)," quoted in Rethinking
Architecture:
A Reader
Cultural
Theory, ed. Neil Leach (New York: Routledge,
1977), 120.
22
in
knowledge experienced in the Greek manner, is a
bringing forth of beings in that it brings
forth
present beings as such beings out of
concealedness and specifically into the
unconcealedness of their appearance; techne
never
signifies the action of making."
It is, of course, specious to select a small excerpt from
Heidegger's prodigious works to make a point.
Notwithstanding, it is interesting to read this passage
from the point of view that the Greeks might consider craft
and art synonymous.
An alternative explanation for why the
Greeks used the term techne
to describe both craft and art
is that they simply did not draw a distinction between the
two.
Another example of this curious concept, that ancient
men did not recognize creativity as an individual trait, is
evident in the writings of the Roman architect and engineer
Vitruvius.
Vitruvius wrote De Architectura
Libra
Decern for
the Roman Emperor Octavian Augustus Caesar in the first
century B.C. to instruct him in his architectural
endeavors.
"I have furnished a detailed treatise so that,
by reference to it, you might inform yourself about the
"ibid.
23
works already complete or about to be entered upon."^^
Morris Hicky Morgan translates the next sentence of this
passage, ^^Namque his
rationes,"^^
voluminibus
aperui
omnes
disciplinae
as, "For in the following books I have
disclosed all the principles of the art."^°
Frank Granger,
however, translates the same passage as, "In the following
books I have expounded a complete system of architecture."^^
Further, Morgan translates a later passage, ^^Partes
architecturae
sunt
tres:
aedificatio,
machinatio,"^^
as, "There are three departments of
ipsius
gnomonice,
architecture: the art of building, the making of timepieces, and the construction of machinery."^^
Again, a more
literal translation is offered by Granger, "The parts of
architecture itself are three: Building, Dialling, and
^Vitruvius, On Architecture,
Loeb Classic Library, trans.
Frank Granger (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1931), 5.
"ibid., 4.
^"vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture,
trans. Morris
Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960), 4.
21Vitruvius,
On Architecture,
5.
^^Ibid., 32.
23.Vitruvius,
The Ten Books
on Architecture,
24
16,
Mechanics."^^
The point is that Vitruvius did not describe
architecture as anything other than building.
Some modern
translators, however, appear to interpret the passages in
light of the modern conception of architecture as a
creative art. Vitruvius wrote De Architectura
guidebook for the Emperor.
as a
It was a practical manual and
not a theoretical treatise. A literal translation lends
further credence to the argument that creativity, in the
modern sense, was foreign to Vitruvius.
The creative artists of ancient times were venerated
for their skill in expressing what they felt the gods or
God inspired them to create.
the Iliad
For example, the heroes of
were honored for heroically carrying out the
instructions of the gods, not for generating original
ideas.
The gods proscribed their battle strategies, and in
Book XVIII of the Iliad,
Vulcan, the god of fire, designed
and forged the great shield of Achilles, not man." To
these societies, there was no reason to consider the source
of creativity; they knew the source to their satisfaction.
^^Vitruvius, On Architecture,
33.
"Homer, The Iliad,
Book XVIII, trans. Alexander Pope
(Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1979), 359.
25
This is perhaps why there are no early discussions of
creativity and the word did not exist in the English
language until recently.
Man, for the longest time, simply
did not see a need to examine the creative process. As
John Dacey points out.
The first effective scholarly inquiry [into the
nature of creative thinking] was undertaken only
a little over a century ago. Research on the
creative process was deterred not so much by
ignorance as by the conviction that the nature of
innovative thinking was already understood: it
was thought that it came as a gift from above.^®
It is important to emphasize that the argument here is not
that people in ancient times were not creative, they
undoubtedly were.
The argument is that they did not
consider themselves creative, it was simply not a
recognized human trait.
Even after the bicameral mind broke down,
philosophical dualism persisted.
Proponents of dualism
held that the creative process was magical, either divine
or demonic, and separate from other body functions. In
medieval times, God replaced the gods as the source of
"John Dacey, "Concepts of Creativity: A History," in
Encyclopedia
of Creativity,
vol. 1, ed. Mark A. Runco and
Steven R. Pritzker (San Diego, California: Academic Press,
1999), 310.
26
inspiration and many Renaissance thinkers believed in the
separation of mind and body.
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment saw the rise of humanism, a system
of thought that the values, characteristics and behavior of
man are vested in his own mind rather than in supernatural
authority.
Proponents of humanism emphasized reason and
science in philosophy and in the study of human culture and
the natural world.
When Napoleon questioned the French
astronomer and mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace about the
absence of God in Laplace's theory of the solar system,
Laplace replied that God was "an unnecessary hypothesis."^^
This mind set, of course, eventually demanded an
explanation for creativity, which resulted in a rigorous
examination of the creative process.
The initial hypothesis was that creativity is a
genetic trait.
Sir Francis Galton is credited with the
first scientific studies into the nature of genius.
Greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's then new theory of
^''Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind:
Understanding
the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View
(New York: Harmony Books, 1991), 308.
27
natural selection, he concluded that genius, as well as all
other mental capabilities, was inherited.
[A] man's natural abilities are derived by
inheritance, under exactly the same limitations
as are the form and physical features of the
whole organic world. Consequently, as it is
easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to
obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of
dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of
running, or of doing anything else, so it would
be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted
race of men by judicious marriages during several
consecutive generations ....[S]ocial agencies of
an ordinary character, whose influences are
little suspected, are at this moment working
towards the degradation of human nature, and that
others are working towards its improvement. I
conclude that each generation has enormous power
over the natural gifts of those that follow, and
maintain that it is a duty we owe to humanity to
investigate the range of that power, and to
exercise it in a way that, without being unwise
towards ourselves, shall be most advantageous to
future inhabitants of the earth.^^
He drew these conclusions from studies on, "the Judges of
England from 1660 to 1868, the Statesmen of the time of
George III., and the Premiers during the last 100 years."^^
First published in 1869, his studies led to vigorous
debates on the importance of inheritance versus environment
as it related to genius and, by extension, creativity—
"Francis Galton, '"Hereditary
Genius: An Inquiry into
Laws and Consequences,"
(London: Watts & Co., 1950), 1.
"ibid., 2.
28
Its
debates that continue to this day.
Robert Albert and Mark
Runco summarized the contribution of the Enlightenment to
the concept of creativity as follows:
As tedious and tangential as they were at
times, the debates through the eighteenth century
nevertheless eventually came to four fundamental
acceptable distinctions, which were to become the
bedrock of our present-day ideas about
creativity: (a) Genius was divorced from the
supernatural; (b) genius, although exceptional,
was a potential in every individual; (c) talent
and genius were to be distinguished from one
another; and (d) their potential and exercise
depend on the political atmosphere of the time.^°
This was the beginning of the modern concept of creativity.
These discussions negated the contribution of supernatural
forces and began to differentiate between creativity and
skill.
The Modern View of Creativity
Rigorous scientific analyses to explain all phenomena
were characteristic of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the
phenomena of creativity were no exception.
The creation
of
a new word to describe the process symbolizes the
^°Robert S. Albert and Mark A. Runco, "A History of
Research on Creativity," in Handbook of Creativity,
ed.
Robert J. Sternberg (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 22.
29
significance of this major paradigmatic shift.
Scientific
investigations demanded a more thorough description of the
process and product of creative endeavors.
Investigators
needed to know exactly what they were studying and, before
they could advance a theory of creativity, they had to
clearly articulate the phenomena that the theory explained.
At the most, a thorough description here will guide
our analyses and discussions concerning creativity while,
at the very least, it will allow us to recognize it when we
see it. Although we may never disprove the existence of
divine intervention or other mysterious forces in
creativity, cognitive neuroscience, the precocious child of
the hard and soft mind sciences, yields a unifying theory.
Investigators have approached creativity by examining
the process, the product and the individuals engaged in the
process to create the product.
specifically to the process.
Creativity here refers
The product of creative work
is, at times, indistinguishable from the product of skill
and creative individuals invariably display considerable
skill in exhibiting their creativity.
30
stages
In 1926, Graham Wallas examined personal descriptions
of the creative process by individuals recognized for their
creativity.
From this, he identified four stages of the
creative process:
We can...take a single achievement of
thought—the making of a new generalization or
invention, or the poetical expression of a new
idea—and ask how it was brought about. We can
then roughly dissect out a continuous process,
with a beginning and a middle and an end of its
own. Helmholtz, for instance, the great German
physicist, speaking in 1891 at a banquet on his
seventieth birthday, described the way in which
his most important new thoughts had come to him.
He said that after previous investigation of the
problem "in all directions...happy ideas come
unexpectedly without effort, like an inspiration.
So far as I am concerned, they have never come to
me when my mind was fatigued, or when I was at my
working table....They came particularly readily
during the slow ascent of wooded hills on a sunny
day." Helmholtz here gives us three stages in
the formation of a new thought. The first in
time I shall call Preparation, the stage during
which the problem was "investigated...in all
directions"; the second is the stage during which
he was not consciously thinking about the
problem, which I shall call Incubation; the
third, consisting of the appearance of the "happy
idea" together with the psychological events
which immediately preceded and accompanied that
appearance, I shall call Illumination.
And I shall add a fourth stage, of
Verification, which Helmholtz does not here
mention. Henri Poincare, for instance, in the
book Science
and Method,...describes
in vivid
detail the successive stages of two of his great
mathematical discoveries. Both of them came to
him after a period of Incubation (due in one case
31
to his military service as a reservist, and in
the other case to a journey), during which no
conscious mathematical thinking was done, but, as
Poincare believed, much unconscious mental
exploration took place. In both cases Incubation
was preceded by a Preparation stage of hard,
conscious, systematic, and fruitless analysis of
the problem. In both cases the final idea came
to him "with the same characteristics of
conciseness, suddenness, and immediate
certainty."...Each was followed by a period of
Verification, in which both the validity of the
idea was tested, and the idea itself was reduced
to exact form. "It never happens," says
Poincare, in his description of the Verification
stage, "that unconscious work supplies ready-made
the result of a lengthy calculation in which we
have only to apply fixed rules....All that we can
hope from these inspirations, which are the fruit
of unconscious work, is to obtain points of
departure for such calculations. As for the
calculations themselves, they must be made in the
second period of conscious work which follows the
inspiration, and in which the results of the
inspiration are verified and the consequences
deduced. The rules of these calculations are
strict and complicated; they demand discipline,
attention, will, and consequently,
consciousness."...In the daily stream of thought
these four different stages constantly overlap
each other as we explore different problems. An
economist reading a Blue Book, a physiologist
watching an experiment, or a businessman going
through his morning's letters, may at the same
time be "incubating" on a problem which he
proposed to himself a few days ago, be
accumulating ]cnowledge in "Preparation" for a
second problem, and be "verifying" his
conclusions on a third problem. Even in
exploring the same problem, the mind may be
unconsciously incubating on one aspect of it,
while it is consciously employed in preparing for
or verifying another aspect. And it must always
be remembered that much very important thinking,
done for instance by a poet exploring his own
32
memories, or by a man trying to see clearly his
emotional relation to his country or his party,
resembles musical composition in that the stages
leading to success are not very easily fitted
into a "problem and solution" scheme. Yet, even
when success in thought means the creation of
something felt to be beautiful and true rather
that the solution of a prescribed problem, the
four stages of Preparation, Incubation,
Illumination, and the Verification of the final
result can generally be distinguished from each
other. ^^
Seventy-four years later, the contemporary novelist
Stephen King describes a strikingly similar scenario when
he developed writer's block:
I was writing this story near the end of the
so-called Energy Crisis in the 1970s,...I liked
my story. I li]ced my characters. And still
there came a point when I couldn't write any
longer because I didn't know what to write....
If I'd had two or even three hundred pages
of single-spaced manuscript instead of more than
five hundred, I think I would have abandoned The
Stand and gone on to something else—God knows I
had done it before. But five hundred pages was
too great an investment, both in time and in
creative energy; I found it impossible to let go.
Also, there was this little voice whispering to
me that the book was really good, and if I didn't
finish I would regret it forever. So instead of
moving on to another project, I started taking
long walks (a habit which would, two decades
later, get me in a lot of trouble). I took a
book or magazine on these walks but rarely opened
it, no matter how bored I felt looking at the
same old trees and the same old chattering, ill-
^^Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought
Brace and Company, 1926), 79.
33
(New York: Harcourt,
natured jays and squirrels. Boredom can be a
very good thing for someone in a creative jam. I
spent those walks being bored and thinking about
my gigantic boondoggle of a manuscript.
For weeks I got exactly nowhere in my
thinking—it all just seemed too hard, too
fucking complex. I had run out too many
plotlines and they were in danger of becoming
snarled. I circled the problem again and again,
beat my fists on it, knocked my head against
it...and then one day when I was thinking of
nothing much at all, the answer came to me. It
arrived whole and complete—gift-wrapped, you
could say—in a single brilliant flash. I ran
home and jotted it down on paper, the only time
I've done such a thing, because I was terrified
of forgetting....
At one moment I had none of this; at the
next I had all of it. If there is any one thing
I love about writing more than the rest, it's
that sudden flash of insight when you see how
everything connects....Whatever you call it, I
wrote my page or two of notes in a frenzy of
excitement and spent the next two or three days
turning my solution over in my mind, looking for
flaws and holes.^^
The stages of Preparation, Incubation, Illumination and
Verification are obvious in this description.
Graham Wallas was primarily concerned with the process
by which something creative is produced.
Other early
researchers attempt to characterize the creative person or
describe the creative product.
^^Stephen King, On Writing:
York: Scribner, 2000), 202.
A Memoir
34
of
the
Craft
(New
Originality and Utility
Donald MacKinnon developed the following definition of
creativity to facilitate his psychological studies:
We came easily to agreement that true
creativeness fulfills at least three conditions.
It involves a response or an idea that is novel
or at the very least statistically infrequent.
But novelty or originality of thought or action,
while a necessary aspect of creativity, is not
sufficient. If a response is to lay claim to
being a part of the creative process it must to
some extent be adaptive to, or of, reality. It
must serve to solve a problem, fit a situation,
or accomplish some recognizable goal. And,
thirdly, true creativeness involves a sustaining
of the original insight, an evaluation and
elaboration of it, a developing of it to the
full.
Creativity, from this point of view, is a
process extended in time and characterized by
originality, adaptiveness, and realization. It
may be brief, as in a musical improvisation, or
it may involve a considerable span of years as
was required for Darwin's creation of the theory
of evolution.•^^
Sarnoff A. Mednick, one of a few psychologists involved in
creativity research to start with a definite theory of the
creative process and follow it with empirical research,
developed a similar definition:
[W]e may proceed to define the creative
thinking process as the forming of associative
elements into new combinations which either meet
^^Donald W. MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative
Talent," American Psychologist
17 (July 1962): 485.
35
specified requirements or are in some way
useful....
Creative thinking as defined here is
distinguished from original thinking by the
imposition of requirements on originality. Thus,
7,363,474 is quite an original answer to the
problem 'How much is 12+12?' However, it is only
when conditions are such that this answer is
useful that we can also call it creative.^^
There is general agreement that the creative process
produces something original.
This originality is important
in two senses of the word. Although originality is
synonymous with novelty, and this is the usual meaning when
applied to creativity, it also implies precedence.
the first to produce something is creative.
Being
Being the
second is derivative.
MacKinnon and Mednick impose an important constraint
on this originality, however.
The product of creative
activity must be useful or of value.
In the Forward to
Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation,
Sir Cyril Burt
emphasizes the importance of value to originality as it
relates to creativity and in doing so suggests legal
implications of that value:
^^Sarnoff A. Mednick, "The Associative Basis of the
Creative Process," Psychological
Review 69, no. 3 (1962)
221.
36
At the moment, therefore, the views of
professional psychologists regarding 'the act of
creation' seem mainly to be in a state of
bewildered confusion; and there is a crying need
for an entirely fresh examination of the subject
from top to bottom. However, psychologists are
by no means the only people to maintain that
'creativity' (or whatever we like to term it) is
in some sense or other an 'individual property'.
In most civilized countries the importance
attached to its results has been recognized by
the laws of patent and of copyright. Both in war
and in peace rewards have been offered and
bestowed for what are known as 'original
inventions'. And the various legal arguments to
which these proprietary rights have led may
furnish some preliminary notion of what such
phrases are intended to convey- First, there
must be the basic idea or conception; secondly,
the idea must be embodied in concrete and
articulate form—a literary, musical, or dramatic
work, the specifications for a machine, a
manufacturing process, or a material product;
thirdly, the outcome as thus embodied must be
new; and finally—a point which, curiously
enough, is often forgotten in psychological and
educational discussions—it must have value; the
novelty must be a useful novelty.^^
Novelty versus Familiarity
Another observation concerning novelty in creativity
is that it must be recognizable.
This consideration
results in an interesting paradox. Albert Rothenberg and
Carl R. Hausman note that.
^^Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation,
with a forward by
Sir Cyril Burt (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964), 15.
37
Creativity is not only complicated and difficult
to study and understand, but it is radically
different from other phenomena that can be
explained in terms of cause. Basically, there is
an unavoidable paradox: creations, when they
appear, are in some way recognizable and familiar
to us and, therefore, they must have something in
common with antecedent experiences. However,
creations, in the most complete sense, are also
radically new and therefore, in some respect
unfamiliar....Creativity is both
undetermined
at the same time.^^
determined
and
Arthur Koestler recognized this paradox by stating, "the
more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems
afterward."^''
Heuristic versus Algorithmic
Teresa Amabile is a Harvard University professor of
business administration.
In true investigative fashion,
she combines abstract theory with scientific laboratory
experiments and survey projects.
She reiterates the
concept of what Burt calls "useful novelty" and adds
another characteristic to this developing definition.
She
states that, "A product or response will be judged as
creative to the extent that (a) it is both a novel and
^^Albert Rothenberg and Carl R. Hausman, eds., The
Creativity
Question
(Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press,
1976), 23.
^''Koestler, 120.
appropriate, useful, correct or valuable response to the
task at hand, and (b) the task is heuristic rather than
algorithmic."^^
Margaret Boden, a British researcher on
artificial intelligence systems, echoes the sentiment that
true creativity is not algorithmic.
"A merely novel idea
is one which can be described and/or produced by the same
set of generative rules as are other, familiar ideas.
A
genuinely original, or creative, idea is one which
cannot, "^^
Therefore, investigators suggest four characteristics
of creative endeavors.
The first is novelty or
originality.
The second is that the novelty must be useful
or relevant.
Amabile, Mednick, MacKinnon and Burt all
agree that the product of creative activities, to be
considered creative, must have value.
MacKinnon adds the
characteristic of realization, "a sustaining of the
original insight, an evaluation and elaboration of it," a
condition realized during Wallas' fourth stage of
•^^T. M. Amabile, Creativity
Social
Psychology
of Creativity
Inc., 1996), 35.
in
Context:
Update to The
(Boulder: Westview Press,
^^M. A. Boden, The Creative
Mind: Myths and
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990), 40.
39
Mechanisms
"Verification."
The final characteristic of creativity, as
suggested by Amabile and Boden, is spontaneity.
The
creative act appears "heuristic rather than algorithmic."
Subjectivity
In spite of these criteria and characteristics by
which investigators judge and recognize creativity,
however, Amabile concedes that,
A product or response is creative to the extent
that appropriate observers independently agree it
is creative. Appropriate observers are those
familiar with the domain in which the product was
created or the response articulated. Thus,
creativity can be regarded as the quality of
products or responses judged to be creative by
appropriate observers, and it can also be
regarded as the process by which something so
judged is produced.^°
This introduces what may be the most important, but
rarely discussed, characteristic of creativity.
Creativity, like beauty, "is in the eye of the beholder."^^
Creativity is participatory.
This may be obvious but it is
crucial to a discussion of the creative process. Le
^°Amabile, 33.
^^Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Molly Bawn (1878), quoted in
John Bartlett, Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations,
16th ed.,
568.
40
Corbusier, relates the following anecdote in Quand
Cathedrales
Etaient
les
Blanches:
In crossing the Franco-Belgian border, the
train passes through the mining country. What is
that, a mirage? Gigantic pyramids rising from
the plains are silhouetted against the sky all
the way to the horizon. I am speaking of my
first trip, made long ago. My emotion was
intense. These sublime monuments sunk into the
blue depths, on the left, on the right of the
train. They were simply the heaps of slag from
the coal mines, piles of gray-black schist,
wastes, which once enclosed veins of coal. Now,
I understand, the tracts supported on the side of
each slope carry the cars to the top of the
pyramid where they are dumped. The law of
landslides fixes forever the destiny of the
pyramids: an impeccable slope of forty-five
degrees. And thus I am near Cairo, in the land
of the Pharaohs.
No, not at all! My emotion, though still
strong, is becoming dulled. My admiration
dissolves. Those are not masterpieces, they are
not works of art. They are simply schist wastes.
And at once I measure the abyss which opens up
between the aspect of a thing and the quality of
spirit which has brought it into being. The
intention is what touches the deepest recesses of
our heart, the quality of the spirit brought to
the creation of the work of art. Here there is
nothing more than an industrial enterprise in
which no elevated intention is involved. For
good reason! And however fresh my understanding
may be, however innocent my heart may be, well, I
do not sense here the utterance of a man or of
men. It is only a fact and a law of physics.
The only emotion which remains is the rigor of
that law. Without anything further.^^
*^Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals
Were White: A
Journey
to the Country
of Timid People,
trans. Francis E. Hyslop
(New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947), 25.
41
Although Le Corbusier offers this anecdote to illustrate
the importance of intent in artistic endeavors, it is also
illustrative of the importance of the observer to
creativity.
If a tree representing creativity falls in a
deserted forest, it will truly make no sound.
Many researchers stress the importance of the creative
act.
Margaret Boden divides creativity into "historical
creativity (H-creative)" and "psychological creativity (Pcreative).""
Historical creativity is something new for
humanity and psychological creativity is only new to the
person creating it.
George Swede makes a similar point by
distinguishing between "universal creativity" and "personal
creativity."**
Dean Simonton uses "eminence" to judge the
relative importance of a creative event or individual.*^
Although the significance of the creation to society
may vary, the importance to the individual involved in the
process does not.
Something is creative if an individual
thinks it is. A theory of creativity should explain the
"Boden, 32.
**George Swede, Creativity:
A New Psychology
(Toronto,
Ontario: Wail & Emerson, Inc., 1993), 3.
*^Keith Dean Simonton, "Eminence," in Encyclopedia
Creativity,
vol. 1, 648.
42
of
creative process regardless of its recognized significance.
That investigators make these distinctions, however, is
further evidence of the importance of subjectivity to
creativity.
A final example of the importance of subjectivity to
creativity derives from the requirement that the product of
the creative process be useful.
Ascribing value to a
product is a purely subjective activity.
Mednick states,
"There are many original ideas expressed in institutions
for the mentally ill and mentally retarded; few of these
are likely to be creative."*^
This, of course, fails to
consider that the idea may be useful to the mentally ill or
mentally retarded individual expressing the idea.
The Creative Personality
It is important to emphasize that the creative process
is a biological process.
Although some higher animals use
primitive tools and rudimentary problem-solving skills to
exhibit what appears to be creative activity under a broad
application of the term, only humans exhibit true
creativity in the context of this thesis.
'Mednick, 221
43
It is therefore
instructive to thoroughly examine the personality
characteristics of the creative individual.
A comparison of Donald MacKinnon's psychological
profiles derived from the study of "creative" American
architects in the 1950s with Ludwig van Beethoven's
personality and creativeness as defined by Barry Cooper in
Beethoven and the
Creative
Process
and other sources serves
to illustrate the universality of the observations
concerning creative individuals.
Beethoven is an appropriate example for at least two
reasons.
First, he is unquestionably creative.
Second,
and more practical, just as extensive documentation exists
concerning creative architects, Beethoven left an unusual
record of his creative process and personality in the form
of musical sketchbooks and conversation books.
As noted previously, Donald MacKinnon began a series
of experiments to define creativity by analyzing the
psychological profiles of creative individuals in the late
1950s.
Although he considered men and women from many
professions, he felt architects best exemplified the
characteristics of creative people.
44
"In what other
profession can one expect better to observe the
multifarious expressions of creativity?"*^
MacKinnon subjected forty "creative" architects to an
extensive battery of psychological tests. His scientific
methods were rigorous and included control groups of what
he considered "less-creative" and "non-creative"
architects.
He first presented his conclusions in
Copenhagen in August of 1961.
One hundred and fifty years before MacKinnon's
presentation in Denmark, Ludwig van Beethoven was composing
in Austria.
Beethoven, this shortish, leonine man with
his unruly hair, blemished skin, brilliant eyes,
immaculate linen and shabby clothes, brusque,
abrasive yet utterly charming when he wished, was
beloved by the aristocracy and even had Archduke
Rudolf as his pupil, friend and protector. He was
then undoubtedly the most eminent composer of
Vienna, possibly of Europe and at the peak of his
48
career.
MacKinnon found that creative architects have a good
opinion of themselves.
They stress their "inventiveness.
*''MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,'
486.
*^Herbert Bower, "Beethoven's Creative Illness,"
Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
23 (1989)
111.
45
independence, and individuality, their enthusiasm,
determination, and industry."*^
The same was true for
Beethoven. As Philip Barford states in The
Reader,
Beethoven
"Beethoven was a genius,..with his own view of
himself enlarged by solid convictions of his own
worth...."^° Beethoven himself claimed, "There is hardly any
treatise which could be too learned for me."^^ Beethoven's
"desire to achieve greatness or even immortality through
his compositions"^^ reflects his determination and industry,
or, as Beethoven again stated, "My one aim has been to
master the art of music. "^^
But MacKinnon discovered that creativity was not
without its price.
His creative individuals consistently
*^acKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent ,
487.
^°Philip Barford, "Beethoven as Man and Artist," in The
Beethoven Reader, ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971), 22.
^^Ibid.
^^Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 19.
53
Ibid., 20.
46
Process
scored higher on psychological tests designed to measure
psychopathology.^*
As for Beethoven, Barford observes,
Beethoven was...neurotic without a doubt,
unstable, oscillating between moody introspection
and depression on the one hand and backslapping
exaltation and enthusiasm on the other, with his
own view of himself...tainted by excursions into
self-pity.^^
In addition, Herbert Bower, an Australian psychiatrist,
convincingly argues that Beethoven suffered a clinical
psychiatric illness between 1815 and 1820 manifested by
depression, neurosis, psychosomatic illness and overt
psychosis. ^^
Another psychological trait of MacKinnon's male
creative architects resulted in high scores on femininity
scales.
As MacKinnon explains.
The more creative a person is the more he reveals
an openness to his own feelings and emotions, a
sensitive intellect and understanding selfawareness, and wide-ranging interests including
many which in the American culture are thought of
as feminine.^^
^*MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
488.
55
Barford, 22.
^^Bower, 115.
^^MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
488.
47
In contrast, Barford describes Beethoven's personality as
"rough, powerful, emotional, overreactive, gross,
uninhibited and crude....He was by instinct earthy,
elemental and untamed."^^
Or, as Goethe wrote after meeting
Beethoven at Teplitz,
His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an
utterly untamed personality, who is not
altogether in the wrong in holding the world to
be detestable but surely does not make it any the
more enjoyable either for himself or others by
his attitude."^^
Surprisingly, however, Barford also noted Beethoven' s
feminine side.
In general, it is the female of the species
and the feminine in man who first respond to the
impact of a powerful artistic nature, and it is
thus easier for an artist to communicate with
women or artistically sensitive men than with
those whose energies revolve around material
possessions and ambitions. Possibly Beethoven
sensed this, because he showed women a gentler
side of his nature.^°
Another of MacKinnon's findings is that his subjects
prefer complex and asymmetrical patterns.
He states.
They appear to be challenged by disordered
multiplicity which arouses in them a strong need
which in them is serviced by a superior capacity
^^Barford, 29.
= ^Ibid.
^°Ibid., 30.
48
to achieve the most difficult and far-reaching
ordering of the richness they are willing to
experience. ^-^
In Beethoven and the
Creative
Process,
Barry Cooper states:
"Beethoven does sometimes seem to have deliberately created
composing difficulties along the lines of musical puzzles
in order to try and solve them."^^
Cooper also notes.
For Beethoven struggles and difficulties were
obstacles not to be avoided but welcomed as a
means of reaching the heights. Even in everyday
life he found delight in tackling difficult
challenges. ®^
MacKinnon expands this notion of creative perception
to include what he calls intuitive perception or intuition,
"an indirect perception of the deeper meanings and
possibilities inherent in things and situations."^*
Beethoven certainly possessed this attribute.
Like other creative geniuses he apprehended
the form in the process, the fact in the flow,
the shape in the series. And to do this he had
to have that quality of mind which sees the
^•^MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,'
489.
^^Cooper, 25.
"ibid, 21.
^*MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
489.
49
metaphysical wholeness above and yet through
every functional detail.®^
MacKinnon found an additional aesthetic need in
creative architects.
"For the truly creative person it is
not sufficient that problems be solved, there is the
further demand that the solutions be elegant.
both truth and beauty."^®
He seeks
There is evidence that Beethoven
harbored the same compulsion.
Cooper notes that,
[H]e sought to create something that was
beautiful and artistic yet novel and surprising.
This aesthetic goal emerges, rather unexpectedly,
in an aside to his friend Ferdinand Ries, whom he
asks to give his wife a surprise; he adds,
'Between ourselves the best thing of all is a
combination of the surprising and the
beautiful!'^'
Finally, Cooper's descriptions of Beethoven reinforce
MacKinnon's definition of creativity-
As MacKinnon states
that creativeness "involves a response or an idea that is
novel,"^^ Cooper writes of Beethoven:
His desire to surprise his listeners also
went hand in hand with his belief that his art
65,
Barford, 28.
^^acKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
490.
67
Cooper, 22,
^^MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
485.
50
should always be moving forward: 'Art demands of
us that we shall not stand still,' he is reported
to have said to Karl Holz, and his concern for
the progress of art was expressed on other
occasions too. Progress implied experiment for
him and surprise for his listeners, and this
suited him well since he was aware from quite an
early age that his music contained certain
'peculiarities of style' which made it 'not
entirely commonplace'. He clung tenaciously to
this independence of style, telling George
Thomson on one occasion that he was prepared to
write easy pieces only if this did not mean his
abandoning the elevation and originality of style
that had been so advantageous to him. But
originality was insufficient unless it was
continually developing, and Beethoven on several
occasions expressed concern for novelty in his
69
music.
When MacKinnon alleges that the creative process "must to
some extent be adaptive to, or of, reality,"^° Cooper notes
that.
This observation is not only the heart of
Beethoven's aesthetic ideals, but also highlights
a major deficiency of many lesser composers, of
whom some have created works of great beauty
which are nevertheless too predictable, while
others have composed works which are highly
original but too unpleasant and inartistic.
Beethoven, by contrast, always managed to keep
within the bounds of artistic sense and beauty,
maintaining a certain inner proportion and logic
even in his most original creations, and this
ability to combine the surprising and the
^^Cooper, 23.
•^"MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
485.
51
beautiful was an important element contributing
to his greatness as a composer.''^
Finally, when MacKinnon contends, "true creativeness
involves a sustaining of the original insight, an
evaluation and elaboration of it, a developing of it to the
full,"^^ Cooper, describing Beethoven's work ethic, states:
In addition, when the composing was done, he
often expended enormous energy on simply checking
copies that were to be sent to publishers or
providing them with correction lists when
inaccurate editions had been printed, despite the
fact that he found checking far less enjoyable
than composing. Even after completion and
performance of a work, extensive labour was
sometimes necessary for making revisions.^^
The relationship of MacKinnon's work to Beethoven's
personality is noteworthy since it suggests that the
psychological attributes of creative individuals as defined
by MacKinnon are independent of time and culture.
It is
remarkable that the psychological profile of an early 19th
century German composer so closely fits the profiles of a
group of 20th century American architects.
71
In addition.
Cooper, 22.
'^^MacKinnon, "The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,
485.
73
Cooper, 21.
52
since Beethoven's creativity is indisputable, this close
correlation further validates MacKinnon's research.
What a Theory of Creativity Should Do
Any theory of creativity should explain, or at least
not contradict, these observations.
A theory of creativity
should explain the process by which we create something
that is novel and useful.
It should resolve the paradox of
novelty and familiarity and it should explain why the
stages of Preparation, Incubation, Illumination and
Verification appear integral to the creative process.
It
should also address the concept of heuristic problem
solving as opposed to algorithmic thinking as it relates to
creativity.
Finally, it should suggest why certain
personality traits are common to creative individuals.
This theory, based on neurophysiologic principals, does
exactly that.
The desire for a deeper understanding of creativity
has inspired an enormous amount of research.
Mark Runco
and Steven Pritzker, in the Preface to the two-volume
Encyclopedia
of
Creativity,
estimate that over 10,000
research articles on creativity have appeared in journals
and periodicals since 1960 and that over 600 books about
53
creativity were published in the 1990s.'^* This thesis will
attempt to distill a portion of this volume of information
into a coherent and inclusive theory of creativity.
^*Mark A. Runco and Steven R. Pritzker, "Preface,
Encyclopedia
of Creativity,
vol. 1, xv.
54
CHAPTER III
THE THEORY
The theory is simple.
of ordinary brain function.
Creativity is the consequence
In fact, this theory holds
that creativity is the only function of the brain.
The
human cerebral cortex is exquisitely adept at storing data
and creating associations between the stored data.
Combining previously remote elements creates the original
and novel associations required for creative thinking.
These elements arise from experience and learning.
A
stimulus, either internal or external, excites existing
neural networks prompting new associations.
If these
associations are useful and acted upon, it is creative.
This is all that is necessary to explain creativity.
Creativity does not require a divine spark or the
recruitment of mystical phenomena.
Juxtaposing the nature
of creative thought with recognized principles of the
anatomy and physiology of the cerebral cortex yields a
remarkably simple and coherent system to solve this mystery
of human intellectual endeavor.
The mind creates our world as we perceive it and as we
understand it.
In 1818, the German philosopher Arthur
55
Schopenhauer began his philosophical treatise. The World as
Will
and Idea,
with the following observation:
"The world is my idea:"—this is a truth
which holds good for everything that lives and
knows, though man alone can bring it into
reflective and abstract consciousness. If he
really does this, he has attained to
philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and
certain to him that what he knows is not a sun
and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a
hand that feels an earth: that the world which
surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e.,
only
in relation to something else, the consciousness,
which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a
priori,
it is this: for it is the expression of
the most general form which is more general than
time, or space, or causality, for they all
presuppose it; and each of these, which we have
seen to be just so many modes of the principle of
sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular
class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object
and subject is the common form of all these
classes, is that form under which alone any idea
of whatever kind it may be, abstract or
intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and
thinkable. No truth therefore is more certain,
more independent of all others, and less in need
of proof than this, that all that exists for
knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is
only object in relation to subject, perception of
a perceiver, in a word, idea. This is obviously
true of the past and the future, as well as of
the present, of what is farthest off, as of what
is near; for it is true of time and space
themselves, in which alone these distinctions
arise. All that in any way belongs or can belong
to the world is inevitably thus conditioned
through the subject, and exists only for the
subject. The world is idea.'^^
•^^Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, 4th ed.
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trtibner & Co. Ltd., 1986), 3.
56
The only function of the mind is to create. If
everything we know, believe and understand is somehow
contained in networks of connected nerve cells, and if
creativity is simply, "the discovery of an analogy between
two or more ideas or images previously thought to be
unrelated,"^^ describing the functioning of the brain on the
cellular level reveals the mystery of creativity.
To construct this theory, a review of the current
beliefs concerning the structure and function of the
cerebral cortex will be presented.
From this, several
principles or characteristics suggested by this review will
be developed.
The modern concept of creativity will then
be addressed and elaborated on using these principles.
Finally, artistic creativity with an emphasis on
architectural creativity as it relates to architectural
design and education will be discussed.
''^artindale, Colin, "Biological Basis of Creativity," in
Handbook of Creativity,
148.
57
CHAPTER IV
BRAIN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
Structure
The brain, in general terms, refers to the neural
tissue enclosed by the skull.
It consists of the brain
stem, the limbic system and the neocortex.
The brain stem
is the most primitive region and is present in most
animals.
It is primarily responsible for the regulatory
and reflex responses of the organism.
The limbic system is
less primitive and is involved primarily in emotions,
behavior and motivation.
Most vertebrates have a limbic
system, or an analogous region, in their brain.
In lower
animals, as well as man, it is thought responsible for
instincts.
The most advanced portion of the brain is the
cerebral cortex or neocortex.
Only mammals have a
neocortex and it is proportionally larger in man than in
other mammals.
The cerebral cortex is the area of the
brain responsible for creativity.
The neocortex is comprised of two sheets of layered
neural tissue situated on either side of the head, usually
referred to as the right and left hemispheres.
On the
cellular level, the neocortex is composed exclusively of
58
nerve cells and the glial cells that support them.
Each
nerve cell, or neuron, consists of multiple dendrites, a
body and a single axon.
Dendrites receive inputs from
other nerve cells or sensory organs and the axon sends
information out to adjacent neurons or other end organs.
The neurons form rich interconnections locally, via
pyramidal cells and interneurons, and remotely, via groups
of axons known as pathways or paths.
Nearly every
pyramidal cell sends an axon into the deeper layers of the
neocortex, which then reenters the neocortex at some
distant location in the same hemisphere (corticocortical
fibers) or the opposite hemisphere (commissural fibers).
The corpus callosum is the collection of axons connecting,
and allowing communication between, the right and left
hemispheres.
The neurons of the cerebral cortex process information
and different areas of the neocortex are responsible for
processing different kinds of information.
An enormous
body of literature exists regarding the precise areas of
the brain responsible for processing these various types of
information.
This is a direct result of the instruments
used to measure human brain anatomy and function.
One
powerful instrument is clinical neurology, the analysis of
59
what happens when certain areas of the brain are missing or
malfunctioning.
Although fascinating and at times bizarre,
it adds little to this neurophysiologic theory of
creativity.
What is important to this theory is the
interaction of the neurons and not the areas where these
interactions occur.
Function
The nerve cell membrane contains active mechanisms
that create electrical potential differences by unbalancing
the concentration of ions outside and inside the cell.
Describing a biological mechanism as "active" means that it
requires energy to occur and continue. Neurons create
energy by metabolizing glucose.
The positron emission
tomography (PET) scanner, another useful tool to localize
brain activity, depends on the metabolism of glucose to
create its image.
Depolarization of the cell membrane occurs when a
stimulus allows the ions to re-equilibrate across the
membrane.
This results in the realization of the
electrical potential created by the unbalanced
concentration of ions.
When one area of the membrane
becomes depolarized, it causes adjacent areas on the
60
membrane to depolarize.
The rapid movement of ions across
the membrane to establish equilibrium generates an
electrical impulse that propagates along the axon of the
nerve cell.
After a refractory period, the membrane
reestablishes the potential difference by again unbalancing
the concentration of ions across the cell membrane. An
electroencephalograph (EEG) records this electrical
activity and represents a third tool to measure brain
function.
Neurons do not touch.
There is a gap, or synapse,
between adjacent nerve cells. An electrical impulse in a
presynaptic neuron causes it to release chemicals into the
synaptic space.
These chemicals, neurotransmitters, either
facilitate or inhibit depolarization of the postsynaptic
neuron.
Neurotransmitters act on the cell membrane of the
postsynaptic neuron by binding with protein receptors in
the membrane.
This binding is extremely specific.
Multiple neurons synapse on the dendrites of a single
neuron.
This single postsynaptic neuron then becomes one
of many presynaptic neurons influencing yet another neuron.
The relative contributions of excitatory and inhibitory
presynaptic neurons determine whether postsynaptic neurons
will fire.
This proceeds in only one direction, a
61
postsynaptic neuron cannot directly influence a presynaptic
neuron.
In the neocortex, most of the synapses come from
axons originating locally and running within it. Although
most of these synapses are excitatory, suggesting a
capacity for self-excitatory modes of behavior, other
presynaptic neurons are inhibitory.
This much of neuronal anatomy and physiology is widely
accepted as fact.^^ However, even the most basic fact, that
the brain is composed of individual and separate cells, is
a surprisingly recent concept.
It also illustrates a
central theme of this essay, that creative thought involves
connecting or associating known facts and ideas.
Facts and
ideas generally well accepted by individuals in their area
of expertise.
Until the early 1900s, the brain was
believed to be a syncytium, a continuous mass of tissue
sharing a common cytoplasm.
In 1906, Santiago Ramon Cajal
shared a Nobel Prize for showing that neurons are discreet
entities.
He shared the prize with Camillo Golgi. Golgi
developed the stain that allowed the visualization of
^^In recognition of this acceptance, the Swedish
pharmacologist Arvid Carlsson shared the 2000 Nobel Prize
in medicine with two Americans, Paul Greengard and Eric
Kandel, for their work on the neurotransmitter dopamine.
62
individual neurons while Cajal used the stain to prove that
neurons were individual units.
Neuroscience:
The Biology
As described in
Cognitive
of the Mind:
[T]he scene at the Nobel Prize ceremony in
Stockholm was ugly. Golgi came off as a huge
egotist, set in his ways, and unwilling to
acknowledge Cajal's discoveries, which by that
time had established the neuron doctrine. Both
were using the same stain, both were using the
same microscopes, both were studying the same
tissue. One saw the answer, one did not. Golgi
continued to see his beloved syncytium of neurons
as a single unit, whereas Cajal saw each neuron
as the independent unit it has proved to be.^^
This serves as an of introduction to today's more
controversial, or at least less well understood, aspects of
brain function.
Aspects crucial to this theory of
creativity.
Memory
For creativity to occur there must be memory.
Simply
stated, memory is the storage and retrieval of information,
Information in this context is everything we know.
In
neurophysiological terms, memory is described as, "the
result of changes in the strength of synaptic influences
''^Michael S. Gazzaniga, Robert B. Ivry and George R.
Mangun, eds.. Cognitive
Mind
Neuroscience:
The Biology
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 11.
63
of
the
among neurons in neuronal networks that process and store
information. "''^
Storage of Information
To store information, the system must demonstrate
plasticity.
It is essential for the brain to create new
neural connections just as it is important for it to break
inappropriate connections.
It seems intuitive, therefore,
that some physical change has to occur at the cellular
level when experiences are stored.
Although the exact
neurophysiological processes responsible for memory and
learning are still unknown, investigators are vigorously
pursuing the precise mechanism by which this occurs.^°
"ibid., 283.
®°N. Toni, P. A. Buchs, I. Nikonenko, C. R. Bron and D.
Muller, "LTP promotes formation of multiple spine synapses
between a single axon terminal and a dendrite," Nature 402
(25 November 1999): 421; H. L. Atwood and J. M. Wojtowicz,
"Silent synapses in neural plasticity: current evidence,"
Learning
and Memory 6, no. 6 (November-December 1999) : 542;
V. Sourdet and D. Debanne, "The role of dendritic filtering
in associative long-term synaptic plasticity," Learning
and
Memory 6, no. 5 (September-October 1999),:422; S. M. Aamodt
and M Constantine-Paton, "The role of neural activity in
synaptic development and its implications for adult brain
function," Advances
in Neurology
79 (1999): 133; S. Trojan
and J. Pokorny, "Theoretical aspects of neuroplasticity,"
Physiological
Research
48, no. 2 (1999): 87; and I. B.
Black, "Trophic regulation of synaptic plasticity,"
Journal
of Neurobiology
41, no. 1 (October 1999): 108.
64
In 1949, the Canadian psychologist Donald 0. Hebb
published The Organization
of Behavior
wherein he developed
one of the first comprehensive theories of how brain
activity might produce various complex psychological
phenomena.
In it, he hypothesized what has become known as
Hebb's Law:
Let us assume then that the persistence or
repetition of a reverberatory activity (or
"trace") tends to induce lasting cellular changes
that add to its stability. The assumption can be
precisely stated as follows: When an axon of cell
A is near enough to excite a cell B and
repeatedly
and persistently
takes part in
firing
i t , some growth process or metabolic change takes
place in one or both cells such that A's
efficacy,
as one of the cells firing B, is
increased.^'''
Restated, a synapse is strengthened if presynaptic activity
occurs when the postsynaptic neuron is active.
This means
that the presynaptic neuron will excite the postsynaptic
neuron more easily on subsequent firings.
From this, the
Hebbian, or correlational, rule for cellular learning
evolved and it has subsequently been used in many studies
of synaptic plasticity.
It is also the underlying
principle of artificial intelligence programs.
^•"^D. 0. Hebb, The Organization
Wiley & Sons, 1949), 62.
65
of Behavior
(New York: John
It is interesting to note that Hebb hypothesized in
1949 that this process must occur, based on clinical case
studies, scientific experiments and logical arguments from
his own observations of daily life.
It was not until 1973,
however, that investigators agreed that the hypothesis was
confirmed in a biological system.
It was then that Bliss
and L0mo published their subsequently oft-cited work
entitled, "Long-lasting potentiation of synaptic
transmission in the dentate area of the anaesthetized
rabbit following stimulation of the perforant path." This
is one of the first demonstrations of long-term
potentiation (LPT), a rudimentary form of memory.
Bliss
and L0mo concluded:
Our experiments show that there exists at
least one group of synapses in the hippocampus
whose efficiency is influenced by activity which
may have occurred several hours previously—a
time scale long enough to be potentially useful
for information storage. Whether or not the
intact animal makes use in real life of a
property, which has been revealed by synchronous,
repetitive volleys to a population of fibres the
normal rate and pattern of activity along which
are unknown, is another matter.
^^T. V. P. Bliss and T. L0mo, "Long-lasting potentiation
of synaptic transmission in the dentate area of the
anaesthetized rabbit following stimulation of the perforant
path," The Journal of Physiology
232 (1973): 355.
66
Hebb's Law allows for the association of neural events in
combinations of interconnected neurons, called cell
assemblies by Hebb, which has become an attractive
mechanism to explain the storage of information.
Retrieval of Information
Unfortunately, the neurophysiological mechanism
responsible for the storage of a memory is only half the
story.
Just as it is that a memory, an engram, has to be
stored somewhere; it also has to be retrievable.
Arguably,
the retrieval mechanism may be more important than the
storage process.
Endel Tulving believes, "A physical
engram exists, but it cannot be identified as an engram by
any physical means, it can be identified only through its
biological-physical action, through the retrieval
process."^^
He goes on to offer the following analogy:
Wind is the movement of air molecules. To
create something that we identify as wind, two
necessary conditions must be satisfied: (1) the
presence of the air molecules in sufficient
quantity and density, and (2) the operation of
some source of energy that sets the molecules in
more-or-less coordinated motion of sufficient
velocity. Now think of an analogy with memory:
(1) the blowing wind is the brain activity that
^^Gazzaniga, Conversations
in the Cognitive
98.
67
Neurosciences,
subserves the experience of remembering, (2) the
air molecules constitute the physical substrate
of the activity, the engram, and (3) the
energizing force is the retrieval cue that
"activates" or "ecphorizes" the engram. Thus,
wind is particles and energy; remembering is
engram and retrieval. In this analogy, the
relation between the experience of remembering
and the engram is the same as the relation
between the wind and air molecules: the second
member of each pair is a necessary condition of
the first.
Now what would you think of a sage who
decides to identify the physical substrate, the
engram, of the wind, and starts searching for it,
assuming it to be a special entity of some kind,
an entity different from other like entities that
do not produce wind? Since no specifically
identifiable engram in fact exists—the air
molecules that can be set in motion do not differ
from those that never are set in motion our sage
is going to be spending a lot of time on his
chosen problem, unaware that the problem is
created by his ownself, by his initial
presupposition, rather than by nature.
The brain scientist who is looking for a
special change at the synapse, one that results
from some experience, one that represents or
stands for memory, and one that is different from
the synaptic activity that subserves other kinds
of behavior or cognition, or other kinds of
physiological activity altogether, takes the risk
of being terribly frustrated because, by looking
for something that in fact does not exist
independently of something else, he is doomed to
failure, regardless of how hard he tries and how
long he persists. He will have become a victim
of the second of the two kinds of obstacles that
lie in the path of all explorers of nature—those
placed there by nature and those placed there by
man.«*
^*Ibid., 99,
68
It should be noted that this theory does not assume
that the connections responsible for creativity are any
"different from the synaptic activity that subserves other
kinds of behavior or cognition, or other kinds of
physiological activity altogether."
In fact, a major
principle of this theory is that normal neuronal
associations, through synapses that are no different from
any other synapses, can adequately explain the creative
process.
Luckily, the details of how the brain forms
associative neural connections and how information is
stored and retrieved are not crucial to this discussion.
What is important is the fact that these connections occur
and the characteristics they exhibit.
For this, we must
make several assumptions concerning how these cell
associations work to result in what occurs when someone is
creative.
Albert Einstein, in his inaugural address before the
Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1914, delivered the
following comments on the nature of theories:
The theorist's method involves his using as
his foundation general postulates or "principles"
from which he can deduce conclusions. His work
thus falls into two parts. He must first
discover his principles and then draw the
69
conclusions which follow from them. For the
second of these tasks he receives an admirable
equipment at school. If, therefore, the first of
his problems has already been solved for some
field or for a complex of related phenomena, he
is certain of success, provided his industry and
intelligence are adequate. The first of these
tasks, namely, that of establishing the
principles which are to serve as the starting
point of his deduction, is of an entirely
different nature. Here there is no method
capable of being learned and systematically
applied so that it leads to the goal. The
scientist has to worm these general principles
out of nature by perceiving in comprehensive
complexes of empirical facts certain general
features which permit of precise formulation.
Once this formulation is successfully
accomplished, inference follows on inference,
often revealing unforeseen relations which extend
far beyond the province of the reality from which
the principles were drawn. But as long as no
principles are found on which to base the
deduction, the individual empirical fact is of no
use to the theorist; indeed he cannot even do
anything with isolated general laws abstracted
from experience. He will remain helpless in the
face of separate results of empirical research,
until principles which he can make the basis of
deductive reasoning have revealed themselves to
him.
The following general principles regarding neurons and
neuronal associations have been "worm[ed]...out of nature
by perceiving in comprehensive complexes of empirical facts
certain general features which permit of precise
^^Albert Einstein, Tdeas and Opinions,
ed. Carl Seelig,
trans. Sonja Bargmann (New York: Random House, 1954) 221.
70
formulation."
And if this formulation "is successfully
accomplished, inference [will follow] on inference,...
revealing unforeseen relations which extend far beyond the
province of the reality from which the principles were
drawn."
Neural Nests
Definition
The interplay of neurons comprising the cerebral
cortex, mediated by neurotransmitters, create collections
that will herein be called neural nests. A nest is, "a
structure that birds and other animals such as mice build
to shelter themselves and their young, using available
natural materials such as grass, twigs, and mud."^^
In like fashion, a neural nest is comprised of
disparate neural connections in the brain that an
individual collects to form a memory, a concept, an idea or
any other mental construct.
Philosophically and
psychologically, we create our neural nests and live within
them.
86
When used as a transitive verb, 'to nest' means, "to
Encarta
World English
Dictionary,
71
s.v. "nest.
put one thing inside another or group things together into
a single unit."®^
This, of course, is the essence of an
associative theory of creativity.
Making a nest involves making connections between
materials, the joining of individual elements to create a
whole.
Architecture also involves making connections. But
not just the physical connections between construction
materials, it also involves making connections between
ideas and constructed spaces.
This theory of creativity
relies on the connections between individual neurons as
well as connections between neuronal nests to explain the
creative process.
What we see on a microscopic level
informs what we observe on a larger scale and this,
although not a proof, is certainly intuitively comforting.
As attributed to a 4000 year-old Upanishad,
As is the human body.
So is the cosmic body.
As is the human mind.
So is the cosmic mind
As is the microcosm.
So is the macrocosm.
As is the atom.
So is the universe.^^
s'ibid.
^^The Upanishads,
as quoted in As Above,
So Below,
Ronald
S. Miller (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1992), xi.
72
The brain stores information in neural nests.
Information means facts, ideas, concepts, emotions—
everything we see, feel, smell, hear and taste as well as
everything we know, conceive and understand.
Smaller
networks connect to form larger associations linking new
information to old.
Sensations and ideas must be stored in
neural nests if, for no other reason, there is nothing else
in the neocortex to serve this function.
Where these nests reside in the brain is of interest
to many-
It is reasonable to assume that neural nests
responsible for similar functions and ideas would be in
close proximity resulting in more dendrites and more
neurotransmitters in regions of the brain responsible for
these associations.
Indeed, postmortem examination of
Albert Einstein's brain revealed that his posterior
parietal lobes, the region of the brain thought responsible
for visuospatial intelligence, were 15% thicker than
controls .^^
^^Sandra F. Witelson, Debra L. Kigar, and Thomas Harvey,
"The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein," The Lancet
353
(19 June 1999): 2151.
73
Properties
In an attempt to mimic brain function, programmers
have designed computer systems, called neural networks, by
borrowing heavily on what is known of neuronal function.
A
neural network is,
[A] type of artificial-intelligence system
modeled after neurons (nerve cells) in a
biological nervous system and intended to
simulate the way in which the brain processes
information, learns, and remembers. A neural
network is designed as an interconnected system
of processing elements, each with a limited
number of inputs and an output. These processing
elements are able to "learn" by receiving
weighted inputs that, with adjustment, time, and
repetition, can be made to produce appropriate
outputs. ^°
Programmers endow these neural networks with several
properties believed to be common to neurons and cell
assemblies.
Like biological neurons, a processing element
has multiple and variable inputs but only limited outputs.
The resulting assembly is then "tuned" in accordance with
Hebb's Law.
Circuitry based on these principles gives rise
to remarkable characteristics.
First, neural networks store information over many
connections.
^°Microsoft
This allows the storage to be distributed and
Press Computer and Internet
Dictionary,
s. v.
"neural network" [CD-ROM] (Redmond: Microsoft Press, 2000)
74
robust, meaning that it will not be lost if a few
connections are added or removed.
A similar process likely
exists in neural nests. Researchers have long observed
that damage to some portions of the brain results in no
discernable problems to the individual.
Either the
information stored in that portion of the brain is
distributed, stored in more than one place and over many
synapses, or adequate tools do not exist to measure the
deficiency.
Second, a single processing element can be involved
in storing multiple distinct pieces of information.
information is said to be superimposed.
The
This property may
exist in biological systems although it is possible to
approximate the same result biologically by repeating
distinct associations.
The human brain has infinitely more
synapses than a computer has processing elements.
Third, neural networks form connections through a
process called completion.
If an interconnected assembly
of processing elements represents an event, stimulation of
one part of the assembly can recreate the entire event.
Given only a portion of an input as a hint or a clue, the
neural network can produce a complete output.
75
It is
abundantly clear that biological nests possess this
propertyMarcel Proust writes in Remembrance
of
Things
Past:
Many years had elapsed during which nothing
of Combray, save what was comprised in the
theatre and the drama of my going to bed there,
had any existence for me, when one day in winter,
as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was
cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not
ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then,
for no particular reason, changed my mind. She
sent out for one of those short, plump little
cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as
though they had been moulded in the fluted
scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon,
mechanically, weary after a dull day with the
prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my
lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked
a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm
liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate
than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I
stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes
that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure
had invaded by senses, but individual, detached,
with no suggestion of its origin. And at once
the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent
to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity
illusory—this new sensation having had on me the
effect which love has of filling me with a
precious essence; or rather this essence was not
in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel
mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it
have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was
conscious that it was connected with the taste of
tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended
those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same
nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did
it signify? How could I seize upon and define
it?. . .
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste
was that of the little crumb of madeleine which
on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those
76
mornings I did not go out before church-time),
when I went to say good day to her in her
bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping
it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower
tea....
And once I had recognized the taste of the
crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of
lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me
(although I did not yet know and must long
postpone the discovery of why this memory made me
so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the
street, where her room was, rose up like the
scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the
little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which
had been built out behind it for my parents (the
isolated panel which until that moment had been
all that I could see); and with the house the
town, from morning to night and in all weathers,
the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the
streets along which I used to run errands, the
country roads we took when it was fine. And just
as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a
porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it
little crumbs of paper which until then are
without character or form, but, the moment they
become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on
colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or
houses or people, permanent and recognizable, so
in that moment all the flowers in our garden and
in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the
Vivonne and the good folk of the village and
their little dwellings and the parish church and
the whole of Combray and of its surroundings,
taking their proper shapes and growing solid,
sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from
my cup of tea.^""^
This is, of course, but one of many examples of completion.
Neural nests are exhibiting the property of completion when
^^Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, trans. C. K.
Scott Moncrieff (New York: Random House, 1934), 34.
77
music evokes emotions.
Umberto Eco recognizes and expounds
on the literary use of this process in a collection of
lectures entitled Six
Walks in a Fictional
Wood.
Fourth, neural networks exhibit the property of
classification.
Given an input related to several of its
associations, the network produces an output that combines
many of the common features of its normal outputs. This
must occur in neural nests.
Current
Developments,
David F. Marks, in
Imagery:
describes this process as it relates
to learning and imagery:
Learning represents the associating together
of sensory inputs with one another, with
schemata, activities, and affect, while imagery
represents the activity of neural networks when
excited by associated sensory processes or
schemata....
Memory, imagination, hypnagogic imagery and
even eidetic imagery all result from triggering
the relevant associative schemata. ^^
This process, classification, is the primary mechanism by
which computers mimic creativity-
However, as
sophisticated as these computer systems have become, they
can only exhibit a rough approximation of what might be
^^David F. Marks, "On the Relationship between Imagery,
Body, and Mind," in Imagery: Current Developments,
ed.
Peter J. Hampson, David Marks, and John T. E. Richardson
(New York: Routhledge, 1990), 23.
78
recognized as creative.
True creativity appears to require
properties in addition to these four. Moreover, since
creativity is a biological process, it is likely that the
process shares characteristics with other biological
systems and, to this end, four biological principles of
neural nests are proposed.
First, this process is an active process--it requires
energy to occur and continue. A correlate to this
principle is that this system, like any naturally occurring
system, prefers the lowest possible energy state.
Second, complete nests are at a lower energy state
than incomplete nests; it requires less energy to maintain
the connections than it does to create them.
Hebb's Law
infers this.
When an axon of cell A is near enough to
excite a cell B and repeatedly and persistently
takes part in firing it, some growth process or
metabolic change takes place in one or both cells
such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells
firing B, is increased. ^^
A more efficient system requires less energy.
Third, a nest must have satisfied connections to be
complete and, to be satisfied, there must be a perfect fit.
Hebb, The Organization
93
of Behavior,
79
62,
The concept of a perfect fit is common in biological
systems.
As noted previously, neurotransmitters require a
precise fit with proteins in the postsynaptic cell membrane
to exert their effect.
Our immune system requires a
perfect fit with foreign entities, antigens, to prompt the
immune response.
Fourth, there must be a feedback system preventing the
system from resting until the connections are satisfied.
Several things suggest that a negative feedback system
exists.
Artificial neural networks must have "hidden-layer
neurons" and additional processing elements that allow back
propagation for error correction.
These extra circuits are
necessary to form adaptive learning systems that
approximate the creative process.^* The neocortex is
layered with rich interneuronal connections that may play a
similar role.
In addition, the presence of inhibitory
presynaptic neurons in synapses suggests that negative
feedback exists.
Finally, negative feedback loops control
most biologic systems.
^*Kathryn J. Jeffery and Ian C. Reid, "Modifiable Neuronal
Connections: An Overview for Psychiatrists," J^erican
Journal of Psychiatry
154, no. 2 (February 1997): 159.
80
These principles may account for the observation that
early cultures did not seek to define creativity.
complete nests.
no questions.
Minds do not seek answers where there are
Of course, creativity is an unconscious and
innate property.
of it or not.
They had
It exists whether the individual is aware
Ancient artists engaged in creative
activities even as they had no conscious conception of the
creative process.
The characteristics of neural nests are evident in
MacKinnon's description of the creative architect.
He
concluded his presentation of "The Personality Correlates
of Creativity: A Study of American Architects," with the
following comments:
But if I were to summarize what is most
generally characteristic of the creative
architect as we have seen him, it is his high
level of effective intelligence, his openness to
experience, his freedom from petty restraints and
impoverishing inhibitions, his aesthetic
sensitivity, his cognitive flexibility, his
independence in thought and action, his high
level of energy, his unquestioning commitment to
creative endeavor, and his unceasing striving for
creative solutions to the ever more difficult
architectural problems which he constantly sets
for himself. ^^
^^acKinnon, "The Personality Correlates of Creativity,
38.
A "high level of effective intelligence" implies the
presence of multiple nests.
His "openness to experience"
and "freedom from petty restraints and impoverishing
inhibitions" suggests that the nests are not easily
satisfied and remain open to allow new associations.
His
"high level of energy" and his "unceasing striving for
creative solutions to the ever more difficult architectural
problems which he constantly sets for himself" reflect the
motivation of the nests to complete themselves.
Proof
It would be good here to present proof of the
existence of neural nests.
Unfortunately, this is not
possible.
It is interesting to note that in any field of
science, the less well understood a process is the more its
explanations become ephemeral.
Before the cellular theory
of organs was accepted, each organ had a "soul" of its own.
We consider this a primitive concept but when we get to the
edge of our understanding of the mind, many still suggest
mysterious energies as driving forces.
When we reach the
limit of our empirical knowledge, we resort to magic to
82
explain what we do not know, instead of believing there is
a logical explanation that we simply do not know.
As we deride the delusions of our forebears, we use
analogous mystical notions.
Pre-Copernican societies
believed the earth was the center of the universe and that
the gods controlled the movement of the celestial bodies.
These beliefs persisted until Copernicus, Kepler and Newton
developed a more logical explanation.^^ We now explain preEinstein "ethers" with quarks and muons as well as
theoretical particles we cannot see or measure.
Yet, we
believe these particles must surely exist because the
theory of quantum mechanics demands it.
In 1905, Albert Einstein introduced what has become
known as the Special Theory of Relativity. ^^ He followed
this with his General Theory of Relativity eleven years
later. ^^ From purely theoretical considerations, he
predicted that light travels in a curve when it passes
^^The time it took for people to believe this new theory
reflects the time it took for society to develop the
appropriate neural nests to understand it.
^^Albert Einstein, "Zur Electrodynamic
Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 891.
bewegter
Korper,"
^^Albert Einstein, "Die Grundlage der
allgemeinen
Relativitatstheorie,
Annalen der Physik 49 (1916) : 50.
through the gravitational field of a massive body.
It was
not until 1919 that scientists proved his hypothesis." We
have already seen that Bliss and L0mo did not prove Hebb's
Law until 23 years after Hebb proposed it.
This theory of creativity does not lend itself to
proof by classic experimental methods. What we can do,
however, is apply what we know or recognize about
creativity and see if it "fits" the theory. As long as it
does, the theory remains valid.
We must modify or abandon
the theory only if something does not "fit."
You can
accurately describe a forest if you examine enough trees.
However, you must revise your description if someone
discovers new trees.
The proof of this theory lies in how
well it describes what we know about creativity.
One criticism of this theory is that it is too simple;
that it cannot explain the complexity involved in creative
thinking.
However, the brain may be more astonishing in
its simplicity than it is awe-inspiring in its complexity.
Consider that everything we know, everything we perceive,
our complete and total understanding of the world is
"Lincoln Barnett, The Universe
and Dr.
Einstein,
(New
York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1948: Bantam Books,
1957), 91.
84
somehow dependent exclusively on neurons. Neurons that,
while demonstrating remarkable individual variability,
share a basic structure and physiological function.
Moreover, simplicity in and of itself is not necessarily a
problem.
In fact, it may strengthen the argument in
accordance with the philosophical principal ascribed to the
Franciscan scholar, William of Ockham.
Known as "Ockham's
razor," it states, "'entities are not to be multiplied
beyond necessity' {non sunt
necessitatim)
multiplicanda
entia
praeter
."-^°° Or as was attributed to Albert Einstein,
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
simpler.""^
The genetic code exemplifies the concept of simplicity
resulting in complexity.
We are convinced that only four
amino acids, the nucleotide bases guanine, cytosine,
thymine and adenine, make up all DNA (human and animal).
Further, adenine only combines with thymine and cytosine
only combines with guanine to form the chains that code for
the stuff of life.
100
So scientists would have us believe
Tarnas, 203.
^°^Albert Einstein, quoted in Encarta Book of
Quotations,
s. V. "science" [CD-ROM] (Redmond: Microsoft Press, 1999)
85
only four units (further restricted to two sets) are
responsible for all of life's diversity, not just humans
but all living creatures.
Wright.
From fruit flies to Frank Lloyd
Is it unrealistic to think that a relatively
simple biological process—still orders more complex than
DNA—can be responsible for human creativity?
Another example of simplicity resulting in complexity
is the binary code of computers.
Each binary digit, or
bit, is represented physically by an element such as a high
or low voltage at one point in a circuit or a small spot on
a disk magnetized one way or the other.-"-"^
Incredibly
complicated functions derive from this simple process.
Functions that, at times, appear far beyond the
capabilities of the human brain.
Do neural nests exist?
By the definition given—that
nests represent the interplay of neurons comprising the
cerebral cortex, mediated by neurotransmitters—they do.
It is, after all, an arbitrary definition.
The answer to a
more pertinent question, however, "Do neural nests exhibit
the properties described herein?" awaits further scientific
^°^Microsoft
Press
Computer and Internet
"bit".
86
Dictionary,
s. v.
investigations.
too.
For now, however, let us assume they do
For if neural nests exist, and if they exhibit either
the characteristics proposed or analogous properties, they
can adequately explain what we understand the creative
process to be.
87
CHAPTER V
DISCUSSION OF CREATIVITY IN NEUROPHYSIOLOGIC TERMS
Nature versus Nurture
Psychological experimental science has historically
embraced alternating theories of brain function—
associationism and nativism.
Associationism theorizes that
everyone has the same neurologic equipment and learning is
the key to brain function.
theory of nativism.
This is in contrast to the
Nativism assumes that humans are born
with many forms of knowledge and sensory information is
simply data on which preexisting mental structures act.'''°^
This is the "nature-versus-nurture" controversy as it
applies to creative individuals.
This theory unifies these
opposing positions and allows for the influence of both in
creative individuals.
In this regard, it supports Hebb's
observation concerning the relative contribution of
heredity and environment to intelligence that he calls,
"The Biologist's Fallacy":
The biologist's fallacy is to ask whether a
given character is inherited or acquired. In
that form today it is rare except when dealing
103
Gazzaniga, Cognitive
Neuroscience,
18.
with behavior and even then is more likely to
take the form of asking how much some aspect of
behavior depends on heredity and how much on
environment, or how important
heredity or
environment is for the behavior. But either
question is bad; the only answer is that any
behavior depends fully on both variables, that
both are of hundred-percent importance. The
relation between them is not additive, so that as
one becomes more important the other becomes
less; instead, one depends fully on the other.
In an analogy used elsewhere, heredity and
environment are related to behavior as length and
breadth of a field are related to its area. To
say that human intelligence in 80% heredity, 20%
environment—or that it depends more on heredity
than on environment—is to make the biologist's
fallacy. It is like saying that the area of the
field depends more on its length than on its
width. Heredity by itself, or the fertilized
ovum at the moment of conception, can produce no
intelligence whatsoever. Its potential can be
realized only with the conjoined environmental
action of the uterus until birth and a supporting
postnatal environment for some time after that.
And vice versa: The environment can do nothing
without a fertilized ovum to work on.-"-"*
This theory resolves the nature-versus-nurture
controversy by considering where neural nests come from.
Neural nests are created by two mechanisms. The
physicochemical properties of the neuronal connections are
indistinguishable; the only difference is the way in which
the connections arise.
The first mechanism is heredity.
^°*D. 0. Hebb, Essay on Mind (Hillsdale, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1980), 72.
89
We share these associations as a species.
jargon, they are hard-wired.
survival.
In modern
These nests are necessary for
These nests also serve as building blocks for
more complex thought.
The second method by which
connections are created is through the conscious and
unconscious mental activities of an individual mind.
Although some associations are obviously innate and others
are decidedly idiosyncratic, most reside between these
extremes and are a combination of the two.
These are the
connections formed through the influence of cultural and
societal pressures and learning.
The society we live in
and the culture we share combine nests present at birth
with new information from the environment.
They are, in
fact, the very reason for cultural and ethnic differences.
The nature-versus-nurture argument turns on the
associations we share through ethnic and cultural ties.
How the connections arise is of minimal importance.
Although we attach more validity to concepts that we share
as a species or as a culture than to those that we create
as individuals, the neurophysiological processes are the
same.
Moreover, we weave our innate and cultural neural
nests into ever more complex personal nests making it quite
difficult to sort out the relative contributions of each
90
part to the whole.
is then moot.
The argument of nature-versus-nurture
When confronted with new information, we
relate it to what we already know regardless of how we know
it.
If it is not at odds with our established connections,
we readily assimilate the information to enrich and
solidify our convictions.
If it is at odds with what we
know, we either reject the data, or modify our
understanding.
This is not to say there can be no inheritable
differences in creativity.
First, as already conceded,
some associations are innate and necessary for the survival
of our species.
Second, the capacity for associations, the
physical number of neurons and synapses present, may differ
among individuals. Animals are not creative, in the same
sense as man, because primitive brains simply do not have
the necessary mental machinery.
As Otto Wagner wrote.
Every artistic talent consists of two personal
qualities: innate ability (predisposition) and
acquired conceptual knowledge. The more these
two qualities appear and balance one another, the
greater will be the value of the work of art they
produce. """"^
IDSWagner,
62
91
An Associative Theory of Creativity
This theory is an associative theory of creativity.
Creativity is what occurs when novel associations are made
and novel associations occur when previously disparate
nests connect.
Mednick goes so far as to state, "The more
mutually remote the elements of the new combination, the
more creative the process or solution. "^°^
Stephen King writes in On
Writing:
Let's get one thing clear right now, shall
we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no
Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story
ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere,
sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two
previously unrelated ideas come together and make
something new under the sun. Your job isn't to
find these ideas but to recognize them when they
show up.''""''
Perhaps Arthur Koestler, the British essayist,
articulated the associative viewpoint best.
Seeing
creativity as the juxtaposition and integration of
disparate categories, he examined creativity in three
fields of endeavor—comedy, art and science.
To Koestler,
creativity occurs when an individual links two separate
matrices.
He terms this process bisociation to distinguish
^°^ednick, 222
^°'King, 37.
92
it from the simpler process of association.
Association
refers to placing things in the same matrix while
bisociation involves linking separate matrices. What
happens for someone to think something is creative lies in
these connections.
Koestler's matrices are neural nests.
Koestler's view is important here because he is one of
the few writers on creativity to include areas of endeavor
beyond the artistic and scientific arenas. He speculates
on what happens when disparate nests connect, "We have seen
how laughter is sparked off by the collision of matrices;
discovery, by their integration; aesthetic experience, by
their juxtaposition.-^"^
Or, as he states more formally,
When two independent matrices of perception or
reasoning interact with each other the
result...is either a collision
ending in
laughter, or their fusion in a new intellectual
synthesis, or their confrontation
in an aesthetic
experience. The bisociative patterns found in
any domain of creative activity are tri-valent:
that is to say, the same pair of matrices can
produce comic, tragic, or intellectually
challenging effects.^
^°^Koestler, 408.
^°^Ibid., 45.
93
Neural nests are not only matrices, they are also the
result of Koestler's matrices colliding, fusing and
confronting one another.
George Swede describes much the same process and calls
it multicontextural thought.
His point is that creativity
can, and often does, involve more than two nests or
matrices. ° This neural nest theory not only encompasses
Koestler's bisociative and Swede's multicontextural
theories, it extends them further to include all mental
activities.
Stages
Neural nests also explain the stages of the creative
process as described by Wallas. More specifically, the
stages describe how individual minds create nests.
Preparation
Preparation is the most important aspect of the
creative process and, fortuitously. Preparation (along with
Verification) is under our conscious control.
The French
scientist Louis Pasteur is credited with stating, "Chance
^^°Swede, 15,
94
favors only the prepared mind.""^
With all due deference,
chance not only favors the prepared mind, it absolutely
requires it.
Preparation, while creating new neural nests,
causes an unraveling of established ones.
This, in fact,
may be its most important contribution to the creative
process.
Preparation frequently breaks as many connections
as it makes.
Incubation
Incubation is what occurs once a problem has been
defined either consciously or unconsciously—once
Preparation has unraveled the neural nests.
This stage is
not necessarily under our control and the process can
progress independent of our awareness.
The mind continues
in its attempt to form stable nests regardless of whether
we attend to it or not.
In fact, conscious attention to a
problem may inhibit the brain's ability to find a solution.
By competitive inhibition, consciously forcing a solution
can interfere with the unconscious processes attempting to
create a better fit.
This might also explain the
^^^Louis Pasteur, Inaugural
lecture.
University
(December 7, 1854), quoted in John Bartlett,
Familiar
Quotations,
16th ed., 502.
95
of
Lille
Bartletfs
observation that creative ideas occur in sleep states or
when a person is not thinking about a problem.
A vast amount has been written on, and multiple
theories have been proposed for, how we form the mental
associations that result in creativity during the
Incubation period.
None of these mechanisms is at odds
with this theory of creativity.
Moreover, by addressing
the connections on a more fundamental level, this theory
unifies these disparate hypotheses.
As Mednick states.
Any ability or tendency which serves to bring
otherwise mutually remote ideas into contiguity
will facilitate a creative solution; any ability
or tendency which serves to keep remote ideas
from contiguous evocation will inhibit the
creative solution."'"''"^
Steven M. Smith and Rebecca A. Dodds list six possible
mechanisms for the formation of neural nests during the
Incubation period.''•"'"•^
The first mechanism, "Conscious
Work," suggests that the Incubation period is the period
after Preparation when the mind actively and consciously
searches for solutions to the problems identified during
^^^Mednick, 222
^^^Steven M. Smith and Rebecca A. Dodds, "Incubation," in
Handbook of Creativity,
vol.2, 40.
96
the stage of Preparation.
The second, "Recovery from
Fatigue," holds that Incubation is simply a period of rest
between the hard work of Preparation and Illumination.
The
third proposition is that an individual is "Forgetting
Inappropriate Mental Sets" during the period of Incubation.
If certain solutions do not result in tight associations,
they become weaker allowing the consideration of other,
perhaps better, connections.
reverse.
This is Hebb's Law in
"Remote Association" represents a fourth possible
manner in which associations are formed.
This occurs when
common responses are exhausted and the mind seeks novel
solutions.
Smith and Dobb's fifth hypothesis concerning
the Incubation process is termed "Opportunistic
Assimilation."
It suggests that the individual might
assimilate chance environmental events with unsolved
problems during the Incubation period.
This is quite
congruent with this theory when combined with the final,
and perhaps best, theory; that the period of Incubation
simply represents a period of "Unconscious Work."
This leads to an interesting conclusion.
As Mednick
observes.
If a newcomer to a field has the requisite
information, he is more likely to achieve a
creative solution than a long-time worker in the
97
field. This may be the reason that theoretical
physicists and master chess players are often
said to have passed their prime by the age of
25."*
Either the novice has fewer entrenched associations or the
accomplished individual has well-established, strong
associations from experience making it more difficult for
the long-time worker to form newer and weaker, but more
novel, associations.
All of these theories of how associations occur are
congruent with this concept of neural nests.
The theories
differ only by how the associations occur and they all
represent valid mechanisms by which we create nests as
individuals.
Illumination
Wallas' third stage is Illumination.
This probably is
not as important to the process of creativity as it is
dramatic. Although creative individuals frequently relate
that the solution to a problem occurred to them "in a
flash," careful examination of the circiomstances
surrounding the moment usually reveals a significant period
of Preparation and Incubation.
114
Mednick, 224.
98
Researchers refer to this
as the "Eureka!" or "Ah-ha!" moment.
This moment is simply
when appropriate connections become consciously evident.
If enough connections occur simultaneously—if multiple
open areas of the nests are satisfied at the same time—a
"flash" of recognition occurs.
It is interesting here to speculate on the
contribution of the release of neurotransmitters into the
synapse to the somatic feelings engendered by a "Eureka!"
moment.
The modern treatment of psychiatric disorders such
as schizophrenia and depression is predicated on the
modulation of the effects of neurotransmitters in the
brain.
Systemic medications exert their effects globally
with remarkable clinical benefits in many cases. Could the
reverse occur?
Can mental activities increase the brain's
neurotransmitter levels over a certain threshold or change
the ratios of neurotransmitters in the synapse in such a
way to cause a mood change or other physiological response
such as goose-bumps or raising the hair on the back of the
neck?
Dr. Michael Jones, Associate Dean of the College of
Architecture at Texas Tech University, refers to this
phenomenon as "ecstasy."
He not only recognizes that this
occurs in the creator when creating, he also notes that
99
this occurs when an observer experiences a somatic response
to the creation.
He offers an observation by the French
architectural critic Frangoise Blondel as an example.
Here is an example that cannot be disputed;
it is the fagade of the Cathedral Church of
Milan, which is regarded as the most beautiful
specimen of Gothic architecture in the world, and
which I never beheld without being moved by a
feeling of veneration and
delight.^^^
A comment attributed to the poet and classical scholar A.
E. Housman underscores the universality of this phenomenon:
[E]xperience has taught me, when I am
shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my
thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays
into my memory, my skin bristles
so that the
razor ceases to act."^^®
The literature on creativity is replete with examples
of Illumination—Archimedes realizing that volume can be
measured by displacement while bathing, Kekule discovering
the benzene ring while dozing, Steven King's "sudden flash
of insight when you see how everything connects" cited
^^^Frangois Blondel, Cours d'architecture
(Paris, 1675),
4; quoted in Michael Anthony Jones, "Models for educating
architects in this century and the next" (Ph.D. diss.,
Georgia Institute of Technology, 1989), 21.
"^A. E. Housman, "The Name and Nature of Poetry,"
(lecture at Cambridge, 1933); quoted in, Anthony Lane,
"Lost Horizon: The sad and savage wit of A. E. Housman,"
The New Yorker, 19 & 26 February 2001, 214.
100
earlier, as well as a host of others.
Two particularly
appropriate examples involve Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd
Wright.
In 1914, Louis Sullivan's career was in decline.
As
Richard Guy Wilson wrote in The AIA Gold Medal,
About 1902 he suffered a psychological collapse,
the exact nature of which is still obscure. It
is clear that he was profoundly affected by the
breakup of his marriage, the dissolution of his
partnership with Adler in 1895, and the
increasing success of the academic revival. He
became sorry for himself and began to drink
heavily; his personality became extremely
difficult. During the next two decades of his
life he did only a handful of small-town banks
and commercial structures in the Midwest.''-^''
One such bank was the People's Saving and Loan Association
Building in Sidney, Ohio.
The bank's secretary, L. M.
Studevant, chose Sullivan entirely by reputation.
It is
recorded that Sullivan, upon his arrival in Sidney,
[R]etired to the opposite corner [from the
building site] and sat on a curbstone for the
better part of two whole days, smoking
innumerable cigarettes (a new habit). Then at
the end of that time, he announced to the
directors that the design was made—in his head.
"'^Richard Guy Wilson, The AIA Gold Medal
McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1984), 165.
101
(New York:
He proceeded to rapidly draw a sketch for them,
and announced an estimate of the cost."®
A second example involves Frank Lloyd Wright. As told
by Edgar Tafel, a Taliesin Fellow and apprentice to Wright:
Fall, 1935. Taliesin, Wisconsin: "Come
along, E. J. We're ready for you," boomed Mr.
Wright in the hand-cranked telephone. The call
was from Pittsburgh and E. J. was Edgar J.
Kaufmann, Sr., department store president. Mr.
Wright was to show him the first sketches for his
new house, "Fallingwater."
I looked across my drafting table at the
apprentice in front of me. Bob Moser, whose back
had stiffened at the words. Ready? There wasn't
one line drawn.
Kaufmann, an important client, coming to see
plans for his house, and was Mr. Wright still
carrying the design confidently around in his
head?...
So that morning in the drafting room, when
we overheard him bellow, "Come along, E. J.," we
wondered what could happen. Kaufmann, calling
from Pittsburgh, was planning to drive to
Chicago, then to Milwaukee, and come to Taliesin.
It was the morning that Kaufmann called again
from Milwaukee, 140 miles away from Spring Green,
and only 140 minutes of driving at a mile a
minute, that Mr. Wright was to start drawing.
Kaufmann was en route.
He hung up the phone, briskly emerged from
his office, some twelve steps from the drafting
room, sat down at the table set with the plot
plan, and started to draw. First floor plan.
Second floor. Section, elevation. Side sketches
of details, talking sotto voce all the while.
^^^Historical
Sketches
of People's
Federal Savings and
Loan Association,
quoted in Robert Twombly, Louis
Sullivan:
His Life and Work (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1986),
425.
102
The design just poured out of him. "Liliane and
E. J, will have tea on the balcony...they'11
cross the bridge to walk into the woods..."
Pencils being used up as fast as we could sharpen
them when broken--H's, HB's, colored Castell's,
again and again being worn down or broken.
Erasures, over-drawing, modifying. Flipping
sheets back and forth. Then, the bold title
across the bottom: "Fallingwater." A house has
to have a name....
Just before noon Mr. Kaufmann arrived. As
he walked up the outside stone steps, he was
greeted graciously by the master. They came
straight to the drafting table. "E. J.," said Mr.
Wright, "we've been waiting for you." The
description of the house, its setting,
philosophy, poured out. Poetry in form, line,
color, textures and materials, all for a greater
glory; a reality to live in! Mr. Wright at his
eloquent and romantic best—he had done it before
and would often do it again—genius through an
organic growth along with nature. Kaufmann
nodded in affirmation.
They went up to the hill garden dining room
for lunch, and while they were away Bob Moser and
I drew up the two other elevations, naturally in
Mr. Wright's style. When they came back, Mr.
Wright continued describing the house, using the
added elevations to reinforce his presentation.
Second thoughts? The basic design never changed-pure all the way.^"-^^
Oft-quoted as an example of Wright's genius, the story at
first glance appears to best illustrate the stage of
Illumination.
What is not mentioned in this account is
that Wright visited Bear Run in December of 1934 and again
"^Edgar Tafel, Years with Frank Lloyd Wright:
Apprentice
to Genius (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979), 1.
103
in June of 1935.
This "Eureka!" moment occurred on
September 22, 1935, after nine months of Incubation.^"
Further examination of the circumstances surrounding
the Sullivan anecdote reveals a similar pattern.
The
dramatic announcement to the bank officials that "the
design was made in his head" came after two days of
Incubation at the site and the completion of four of six
successful Midwestern bank projects.
The penultimate
People's Saving and Loan Building likely did not require
the creation of all new associations as Sullivan already
possessed appropriate neural nests for the building type.
It was a further iteration of a group of projects although
Hugh Morrison, Sullivan's biographer, notes, "Sullivan
himself considered this building the best of the series ."'^'^'^
Verification
The stage of Verification is the most important phase
for historical, universal or eminent creativity-
MacKinnon
"°Richard L. Cleary, Merchant
Prince
and Master
Builder:
Edgar J. Kaufmann and Frank Lloyd Wright
(Pittsburgh: The
Heinz Architectural Center Carnegie Museum of Art, 1999) ,
39.
"^Hugh Morrison, Louis
Architecture
1935), 220.
Sullivan:
Prophet
of
Modern
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
104
even proposes Verification as a condition that must be met
before something can be considered creative, "true
creativeness involves a sustaining of the original insight,
an evaluation and elaboration of it, a developing it to the
full."
This theory is congruent with these observations
in that Verification is the process whereby the conscious
and unconscious mind checks the connections for a precise
fit with all aspects of a problem.
Novelty versus Familiarity
Next, this theory, like all associative theories of
creativity, resolves the paradox of how a product of the
creative process is both novel and, at the same time,
recognizable.
It is recognizable because the observer, and
judge, possesses the same nests as the creator.
As
Koestler writes.
The creative act is not an act of creation in the
sense of the Old Testament. It does not create
something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects,
re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already
existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills. The
more familiar the parts, the more striking the
new whole. Man's knowledge of the changes of the
tides and the phases of the moon is as old as his
"^MacKinnon, "The Personality Correlates of Creativity,
11.
105
observation that apples fall to earth in the
ripeness of time. Yet the combination of these
and other equally familiar data in Newton's
theory of gravity changed mankind's outlook on
the world.
'It is obvious', says Hadamard, 'that
invention or discovery, be it in mathematics or
anywhere else, takes place by combining
ideas....The Latin verb cogito
for 'to think'
etymologically means 'to shake together.' 123
""
Heuristic versus Algorithmic
This theory also addresses the requirement that
creativity should be heuristic and not algorithmic.
Algorithmic thinking is a conscious process, a stepwise
application of known principles to yield a solution to a
defined problem.
Heuristic thinking, on the other hand,
owes as much to unconscious mechanisms, such as random
trial-and-error, as it does to conscious thought.
Neurophysiologically, the unconscious mind works like the
conscious mind; we are simply not aware of it.
In
addition, the mind can work to satisfy multiple nests
simultaneously, another form of heuristic thinking.
123
Koestler, 120
106
Subjectivity
Next, this theory has implications for the subjective
aspects of the creative process.
To again quote Amabile:
A product or response is creative to the
extent that appropriate observers independently
agree it is creative. Appropriate observers are
those familiar with the domain in which the
product was created or the response
articulated. •'•^*
How creative a solution is depends on the audience and
the nests they possess.
red.
For example, think of something
The list is near endless. Now think of something red
with wheels.
Two nests are involved and the list narrows
to such things as sport cars and wagons.
The list is
limited and although these algorithmic responses are not
particularly novel, they are useful—they satisfy both
nests.
Finally, add a third nest.
with wheels that puts out fires.
a fire truck.
fireman?"
wheals
Think of something red
The algorithmic answer is
However, what of the response, "an allergic
An allergic reaction causes a red rash and skin
(a homonym of wheels).
If an observer does not have
a nest for the cutaneous manifestations of allergic
reactions, the response is novel but not useful.
^^^Amabile, 33.
107
Conversely, even this novel response may appear algorithmic
to an allergist.
Motivation
Finally, this neural nest theory of creativity speaks
to motivation.
Algorithmic thinking represents conscious
work while heuristic thinking involves the unconscious
drive of neural nests to complete themselves by weaving the
frayed areas of the nests into a complete whole.
Motivation represents the attempts of the biological system
to achieve equilibrium.
If everything we know is stored in
neural nests, and an unfinished nest is unstable,
motivation is nothing more than the drive of the organism,
or nest, to stabilize itself.
People then are motivated to
create if, for no other reason, than to conserve energy.
When a seeking mind (an open nest) has formed appropriate
associations, it is at rest. Until it forms these
associations, it continues to use energy and, in accordance
with the first biological principal of neural nests—a
principle shared with all biological and physical systems—
the nest prefers to be at rest.
108
The Unique Nature of Artistic Creativity
This broad concept of creativity can now be narrowed.
After stressing the universality of the process involved in
neural nest building, it is now time to concede the
obvious.
For most individuals creativity is a unique type
of neural nest building.
First, creativity involves internal mental processes
exclusively.
Nest building from external information
represents learning and education, resulting in
intelligence but not creativity.
No one considers
gathering facts to be a creative process (even though the
neurophysiological process is identical to the
neurophysiological process resulting in creativity).
Second, the product of this internal process must be
judged subjectively by others to be deemed creative.
This
results in Boden's historical, Swede's universal and
Simonton's eminent creativity.
Art and scientific advancement involves this type of
neural nest building and it is this type of neural nest
building that architecture demands.
Architectural creativity requires unique associations.
It must address multiple matrices.
There are the physical
laws of nature, gravity, the environment, sunlight.
109
earthquakes, rain, snow, the sun and a host of others.
knowledge of these is stored in neural nests.
Our
It also must
obey the laws of building, the physical aspects of
materials and the capabilities of builders.
is likewise stored in neural nests.
Finally, there are
actual laws, statutes and building codes.
is stored in yet more neural nests.
This knowledge
This knowledge
The creative architect
must address these disparate matrices and in some fashion
link them to the matrices of aesthetics and meaning without
unraveling any of the established nests.
Practitioners of
other art forms are frequently able to change the
underlying "rules" with a freedom not afforded to
architects.
For example, cubist painters are not
constrained by the requirement that their art realistically
represent true images.
Architects, on the other hand,
cannot repeal the law of gravity.
up.
A building must stand
They can, however, creatively find and exploit
loopholes in the law."^
The dramatic cantilevers of Frank
Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and the soaring roof of Eero
Saarinen's TWA terminal are but two examples.
^^^This is much like accountants finding loopholes in the
tax code. Perhaps definition I.e. in the OED listing for
creative is germane to this discussion after all.
110
CHAPTER VI
ARCHITECTURAL CREATIVITY
Just as this theory is an architectural theory of
creativity and a theory of architectural creativity, it is
a creative theory of creativity.
creative by definition.
Theories are, of course,
They take disparate facts and
concepts—nests—and relate them to create a new and
original whole.
As we have seen, however, originality is
only one criterion of creativity.
activity must also be useful.
The product of creative
Architecture provides ready
examples of the utility of this theory, and, to this end,
two areas in architecture where this theory is useful will
be considered—architectural design and architectural
education.
Definition of Architecture
The OED defines architecture as follows:
architecture ('a:kitsktjue(r)), sb.
architecture
architectura,
[a. F.
(? or It. architettura),
ad. L.
f. architect-us;
see ARCHITECT sb.
And -URE. ]
1. The art or science of building or
constructing edifices of any kind for human use.
Regarded in this wide application,
architecture
is divided into civil,
military,
ecclesiastical,
naval,
which deal respectively with houses and
111
other buildings (such as bridges) of ordinary
utility, churches, ships, fortification. But
architecture
is sometimes regarded solely as a
fine art, and then has the narrower meaning
explained in quots. 1849, 1879 below.
1563 SHUTE (title) The first and chief Grounds of
Architecture vsed in all the auncient and famous monyments,
1581 W. STAFFORD Exam. Compl. i. (1876) 24 Architecture, that
is to say, the scyence of building. 1756 BURKE Subl. & B.
Wks. I, 292 The management of light is a matter of
importance in architecture, isoo J, CHARNOCK [title)
History
of Marine Architecture, 1849 RUSKIN Sev. Lamps i. §1, 7
Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the
edifices raised by man . . that the sight of them
contributes to his mental health, power, and pleasure, 1879
G, SCOTT Led.
Archit.
II. 292 Architecture, as
distinguished from mere building, is the decoration of
construction,
2. The action or process of building,
arch.
1646 SIR T , BROWNE Pseud. Ep. 381 [If] the great Cities
Anchiale and Tarsus were built . , both in one day, since
that great one of sixe, 1736 BUTLER Anal. i. i. 36 Carriages
and leavers and scaffolds are [necessary] in architecture.
3. concr.
building.
Architectural work; structure,
1611 TOURNEUR Ath. Trag. v, i, On these two pillars
stood the stately frame And architecture of my loftie
house. 1759 JOHNSON Rasselas
xxix, (1787) 85 The ruins of
their architecture are the schools of modern builders, IB64
BURTON Scot
Abr. I, v. 291 Architecture, especially if it be
of stone.
4. The special method or 'style' in
accordance with which the details of the
structure and ornamentation of a building are
arranged.
1703 MAUNDRELL Journ. Jerus.
(1732) 135 The a d j e c t i t i o u s
B u i l d i n g s a r e of no mean A r c h i t e c t u r e , i853 RUSKIN Stones
Ven. I I . v i . Many o t h e r a r c h i t e c t u r e s b e s i d e s Gothic, 1883
RIDEING i n Harper's
Mag. J u l y I8O/1 The Queen Anne
a r c h i t e c t u r e of t h e day.
5. transf.
or fig. Construction or structure
generally; both abst. and concr.
C1590 MARLOWE ist Ft. Tamburl.
11, vii. The wondrous
architecture of the world, I607 TOPSELL Serpents
627
Hieroglyphical Emblems . . made ready and squared for the
architecture of this discourse. 1794 SULLIVAN View Nat. II.
391 Millions of opaque globes . . constitute the moving
order of its architecture. 1875 GRINDON Life xxvi, 337 In
beautiful and ingenious architecture, the birds, the bees,
and the wasps, have been competitors, 1907 F, R, SABIN in
Morris & McMurrich Human Anat.
(ed. 4) v, 490 (heading)
The
Architecture of the Heart. 1836 Discovery
Nov. 363/i The
112
architecture of molecules. 1959 D, COOKE Lang. Mus. i, I We
speak of the 'architecture' of a symphony, and call
architecture, in its turn, 'frozen music' . 1962 'C. E, MAINE'
Darkest
of Nights
ii, 32 He's our protein chemistry expert
and he knows a great deal about the architecture of the
Hueste virus,
6. Computing. The conceptual structure and
overall logical organization of a computer or
computer-based system from the point of view of
its use or design; a particular realization of
this.
1962 F. BROOKS in W. Buchholz in Planning
Computer
Syst.
ii, 5 Computer architecture, like other architecture,
is the art of determining the needs of the user . , and
then designing to meet those needs as effectively as
possible, 1964 IBM Jrnl.
Res. & Devel.
VIII. 87
{heading)
Architecture of the IBM System/360. Ibid., The term
architecture
is used here to describe the attributes of a
system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual
structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the
organization of the data flow and controls, the logical
design, and the physical implementation. 1967 H. HELLERMAN
Digital
Computer Syst.
Princ.
viii, 328 A most iit^ortant
factor in machine architecture is the recognition of the
increasingly important role of the high-level languages as
the principal medium of user-system interaction. 1975 Sci.
Amer. May 35/i One architecture may emphasize facility of
arithmetic operations and another may stress convenience of
input and output operations. 1979 KRAFT & TOY
Mini/Microcomputer
Hardware Design iii. 121 In the most
widely used minicomputer architecture, the CPU communicates
with main memory over a high-speed store bus; all programcontrolled operations involving external devices are
required to take place over a separate I/O bus, i98i I.
FLORES Data Base Archit.
i. 22 All three data base
architectures have implementations which compete on the
marketplace, 1984 Freetime Autumn 21/2 (Advt,), Fast,
powerful 32-bit architecture: allows windowing , . and
multi-tasking, 1985 Which Computer?
Apr 20 (Advt,), Because
of its multi-processor architecture, its performance
doesn't deteriorate as more users are added.^^^
The British architectural critic John Ruskin is the
likely source for the first definition.
of Architecture,
126
In The Seven
Lamps
he wrote, "Architecture is the art which
OED, 2nd ed., s. v. "architecture.'
113
so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for
whatever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his
mental health, power, and pleasure. "^^^ This phrase appears
in abbreviated form in the OED's exemplary citations.
Ruskin then divides architecture into five types,
"Devotional;...Memorial;...Civil;...Military;...[and]
Domestic, "^^^ which the OED dutifully lists as,
ecclesiastical,
naval,
military,
"'civil,
which deal respectively
with houses and other buildings (such as bridges) of
ordinary utility, churches, ships, fortification."
However, Ruskin then adds, "It is very necessary, in the
outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between
Architecture and Building,"^^^ stating that building
requires the addition of "unnecessary features"^^° to become
works of architecture.
"Architecture concerns itself only
with those characters of an edifice which are above and
^^Vohn Ruskin, The Seven
Lamps of Architecture
Dover Publications, Inc., 1989), 8.
^^^Ibid., 9.
^"ibid., 8.
^2°Ibid., 9.
114
(New York;
beyond its common use.""^
Unfortunately, this important
qualification is not emphasized in the OED listing.
In 1486, the Renaissance scholar Leon Battista Alberti
wrote De Re Aedificatoria,
architecture as an art.
in which he describes
He begins the treatise with the
following comments:
Many and various arts, which help to make
the course of our life more agreeable and
cheerful, were handed down to us by our
ancestors, who had acquired them by much effort
and care. All of them seem to compete toward the
one end, to be of the greatest possible use to
humanity, yet we realize that each has some
integral property, which shows it has a different
advantage to offer from the others. For we are
forced to practice some of these arts by
necessity, while others commend themselves to us
for their utility, and still others we appreciate
because they deal with matters that are pleasant
to know. I need not specify these arts: it is
obvious which they are. Yet, if you reflect on
it, you would not find one among all the most
important arts that did not seek and consider its
own particular ends, excluding anything else.
If, however, you were eventually to find any that
proved wholly indispensable and yet were capable
of uniting use with pleasure as well as honor, I
think you could not omit architecture from that
category: architecture, if you think the matter
over carefully, gives comfort and the greatest
pleasure to mankind, to individual and community
"^Ibid,
115
alike; nor does she rank last among the most
honorable of the arts.^^^
Dr. Michael Jones recognizes the multitude of factors
involved in architecture in the definition he developed
after an exhaustive review of architectural writings on the
topic.
It is particularly appropriate to this discussion
as it emphasizes the many and varied neural nests involved
in architectural creativity.
Architecture cannot be narrowly defined as
it encompasses every aspect of the conceptual/
design/erection process. To conceive and
construct a building has always been a cyclical
event; it starts from, and returns to abstract
realities, that is, from ideas (before
construction) to interpretations (after
completion). Thus architecture embraces many
actions; cerebral organization and behavior,
establishing concepts and ideas; the
representational description—through writing,
drawing, painting, model-making, photography and
film; the descriptions for making—through
technological, constructional and legal
documentation; the actual making, the erection of
the building—time and economic management,
technology and quality control; the occupation of
the resulting artifact—house, corporate
headquarters, etc.; and finally, the return to
the cerebral through perception and understanding
by use, interpretation and re-interpretation of
"^Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building
in Ten
Books,
trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert
Travernor (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1988),
2.
116
the artifact—the symbolic, mythological, and/or
representational meanings."^
For the purposes of this discussion, creativity will
be the primary criterion that distinguishes architecture
from building.
Or, as Corbusier so eloquently states.
You employ stone, wood and concrete, and
with these materials you build houses and
palaces; that is construction. Ingenuity is at
work.
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me
good, I am happy and I say: 'This is beautiful.'
That is Architecture. Art enters in.
My house is practical. I thank you, as I
might thank Railway engineers or the Telephone
service. You have not touched my heart.
But suppose that walls rise towards heaven
in such a way that I am moved. I perceive your
intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal,
charming or noble. The stones you have erected
tell me so. You fix me to the place and my eyes
regard it. They behold something which expresses
a thought. A thought which reveals itself
without work or sound, but solely by means of
shapes which stand in a certain relationship to
one another. These shapes are such that they are
clearly revealed in light. The relationships
between them have not necessarily any reference
to what is practical or descriptive. They are a
mathematical creation of your mind. They are the
language of Architecture. By the use of inert
materials and starting from conditions more or
less utilitarian, you have established certain
relationships which have aroused my emotions.
This is Architecture.^^*
^^^ Jones, 9.
134 Le
Corbusier, Towards
a New Architecture,
117
203
Corbusier uses the association of built structures and
ideas to differentiate between architecture and mere
building and in doing so suggests a "language of
Architecture."
However, all buildings "speak"—most just
have nothing to say. As the architectural critic Bruno
Zevi contends.
Indeed, most people who are designing and
building today can barely mumble. They utter
inarticulate meaningless sounds that carry no
message. They do not know how to speak. They
say nothing and have nothing to say.-^^^
Architectural Design
If creativity distinguishes architecture from
building, a theory of creativity must have direct
application to the design process. Associating ideas and
built structures results in the obvious example of
architecture designed to honor or commemorate a person,
place or thing.
examples.
Museums and Halls of Fame are two obvious
Likewise, considering that a group that shares
certain nests relative to their homes will satisfy their
^^^Bruno Zevi, The Modern Language of
Architecture
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 3.
118
nests in similar fashions might explain the existence and
popularity of vernacular architecture.
Gothic architecture affords the best example of this
concept.
As reviewed by Dr. Jones, the development of
Gothic architecture not only paralleled the rise of
Scholasticism and embodies its principles, it quite
blatantly served as a mnemonic device.
"Mnemonic images
aided architects in the design of their structure while
they in turn produced memory aids for the greater
society.""^
Symmetry
Symmetry in architecture is an example of how neural
nests influence design considerations.
this discussion in two ways.
It is germane to
First, good evidence exists
that the recognition of symmetry represents an inborn nest.
Second, it is an example of how acquired neural nests can
influence the meaning of an inherently neutral design
consideration.
Axial symmetry, "the balanced distribution of
equivalent forms and spaces about a common line (axis) or
136
Jones, 90.
119
point (center),""'^ is surprisingly controversial in
architecture.
Classical architecture demanded symmetry.
Ancient Greek architecture was based on a mathematical
canon in which symmetry played an integral role. Vitruvius
described the classical Greek architectural canon in
detail.
He listed six elements of architectural
construction, one of which was symmetria.
He stated that,
"The planning of temples depends upon symmetry: and the
method of this architects must diligently apprehend.
It
arises from proportion (which in Greek is called
analogia) ."^^^
By symmetria,
Vitruvius meant a harmonious arrangement
of parts and he used the term to describe much more than
simple axial symmetry.
Symmetry also is the appropriate harmony
arising out of the details of the work itself:
the correspondence of each given detail among the
separate details to the form of the design as a
whole. As in the human body, from cubit, foot,
palm, inch and other small parts comes the
symmetric quality of eurhythmy; so is it in the
completed building.^^^
"''Francis D. K. Ching, Architecture:
Order
Form,
Space
(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979), 333.
"^Vitruvius, On Architecture,
159,
"'ibid., 27.
120
and
However, in practice, axial symmetry was an important
component of symmetria
symmetria
and it is not a coincidence that
is the etymological root of the word "symmetry."
Roman architecture exhibits marked axial symmetry.
Roman city planning, the city, or castrum,
grid surrounding the cardo
and decumanus,
In
is arranged on a
which intersect
at the exact center of the town.-"-*" Roman baths, forums and
villas also demonstrate strict mirror symmetry.
This virtual requirement of symmetry in architectural
design continued for centuries.
In the 15th century, Leon
Battista Alberti offered the following justification:
We must therefore take great care to ensure
that even the minutest elements are so arranged
in their level, alignment, number, shape, and
appearance, that right matches left, top matches
bottom, adjacent matches adjacent, and equal
matches equal, and that they are an ornament to
that body of which they are to be part. Even
reliefs and panels, and any other decoration,
must be so arranged that they appear to be in
their natural and fitting place, as though
twinned. The ancients attached such value to
this balancing of the parts one against another,
that they even tried to match their marble panels
exactly in quantity, quality, shape, position,
and color.
I have long been an admirer of a particular
custom of the ancients in which they displayed
"°Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman,
From Prehistory
to Post-Modernism
/ The Western
(The Netherlands: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), 147.
121
Architecture:
Tradition
outstanding skill: with statues, especially for
the pediments of their temples, they took care to
ensure that those on one side differed not a
whit, either in their lineaments or in their
materials, from those opposite. We see two- and
four-horse chariots, sculptures of the horses,
the commanders, and their lieutenants, so similar
to one another that we might claim that here
Nature herself has been surpassed; since never in
her works do we see so much as one nose identical
to another."^
In 1673, the French architect and architectural
theorist Claude Perrault emphasized the need for axial
symmetry in his translation of De Architectura
Vitruvius.
by
He appropriately translated the word symmetry
as proportion but then noted that,
[T]he word symmetry has another meaning in
French; for it signifies the correspondence in a
building between right and left, high and low,
front and back, whether in size, shape, height,
colour, number, or placing—indeed in everything
that can make one part resemble another; and it
is rather odd that Vitruvius never spoke of this
kind of Symmetry, which accounts for much of the
beauty of Buildings."^*^
Other architects have embraced symmetry as well.
In the
18th Century, Etienne-Louis Boullee stated.
"^Alberti, 310.
''"*^Claude Perrault, Les Dis Livres,
Kruft, A History
of Architectural
quoted in Hanno-Walter
Theory from Vitruvius
to
the Present,
trans. Ronald Taylor, Elsie Callander and
Antony Wood (New York: Princeton University Press, 1994),
134.
122
The basic rule and the one that governs the
principles of architecture, originates in
regularity...any deviation from symmetry in
architecture is as inconceivable as failing to
observe the rules of harmony in music
any
disparity [by which he means asymmetry] is
repugnant. ^*^
The need for symmetry in architectural design
persisted into the 20th Century.
In 1906, Otto Wagner
declared:
A simple, clear plan in most cases requires
the symmetry of the work. In a symmetrical
arrangement there is some measure of selfcontainment, completeness, balance; an
impossibility of enlargement; even selfassurance. Gravity and dignity, the constant
companions of architecture, also demand symmetry.
Only where the shape of the site, purpose, means,
or reasons of utility in general make compliance
with symmetry impossible is an unsymmetrical
solution justified.
The aping of unsymmetrical buildings or the
intentional making of an unsymmetrical
composition in order to achieve a supposed
painterly effect is totally objectionable. All
unsymmetrical ancient models came about only
because later generations made spatial changes to
a building originally symmetrical, causing the
asymmetry. Never, never may this be looked upon
as the original intention.^**
''^*^Etienne-Louis Boullee, Architecture,
Essai sur J'art
(Paris); original in Helen Rosenau, Boullee's
Treatise
on
Architecture
(London, 1953), 38; trans. Helen Rosenau,
Boullee and Visionary
Architecture
(London, 1976), 87;
quoted in Philip Tabor, "Fearful Symmetry," The
Architectural
Review 111 (May 1982): 18.
144
Wagner, 86,
123
Most modern architectural theorists, however, eschew
symmetry.
John Ruskin denigrates symmetry in The
Lamps of Architecture
between equal things.
Seven
stating, "There is no proportion
They can have symmetry only, and
symmetry without proportion is not composition.""^
Bruno
Zevi, a disciple of Ruskin, is vociferous in his
denouncement of symmetry.
He states, "Symmetry = a
spasmodic need for security, fear of flexibility,
indetermination, relativity, and growth—in short, fear of
living. "•'•**' He further alleges, "Symmetry = passivity or,
in Freudian terms, homosexuality."^*^
He considers
symmetrical buildings to be "symbols of totalitarian power
or products of sloth and cynicism"^*® and later compares
symmetry to "a tumor whose cells have metastasized
everywhere in geometry."^*' He therefore equates symmetry
"^Ruskin, 125.
"^Zevi, 17.
"'Ibid.
"^Ibid., 18.
"'ibid., 20.
124
with perversion and tyranny and recommends "antigeometry
and free form" as "emancipation through dissonance."""
This modern belief that axial symmetry is somehow
tyrannical is pervasive.
Trachtenberg and Hyman state:
It is obvious that the difference between
Greek and Egyptian architectural complexes
involve attitudes toward symmetry and axiality.
In Egypt, as later under the Romans, and, indeed,
the universal tendency in all centralized or
totalitarian states, axiality and bilateral
symmetry form the basis of planning. The
underlying concern is to limit sharply the
freedom of the human participant in architecture,
to control movement and perceptions in much the
way life and thought in general are controlled by
the state."^
Why a morally and emotionally neutral geometric
construct should elicit such vehement and diverse responses
is puzzling and these widely diverse opinions concerning
the meaning of architectural symmetry appear
irreconcilable.
concept.
This theory, however, suggests a unifying
How can the observation of the same thing,
symmetry, elicit such varying responses?
The answer may
reside in neural nests, nests created by combining existing
nests with new experiences, integrating the past with the
"°Ibid., 22.
^^^Trachtenberg, 98.
125
present and involving an external stimulus as well as the
internal response to that stimulus.
Considerable evidence supports the view that symmetry
represents ourselves.
This anthropomorphic theory hinges
on the fact that the perception of symmetry is one of the
most fundamental of body schemata.
Axial symmetry is so
basic to our body image that we perceive our bodies as
symmetrical even as we intellectually know it not to be
true.
This may represent what Gombrich describes as a
"will-to-make-conform"^^^ or as Wittkower states, "we
instinctively endeavor to translate every shred of sensory
experience into a coherent concept. """"^^ In this case, the
coherent concept is that axial symmetry represents the
human body and translating "every shred of sensory
experience into a coherent concept" is a demonstration of
the neural nest properties of classification and
completion.
"^E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion:
Psychology
of Pictorial
Representation
A Study in the
(London: The Folio
Society, 2000), 65.
"^Rudolf Wittkower, Allegory
and the Migration
(Bolder: Westview Press, 1977), 174.
126
of
Symbols
For example, we understand the heart to be at the
geometric center of our bodies and at the center of our
being.
It has thus become a metaphor for love and life.
The heart, with its auditory and rhythmic
presence, exemplifies the phenomenon of an
internal landmark acquiring a universal spatial
meaning in adult life. Expressions such as "the
heart of the matter" and the "heartland" refer to
the heart as a centerplace....[B]ecause we feel
its internal presence vividly, it has been given
a status at the very center of life and has
become a metaphor for love and supreme geographic
importance.-''^*
However, we know the heart is not symmetrical nor is it
symmetrically positioned in our body.
Faces are also perceived as symmetrical.
This is why
it is so interesting to split a photograph of a face and
create two separate representations of it by combining each
half with its mirror image.
Since we perceive our faces to
be symmetrical, demonstrating that they are not is
surprising.
The enjoyment in this recognition occurs
precisely because it conflicts with our perception.
Facial symmetry is also one of the earliest recognized
patterns.
Infants recognize facial symmetry almost
iimnediately.
^^*Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore, Body, Memory, and
Architecture
(New Haven; Yale University Press, 1977), 39.
127
At an average age of nine minutes, newborns
will turn their eyes and their heads to follow a
sketch of a face more than they will a similar
sketch with upside-down or scrambled features,
and still more than a face shape with no features
at all."^
This is a perfect example of an inborn neural nest.
It is
important for survival that a newborn infant attends to the
human face.
Moreover, the concept of facial symmetry is closely
linked to our understanding of architecture.
and Charles Moore in Body,
Memory,
Kent Bloomer
and Architecture
note:
Front doors and house facades almost always
exhibit a measure of symmetry....This is
certainly related to the frontal 'symmetry of
mobilization' characteristic of body posture,
where the eyes and ears are focused for defense.
In houses these symmetries are facial and are
usually oriented toward the public.-"^^^
They also note that the appreciation of facial symmetry
occurs quite early in our development.
In children's drawings of houses (sometimes
even in countries where the houses do not look
like ours) there is generally a door like a
mouth, windows like eyes, and a roof like a
forehead, with symmetrical enhancements in
front."'
"Kelvin Konner, Childhood
Company, 1991), 56,
(Boston: Little, Brown and
"^Bloomer, 46.
"'ibid., 1.
128
We perceive our bodies as symmetrical, even though
they are not true mirror images.
In fact, if there is
enough asymmetry to be noticeable, we appear deformed.
Alberti noted.
When even the smallest parts of a building are
set in their proper place, they add charm: but
when positioned somewhere strange, ignoble, or
inappropriate, they will be devalued if elegant,
ruined if they are anything else. Look at
Nature's own works: for if a puppy had an ass's
ear on its forehead, or if someone had one huge
foot, or one hand vast and the other tiny, he
would look deformed. Even cattle are not liked,
if they have one eye blue and the other black: so
natural is it that right should match left."^^^
Or, as Boullee stated:
Let us imagine a man with a nose that is not
in the middle of his face, with eyes that are not
equidistant, one being higher than the
other....[W]e should consider such a man hideous,
[thus] if we imagine a Palace with an off-centre
front projection, with no symmetry and with
windows set at varying intervals and different
heights....[S]uch a building would be both
hideous and intolerable.''^^'
Although these observations by Alberti and Boullee
imply a relationship between Man and architecture, the
writings of Vitruvius are even more explicit.
The Greek
canon, that mathematical form binding ancient architects.
"^Alberti, 310.
"'Tabor, 20.
129
was based on human proportions.
Vitruvius wrote of
proportions:
Therefore if Nature has planned the human
body so that the members correspond in their
proportions to its complete configuration, the
ancients seem to have had reason in determining
that in the execution of their works they should
observe an exact adjustment of the several
members to the general pattern of the plan."°
He further notes, "For without symmetry and proportion no
temple can have a regular plan; that is, it must have an
exact proportion worked out after the fashion of the
members of a finely-shaped human body, ""''^•''
Therefore, just as symmetry is a characteristic of
man, symmetrical buildings can become a symbol, or sign,
for man.
In Peirce's terms, if the anthropomorphic
theories are correct, architectural symmetry can function
as an icon and it certainly functions as a symbol.
There
is a structural argument for symmetry and, in this sense,
symmetry could also be considered an index.
This theory
will not be elaborated here except to offer the following
description by Palladio of how to design a villa:
^^°Vitruvius, On Architecture,
161
"^Ibid., 159.
130
The rooms ought to be distributed of each
side of the entry and hall; and it is to be
observed, that those on the right correspond with
those on the left, that so the fabrick [sic] may
be the same in one place as in the other, and
that the walls may equally bear the burden of the
roof; because if the rooms are made large in one
part, and small in the other, the latter will be
more fit to resist the weight, by reason of the
nearness of the walls, and the former more weak,
which will produce in time very great
inconveniences, and ruin the whole work."^
Symmetry as a symbol for man is universally
understood.
Wittkower alleges that a symbol for man is one
of, if not the only, universal symbol since it represents
"the one common experience of all men, namely Man."^^^
The ancient Greeks believed in individuality and the
importance of the individual as he related to others in a
democratic society-
While individual structures were quite
symmetrical, created according to a canonic measurement
rooted in human proportions, they were deliberately sited
asymmetrically in relation to each other to accentuate
their individuality.
Roman architecture and urban planning
was rigidly symmetrical, siting the individual (building or
"^Andrea Palladio, I Quattro
Libri
dell'
Archetettura
(Venice, 1570), translated in Isaac Ware, The Four Books of
Andrea Palladio's
Architecture
(London: 1738; reprint. New
York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1965), 27.
153Wittkower,
176
131
person) relative to others authoritatively and thereby
downplaying their individuality.
Bruno Zevi's experience as a European Jew may have
influenced his perception that symmetry represents a
totalitarian system.
Born in 1918, Zevi was in his early
20s during World War II. He views symmetry in architecture
as representative of "dictatorial or bureaucratic power,""*
"a world easily kept under guard by rifle or machine
gun.""^
He alleges that, "Once you get rid of the fetish
of symmetry, you will have taken a giant step on the road
to a democratic architecture. "•'•^^ Zevi's colorful
descriptions could just as well be a description of how a
totalitarian state treats individuals as it is a
description of how it treats architecture.
As for symmetry in modern architecture, Bloomer and
Moore contend that before the Industrial Revolution,
architects were more sensitive to body images and that
classical design reflects this sensitivity.
After the
Industrial Revolution, mechanical considerations
164
Zevi, 20
"^Ibid., 21.
166
Ibid., 15,
132
overshadowed these aesthetic concerns and functional design
replaced symmetry.^^' Another argument, however, could be
that man's view of himself has changed and artistic
representations of ourselves have become increasingly
abstract and asymmetrical.
For example, Picasso and other
Cubist painters represent the human face and figure in
strikingly asymmetric fashion.-"-^^
Even with this asymmetry, however, and perhaps as its
justification, the human body persists as a model for
architectural design.
In the mid-twentieth century, Le
Corbusier—a painter himself who, along with the French
Cubist Amedee Ozenfant, began a new movement within the
Cubist tradition called Purism^®'—developed his own system
of dimensioning based on body proportions.
this system, le Modulor,
He described
as,
[A] measuring tool based on the hinnan body and
mathematics. The height of a man with an
upraised arm may be divided into segments at the
points determining his position in space—his
"'Bloomer, 17.
"^Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey, Art Through
the Ages, 6th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1975), 731.
"'Peter Blake, The Master Builders:
Le Corbusier,
Mies
van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright
(New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 197 6), 28.
133
feet, his solar plexus, his head, his
fingertips.^'"
He further alleged that, "the constructions whose
dimensions will be determined by these measures are
containers
or extensions
of man."^''^
Modulor
With this
system, he created a wealth of harmonious human-scaled
forms not known for their symmetry."^
He even justified
this asymmetry by anatomically correct considerations of
the human body.
That is, just as the digestive system is
asymmetrically arranged in the abdominal cavity, his villa
at Garches "reveals the compression of internal organs
within a rigid envelope . "-^'^^
Other modern architects equate the freedom of the
individual with the freedom expressed in design.
In
addition, it follows that a free, or democratic, society
would embrace freedom in design.
•'•'°Le Corbusier, Le Modulor
1'Architecture
d'Aujourd'hui,
"The architecture of such
(Paris: Editions
de
1950); quoted in Jacques
Guiton, The Ideas of Le Corbusier:
On Architecture
and
Urban Planning,
trans. Margaret Guiton (New York: George
Braziller, Inc., 1981), 67.
"^Ibid.
^'^Jonathan Hale, The Old Way of Seeing:
How
Architecture
Lost Its Magic (And How to Get It Back) (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1994), 66.
173
Tabor, 21
134
a society, what [Frank Lloyd] Wright calls the architecture
of democracy, is 'simply the human spirit given appropriate
architectural form.'"^'*
Symmetry, then, is a symbol for ourselves.
It is
understood on a primal level to represent ourselves.
Once
recognized, even if not consciously, it is interpreted
based on shared cultural experiences as well as individual
connotations attached to it as a symbol.
Tabor states,
"The anthropomorphic argument is an argument of vanity: we
like symmetric buildings since they remind us of ourself—
of our face and of our whole body."''"'^
In this sense, the feelings evoked by architectural
symmetry become a Rorschach test reflecting the
psychological makeup of the observer .•'•'^ Or, as Tabor
asserts, "the attitude to symmetry of many architectural
theorists is first a sensitive litmus test of their own
philosophical and psychological base.""'
"*Hale, 196,
"^Tabor, 18,
"^The fact that the Rorschach test inkblot is bilaterally
symmetrical strengthens the analogy.
^"Tabor, 18.
135
Zevi may be projecting his perception of the
totalitarian state onto the architecture created by that
state.
He has associated the nests representing the Nazis
with the nests of symmetry and symmetrical architecture.
Architectural theorists have ascribed significant
psychological importance to symmetry.
Those who embrace
symmetry consider it normal, the natural state of being.
Any deviation is considered, well, deviant.
Those opposed
to symmetry are just as vehement in their opposition.
Again, symmetry is a morally and emotionally neutral
geometric construct.
It only develops meaning when the
observer, with his unique neural nests, attaches meaning to
it.
Ambiguity
Another way this theory can be used in design involves
completion (the characteristic of neural nests whereby the
nest, given only a portion of an input, produces a complete
output) and classification (given an input related to
several of its association, the nest produces an output
that combines many of the common features of its normal
outputs).
These processes are active in design ambiguity.
The importance of ambiguity in the design process (and
136
sometimes in the product) cannot be overemphasized.
Ambiguity occurs in sketches and drawings when the details
are not explicit.
The observer, if not given the necessary
data, will "fill in the gaps" by the processes of
completion and classification.
This is of great use to the
designer when, through sketching, he sees more in the
drawing than he drew.
It can also be helpful to the
designer when the client completes and classifies ambiguous
drawings.
This process affords the designer a window to
the client's mind.
Smudges and partial erasures become
architectural details to those with open nests. The
precision of computer-aided design circumvents this process
to a large degree.
Preparation and Verification
The only stages in the creative process that the
individual has complete control over are Preparation and
Verification.
Incubation is as much unconscious as
conscious and Illumination is the stage over which we have
the least control.
Preparation involves precedence and the
study of types is an obvious extension and aid to design.
Verification is the hard work associated with ensuring that
all aspects of a design solution "fit" the program and make
137
sense on all structural and theoretical levels. Every
designer has known the flash of recognition when he finds a
solution only to be disappointed when Verification proves
it wrong.
Conversely, the unconscious nature of Incubation
is apparent when the "conscious" solution to a design
problem solves problems the designer did not realize he
had.
Subjectivity
Finally, the subjectivity of the creative process is
important to design considerations.
audience.
Every architect has an
An audience that should share certain
associations and certain unsatisfied nests.
If the
audience does not share these, the architect must create
them.
The creative architect creates and unravels nests
and then satisfies them through his design.
The audience
can be a client, society or the architect himself.
In the fall of 2000, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum awarded
the Florida architect Morris Lapidus its National Design
Award, along with Frank Gehry and the late John Hedjuk. At
the time, Lapidus was 98 years old.
His comment on
accepting the award was.
My feeling always was, who am I trying to
impress? I have tried all my life to create the
138
kind of architecture that makes people
satisfied.
It has nothing to do with stone and mortar and
marble. Too many architects forget who they are
working for.-^'^
Architectural Education
Academic versus Vocational
Before discussing what this theory of creativity
suggests concerning architectural education, the unique
nature of architectural education must be examined.
The
education of most professionals addresses common concerns.
Architectural education, however, involves creativity,
something not required in many other professions.
As an
example, medical education can be compared to architectural
education.
Medical education here is representative of
vocational training so this, in a larger sense, is also a
discussion contrasting vocational education with educating
someone for creative activity.
It applies similarly to the
difference in a draftsman and an architect and, in turn,
speaks to the difference between skill and creativity.
Academic education is as broad as vocational training
is narrow.
Medicine involves learning an impressive volume
"^Paul Goldberger, "The Architect of Swanky Populism,"
The New Yorker,
4 December 2 000, 36.
139
of facts and applying them in an algorithmic fashion. Many
medical insurance companies apply algorithms to direct
treatment and artificial intelligence systems exist to
solve diagnostic dilemmas algorithmically.
As noted
previously, however, nest building by assimilating facts
presented externally represents learning and algorithmic
problem solving is, by definition, not creative.
Architectural education also requires the assimilation
of a large amount of basic information, but it does not
stop there. Architects are also expected to apply the
information in original and useful ways.
Architects are
expected to be creative.
The respective educational processes reflect this
difference.
Medical education requires the student to
master impressive amounts of information while it makes no
demands for creativity.
Architectural education also
requires the successful student to master a great deal of
information, but it must also address creative thinking and
problem solving.
Physicians are primarily concerned with making a
diagnosis.
When a patient presents with a symptom, the
physician uses a variety of techniques to investigate the
complaint in an attempt to discover the underlying cause of
140
the problem.
Once the physician makes the diagnosis, he
prescribes a treatment based on his prior experiences and
his knowledge of available technology-
The emphasis is on
making the diagnosis while the treatments are relatively
standardized once the problem is identified.
For example,
when a patient with suspected coronary artery disease
presents with chest pain, an impressive array of modern
diagnostic procedures allows the cardiologist to pinpoint
the problem with astonishing accuracy.
Once the problem is
defined, however, only a few of a vast number of possible
therapeutic options are considered appropriate.
The art of
medicine resides in how accurately the practitioner can
define the problem.
Once he adequately defines the
problem, convention all but mandates the solution.
Architects are more concerned with solutions than
problems.
outset.
The problems are usually well defined at the
In architectural practice, novel solutions to
standard problems are highly regarded.
In medicine, novel
solutions are discouraged and embraced only at the
physician's peril.''''^
"'The prescribing of non-standard medical therapy has
significant civil and, of late, criminal legal
implications.
141
Physicians, therefore, apply standard solutions to
unique problems while architects apply novel solutions to
standard problems.
This may be one reason why some
architects consider handicapped accessibility codes an
anathema to creativity.
Standardized solutions stifle
creativity, which is, in one sense, the generation of nonstandard solutions.
Physicians on the other hand are
expected to embrace standard treatments.
Of course, not all architects are creative. By
exhaustive study of historical solutions to architectural
problems, however, a less creative architect can compensate
for this deficit.
Unfortunately, technological changes
expose this weakness.
Creativity cannot be taught.
Rather, successful
teachers develop an atmosphere in which creativity can
flourish.
No amount of study of creative people can make a
student creative and no matter how carefully a work is
dissected, can its reconstruction be anything but imitative
and, by definition, derivative.
exercises are futile.
This is not to say these
The study of creative projects can
develop techniques to employ when creating unique designs
and the act of recreating a recognized creative work
142
solidifies abstractions, which are useful in
conceptualizing new ideas.
In the same fashion, designing, the creative aspect of
architecture, cannot be taught. What can be taught are
techniques for expressing creative activity.
Drawing well
allows the artist to convey his thoughts more effectivelyIndeed, much of architectural education such as design
labs, drawing exercises and critiques is more useful in
teaching the student how to communicate ideas than it is in
teaching the student to be creative.
Principles are important to both medicine and
architecture.
The pathophysiology of body systems is
taught by studying the principles of disease processes.
The interventions into the disease processes—the facts—
are in a constant state of flux. New procedures and
medications are forever being developed while the
underlying principles of disease processes change more
slowly.
For example, a principle underlying cardiovascular
disease is that blood vessels can become blocked by
material that builds up on their linings.
The treatments
vary, from preventing the buildup to clearing it out
mechanically or chemically to routing blood around it. The
principal however remains unchanged.
143
One principle of a
roof is to keep the inside of a building dry.
Whether it
IS flat or steep and the materials used to achieve this
vary with fashion and technology.
has failed as a roof.
If it leaks, however, it
Similarly, if blood does not flow
through a blocked blood vessel after treatment, the medical
treatment has failed.
Architectural creativity involves the generation of
novel solutions to standard problems.
For example,
structures exist to afford privacy and protection from the
elements.
This is the principal.
The mechanism by which
architects accomplish this involves creative thinking and
the solutions change as technology changes.
In modern
times, you must have some means of delivering electricity
to a building and a certain collection of facts concerning
how electricity works and how it is delivered is necessary.
The details, however, are subject to creative thought
within this framework.
Handicapped accessibility is another example.
The
entrance to a building, in principle, exists only as a
means of opening a wall to allow access.
For years,
functional requirements of human beings delegated certain
rules for entry-
The opening was not located five feet
above the ground without steps because the majority of
144
people could not enter.
Likewise, the size of the opening
admits the average adult.
Therefore, over years, the
"rules" evolved, stair height, size of the openings, and so
forth.
Handicapped accessibility involves new "rules." It
therefore places a significant burden on the non-creative
or minimally creative architect who applies standard
solutions to architectural problems. Historical, or
standard, solutions are no longer appropriate. However,
handicapped accessibility should pose no greater problem
for the creative architect than the intuitive rules of
access previously incorporated into architectural design.^^°
Handicap considerations are no different from any
other constraints; they are only more difficult for the
•^^°Building codes and regulations as they apply to
handicapped accessibility is a different matter. These
standards are based on current technology that is subject
to change. For example, the requirement that elevated
entrances have ramps could be made obsolete by requiring
all wheelchairs to climb stairs—this technology does
exist. It is debatable whether it would be cheaper to
convert all architecture or simply equip all the
handicapped with the technology. In like form, is it
ergonomically necessary to require standard counter heights
to be 2" lower or could the standard wheelchair be made 2"
higher? Again, these arguments are moot as a large body of
laws now exists demanding that ramps and counter heights
conform to rigid standards that leave no room for creative
modifications.
145
non creative because they have nothing from which to derive
their designs.
Importance of a Broad Based Education
This theory predicts that a broad based education
might foster creativity.
The more neural nests available,
the more creative possibilities exist.
The importance of a
broad education for architects has been recognized for
centuries.
Architectura,
1.
2.
3.
In the first chapter of the first book of De
Vitruvius wrote:
The science of the architect depends upon
many disciplines and various apprenticeships
which are carried out in other arts. His
personal service consists in craftsmanship
and technology. Craftsmanship is continued
and familiar practice, which is carried out
by the hands in such material as is
necessary for the purpose of a design.
Technology sets forth and explains things
wrought in accordance with technical skill
and method.
So architects who without culture aim at
manual skill cannot gain a prestige
corresponding to their labours, while those
who trust to theory and literature obviously
follow a shadow and not reality. But those
who have mastered both, like men equipped in
full armour, soon acquire influence and
attain their purpose.
Both in general and especially in
architecture are these two things found;
that which signifies and that which is
signified. That which is signified is the
thing proposed about which we speak; that
which signifies is the demonstration
unfolded in systems of precepts. Wherefore
146
a man who is to follow the architectural
profession manifestly needs to have
experience of both kinds. He must have both
a natural gift and also readiness to learn.
(For neither talent without instruction nor
instruction without talent can produce the
perfect craftsman.) He should be a man of
letters, a skilful draughtsman, a
mathematician, familiar with scientific
inquiries, a diligent student of philosophy,
acquainted with music; not ignorant of
medicine, learned in the responses of
jurisconsults, familiar with astronomy and
astronomical calculations .^^^
Probably the only thing that has changed in the two
thousand years since Vitruvius wrote this is that we now
have biological justification for his sentiments.
More recently, Jones proposed an alternative to the
current methods of educating architects wherein.
Students of all relevant disciplines—
architecture, planning, landscape and
environmental design, the social sciences, the
engineering disciplines, construction,
development and management—would participate
together in the Vitruvian method of receiving as
much common knowledge as possible before going on
and specializing in their own areas.•'•^^
This theory of creativity suggests that such a program
would likely result in more creative practitioners of
architecture.
181,
Vitruvius, On Architecture,
3
"^ Jones, 565,
147
Education builds nests, this is learning which results
in intelligence but has little to do with creativityCreativity is the process that links the nests created by
education.
A broad based education creates more nests,
which, in turn, allows for greater creativity.
Creativity involves "useful novelty" and,
unfortunately, many consider usefulness and novelty to be a
zero-sum proposition.
Creativity, they believe, resides
along a line with usefulness and novelty at opposite ends.
The more novel a response, the less utility it
demonstrates, and vice
versa.
Even some investigators in
the field of creativity describe usefulness as a constraint
on novelty.
Mednick states that creativity is,
"distinguished from original thinking by the imposition
requirements on originality.""^®^
of
However, Hebb's
"Biologist's Fallacy" applies here.
Creativity requires
that a response be both original and useful, one without
the other is not creative.
Just as a response is
considered more creative if it is more novel, it is also
more creative if it is more useful.
satisfies more nests.
Useful in that it
If a broad based education creates
"^Mednick, 221
148
more nests, a response must satisfy more nests to be deemed
creative.
People in the domain of the creation require
more nests to be satisfied which results in a more useful
response, which is a more creative response.
If an architectural student designs a building that
does not consider building codes or structural concerns,
the design will be less creative than a design that does.
The more nests he satisfies (site, building codes, handicap
accessibility, and so on), the more creative the design
will be judged by someone with knowledge of these things.
If a student is simply not aware of the multiple
components—if he does not have the requisite nests—he
cannot be expected to be as creative as someone who does.
Education also unravels established nests.
the weaknesses in some associations.
It shows
By expanding the
nests, it exposes areas that do not fit precisely.
Creativity answers the questions raised by education.
The utility of a broad education lies in the simple
fact that you cannot link what you do not have.
There is a
direct relationship between education and creativity.
Learning is a dynamic and ongoing process.
The more
associations stored, the higher the likelihood that fresh
combinations can and will occur.
149
As Mednick states.
It should be clear that an individual without the
requisite elements in his response repertoire
will not be able to combine them so as to arrive
at a creative solution. An architect who does
not know of the existence of a new material can
hardly be expected to use it creatively. 184
Donald MacKinnon's analyses of creative architects
also confirm the importance of a broad based education.
One should not conclude, however, that the
intelligence of creative architects is expressed
only in narrow and rather specific skills and
abilities. On the General Information
Survey...creative architects are among the
highest scorers. This test consists of farranging factual questions about sports, music,
literature, history, geography, drinks,
restaurants, and the like, and is designed to
assess an individual's general knowledge of the
world and the culture in which he lives.
In brief, creative architects reveal
themselves as broadly informed (remember, we
checked "interests wide" for them), who, if not
outstanding in their performance on tests of
verbal intelligence are, nevertheless,
intellectually very competent. A distinction
must be made between IQ intelligence and
effective intelligence; and it is on the latter
that creative architects excel. Yet, if verbal
intelligence tests are not the special metier of
creative architects, they are nonetheless highly
verbal characters. The item which fell in
fifteenth place (out of 100) in our Q-sort
description of them was "Is a talkative
person. ""^^^
" * I b i d . , 222.
"MacKinnon, "The P e r s o n a l i t y Correlates of C r e a t i v i t y ,
25,
150
This is underscored by a description of Louis
Sullivan's library, which affords a unique glimpse into the
broad based interests of at least one great architect.
He read a great deal. The books in his
library reveal some rather esoteric interests.
There were several books on Japan and Japanese
art, and he possessed a small but choice
collection of Oriental rugs, Chinese and Japanese
vases, bronzes, and jade carvings. He had about
a dozen books on gems and precious stones, from
the designs of which it has been suggested that
he derived motives for his ornament, although
this is not true. Gray's Botany influenced his
ornament more than any other single source. He
had a dog-eared copy, showing extensive use in
studying the morphology of plants and their
curious and marvelous differentiation within
species. He referred the book to students
frequently. His sketch-book was full of drawings
from this source: complex organic developments
from single germinal ideas. There were a few
books on the history of music, others on musical
analysis, harmony, etc., and fourteen volumes of
oratorios. Several books on psychology and
psychic phenomena reveal a profound interest in
this field. There were in addition well-worn
copies of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and
Nietzsche's Thus
Spake
Zarathustra,
especially
suggestive to the student of his writings.^®®
^^orrison, 225,
151
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSIONS
In summary, although the details are yet to be found,
creativity must involve the interplay of neurons comprising
the cerebral cortex, mediated by neurotransmitters—herein
described as neural nests—if, for no other reason, there
is nothing else there to serve this function.
The notion of these nests, these associations of
neural cells alive with energy and awaiting a triggering
stimulus, is both accurate and appealing.
Our speech
reflects the intuitive recognition of this concept.
"Let
me think about it," or "let me put my mind to it,"
describes the process of self-stimulation of nests to
associate into new nests. You can imagine these nests
humming with stored energy (knowledge and memory) until
excited and combined by a "spark" of creativity.
Conversely, when mental conflicts are resolved (and
therefore further creative thought is not necessary) your
mind is "put to rest."
Some solutions to problems never
"cross" your mind although if the solution becomes obvious
there may be a "shock" of recognition.
One of the best
words to describe creative thinking, however, aptly
152
describes the cataclysmic discharges of energy required for
creative thinking as the spread of electrical impulses
incorporates more and more nests of associated neurons.
How appropriate it is that we call this a "brainstorm."
Moreover, how comfortable we become in our wellconstructed nests. We construct an argument.
We "collect
our thoughts." We lay a foundation and build upon it to
support our assertions. When brainstorms unravel the
nests, we piece them back together from the materials at
hand, other nests or fragments of nests, to create a secure
home.
If mental activity weakens our nests, we repair
them.
If we build carefully and the connections are sound,
the resulting ideas are aesthetically pleasing.
This theory, as a work of architecture, is hopefully
sound.
Although the finishes, the details, can and will
change, the basic structure should stand.
Occasionally, as
conditions change, a major remodeling might become
necessary, the moving of walls or the addition of a wing as
dictated by new data.
Just as in a building, it is hoped
that this can be accomplished without altering the basic
structure and with an eye to the original intent.
Finally, the suggestion that the individual has
conscious control over the two most important stages of
153
creativity poses an interesting question.
Is this an
elaborate parlor trick, a way to simply appear creative?
If an individual works hard enough developing nests and
satisfying them appropriately—a daunting but achievable
task—is he creative?
As Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., whose father
was an architect, wrote in his Introduction to
Mother
Night:
This is the only story of mine whose moral I
know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I
simply happen to know what it is: We are what we
pretend to be, so we must be careful about what
we pretend to be."'"®'
If you pretend to be creative, and in doing so
convince creative people that you are, are you creative?
Yes.
"'Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night
Publishing Co., Inc., 1961), v.
154
(New York: Dell
REFERENCES CITED
Aamodt, S. M., and M Constantine-Paton. "The role of
neural activity in synaptic development and its
implications for adult brain function." Advances
Neurology 79 (1999): 133.
Alberti, Leon Battista.
On the
Art
of Building
in
in
Ten
Books.
Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and
Robert Travernor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT
Press, 1988.
Amabile, Teresa M. Creativity
Westview Press, 1996.
in Context.
Boulder:
Atwood, H. L., and J. M. Wojtowicz. "Silent synapses in
neural plasticity: current evidence." Learning and
Memory 6, no. 6 (November-December 1999); 542.
Barford, Philip. "Beethoven as Man and Artist." In The
Beethoven Reader, edited by Denis Arnold and Nigel
Fortune, 21-38. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1971.
Barnett, Lincoln.
Edition.
Black, I. B.
Journal
Blake, Peter.
der Rohe,
The Universe
and Dr.
Einstein.
Revised
New York; Bantam Books, 1968.
"Trophic regulation of synaptic plasticity."
of Neurobiology
Al,
The Master Builders:
Frank Lloyd Wright.
no.l (October 1999): 108.
Le Corbusier,
Mies van
New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, Inc., 1976.
Bliss, T. V. P-, and T. L0mo. "Long-lasting potentiation
of synaptic transmission in the dentate area of the
anaesthetized rabbit following stimulation of the
perforant path."
The Journal
of
Physiology
232
(1973): 331-356.
Bloomer, Kent C , and Charles W. Moore. Body, Memory, and
Architecture.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
155
Boden, Margaret A. The Creative Mind: Myths and
Mechanisms.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990.
Bower, Herbert. "Beethoven's Creative Illness."
Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
(March 1989): 111-116.
23
Ching, Francis D. K. Architecture:
Form, Space and
New York; Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979.
Order.
Cleary, Richard L. Merchant Prince and Master
Builder:
Edgar J. Kaufmann and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Pittsburgh:
The Heinz Architectural Center Carnegie Museum of Art,
1999.
Cooper, Barry. Beethoven and the Creative
Process.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
de la Croix, Horst, and Richard G. Tansey- Art Through the
Ages, 6th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc., 1975.
Eco, Umberto. Six Walks in the Fictional
Woods.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1994.
Einstein, Albert. "Zur Electrodynamic
bewegter
Annalen der Physik 17 (1905); 891.
"Die Grundlage der
allgemeinen
Relativitatstheorie."
Annalen der Physik
50.
Korper."
49 (1916):
Ideas and Opinions.
Edited by Carl Seelig.
New translations and revisions by Sonja Bargmann. New
York: Wings Books, 1954.
Frascari, Marco. Monsters of
Architecture:
Anthropomorphism
in Architectural
Theory.
Savage,
Maryland; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1991.
Galton, Francis. Hereditary
Laws and Consequences.
Genius: An Inquiry into
Its
London: Watts & Co., 1950.
156
Gazzaniga, Michael S., ed.
Neurosciences.
Press, 1997.
Conversations
in
the
Cognitive
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT
Gazzaniga, Michael S., Richard B. Irvy and George R.
Mangun, eds.
the Mind.
Cognitive
Neuroscience:
The Biology
of
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.
Goldberger, Paul. "The Architect of Swanky Populism."
New Yorker, 4 December 2 000, 36.
Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion:
A Study
Psychology
of Pictorial
Representation.
in
The
the
London: The
Folio Society, 2000.
Guiton, Jacques.
Architecture
The Ideas of Le Corbusier:
On
and Urban Planning.
Translated by
Margaret Guiton. New York: George Braziller, Inc.,
1981.
Hale, Jonathan. The Old Way of Seeing:
Lost Its Magic (And How to Get It
How
Back) .
Architecture
Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.
Hampson, Peter J., David Marks and John T. E. Richardson,
eds.
Imagery:
Current
Developments.
New York:
Routhledge, 1990.
Hebb, D. 0.
The Organization
of Behavior.
New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 1949.
. Essay on Mind. Hillsdale, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1980.
Homer. The Iliad.
Translated by Alexander Pope. Norwalk,
Connecticut; The Easton Press, 1979.
Jaynes, Julian. The Origin
of
Breakdown
of the Bicameral
Consciousness
in
the
Mind.
Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1976.
Jeffery, Kathryn J., and Ian C. Reid. "Modifiable Neuronal
Connections: An Overview for Psychiatrists."
American
Journal of Psychiatry
154, no. 2 (February 1997): 156164.
157
Jones, Michael Anthony. "Models for educating architects
in this century and the next." Ph.D. diss., Georgia
Institute of Technology, 1989.
King, Stephen.
On Writing.
New York: Scribner, 2000.
Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation.
With a forward by
Sir Cyril Burt. New York: The Macmillan Company,
1964.
Konner, Melvin. Childhood.
Company, 1991.
Boston: Little, Brown and
Kruft, Hanno-Walter. A History
of Architectural
Theory
from Vitruvius
to the Present.
Trans. Ronald Taylor,
Elsie Callander and Antony Wood. New York: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors
We Live
By.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Lane, Anthony. "Lost Horizon: The sad and savage wit of A.
E. Housman." The New Yorker,
19 & 26 February 2 001,
208.
Leach, Neil, ed. Rethinking
Architecture:
A Reader
Cultural
Theory.
New York: Routhledge, 1997.
in
Le Corbusier. i^hen Cathedrals
Were White: A Journey
to
Country
of Timid People.
Translated by Francis E.
Hyslop, Jr. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947.
the
Towards a New Architecture.
Translated by
Frederick Etchells. New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1986.
MacKinnon, Donald W- "The Nature and Nurture of Creative
Talent." American
Psychologist
17 (July 1962), 484494.
. "The Personality Correlates of Creativity: A
Study of American Architects."
In Proceedings
of the
XIV International
Congress
of Applied
Psychology
Held
in Copenhagen
13-19 August
1961.
Edited by Gerhard S.
Neilsen. Vol. 2, Personality
Research.
Edited by
158
Stanley Coopersmith, 11-39.
1962.
Copenhagen: Munksgaard,
Mednick, Sarnoff A. "The Associative Basis of the Creative
Process." Psychological
Review 69, no. 3 (1962): 220232.
Miller, Ronald S. As Above,
Putnam, Inc., 1992.
Morrison, Hugh.
Architecture.
1935.
So Below.
New York: Penguin
Louis Sullivan:
Prophet
of Modern
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
Palladio, Andrea. J Quattro
Libri
dell'
Architettura.
Venice: 1570. Translated by Isaac Ware. The Four
Books of Andrea Palladio's
Architecture.
London:
1734; reprint. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,
1965.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Philosophical
Writings
Edited by Justus Buchler. New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1955.
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance
C. K. Scott Moncrieff.
1934.
of
Peirce.
of Things Past.
Translated by
New York: Random House, Inc.,
Rothenberg, Albert, and Carl R. Hausman, eds. The
Creativity
Question.
Durham, N. C : Duke University
Press, 1976.
Runco, Mark A., and Steven R. Pritzker, eds.
Encyclopedia
of Creativity.
Vol. 1 & 2. San Diego: Academic
Press, 1999.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture.
Dover Publications, Inc., 1989.
New York:
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea,
4th ed.
Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co. Ltd., 1896.
Sourdet, V., and D Debanne. "The role of dendritic
filtering in associative long-term synaptic
159
plasticity." Learning
October 1999), 422.
and Memory 6/5 (September-
Sternberg, Robert J., ed. Handbook of
Creativity.
Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press,
1999.
Creativity:
Swede, George.
A New Psychology.
Toronto,
Ontario; Wall & Emerson, Inc., 1993.
Tabor, Philip. "Fearful Symmetry."
Review 171 (May 1982): 18-24.
Tafel, Edgar.
Genius.
1979.
Years
Frank
Lloyd
Architectural
Wright:
Apprentice
to
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.,
Tarnas, Richard.
Understanding
View.
with
The
The Passion
the Ideas
of the Western
Mind:
That Have Shaped Our World
New York: Harmony Books, 1991.
Architecture:
Trachtenberg, Marvin, and Isabelle Hyman.
From Prehistory
Tradition.
to Post-Modernism
/ The
Western
The Netherlands: Harry N. Abrams, 1986.
Toni, N., P. A. Buchs, I. Nikonenko, C. R. Bron and D.
Muller. "LTP promotes formation of multiple spine
synapses between a single axon terminal and a
dendrite." Nature 402 (25 November 1999), 421.
Trojan, S., and J- Pokorny. "Theoretical aspects of
neuroplasticity." Physiological
Research 48, no. 2
(1999): 87.
Twombly, Robert.
Louis
Sullivan:
His
Life
and Work.
New
York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1986.
Vitruvius. On Architecture.
Loeb Classic Library.
Translated by Frank Granger. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931.
.
The Ten Books
Morris Hicky Morgan.
Inc., 1960,
on Architecture.
Translated by
New York; Dover Publications,
160
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Mother Night.
Publishing Co., Inc., 1961.
New York; Dell
Wagner, Otto. Modern Architecture:
A Guidebook for His
Students
to this Field of Art."
1902 Edition.
Translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Santa Monica,
California; The Getty Center for the History of Art
and the Hximanities, 1988.
Wallas, Graham. The Art of Thought.
Brace and Company, 1926.
New York; Harcourt,
Wilson, Richard Guy. The AIA Gold Medal.
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1984.
New York:
Witelson, Sandra F., Debra L. Kigar, and Thomas Harvey.
"The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein."
Lancet
353 (19 June 1999); 2149-1823.
Wittkower, Rudolf. Allegory
and the Migration
Boulder: Westview Press, 1977.
of
Zevi, Bruno, The Modern Language of
Architecture.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978.
161
Symbols.
OTHER REFERENCES
Bohm, David.
On Creativity.
Cary, Joyce.
Art
New York: Routledge, 1998.
and Reality:
Ways of
the
Creative
Process.
Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company,
Inc., 1958.
The Astonishing
Crick, Francis.
Search for the Soul.
Sons, 1994.
Hypothesis:
The
Scientific
New York: Charles Scribner's
Crick, Francis, and Graeme Mitchison. "The Function of
Dream Sleep." Nature 304 (July 1983): 111-114.
Descartes'
Damasio, Antonio R.
the Human Brain.
in
Error:
Emotion,
Reason,
and
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1994.
. The Feeling
of What Happens: Body and
Emotion
the Making of Consciousness.
New York: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1999.
Dowling, John E.
Creating
Mind:
How the
Brain
Works.
New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.
Gazzaniga, Michael S. The Mind's Past.
Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1998.
Goldberger, A. L. "Fractuals and the birth of Gothic:
reflections on the biologic basis of creativity."
Molecular
Psychiatry
1 (May 1996): 99-104.
Hilgard, Ernest R. "Creativity: The Juxtaposition and
Integration of Disparate Categories." Science 147 (1
January 1965): 37-38.
Howard, Pierce J.
ed.
The Owner's
Manual
for
the
Brain,
2nd
Austin, Texas: Bard Press, 2000.
Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind:
Meaning,
Imagination,
and Reason.
The Bodily
Basis
Chicago; The
University of Chicago Press, 1987.
162
of
Le Goff, Jacques. The Medieval
Imagination.
Translated by
Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1988.
MacKinnon, Donald W. "Creativity and Images of the Self."
In The Study of Lives,
ed. Robert W. White, 251-278.
New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963.
McEwen, Indra K. Socrates'
Ancestor:
An Essay on
Architectural
Beginnings.
Massachusetts: MIT Press,
1993.
Peat, David F. The Blackwing
Night:
Creativity
in
and Mind.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus
Publishing, 2000.
Restak, Richard.
Brainscapes.
Nature
New York: Hyperion, 1995.
Ricceur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor.
Translated by Robert
Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.
Ridley, Matt.
Chapters.
1999.
Genome: The Autobiography
of a Species
in 23
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.,
Rothenberg, Albert. Creativity
and Madness.
Baltimore,
Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Schrodinger, Erwin. iVhat is Life?
Cambridge; Cambridge
University Press, 1944. Reprint, London: The Folio
Society, 2000.
Shainess, Natalie. "The Roots of Creativity." The
American
Journal
of Psychoanalysis
49/2 (June 1989):
127-138.
Smith, Steven M., Thomas B. Ward and Ronald A. Finke, eds.
The Creative
Cognition
Approach.
Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997.
Tippett, Lynette J. "The Generation of Visual Images; A
Review of Neuropsychological Research and Theory."
Psychological
Bulletin
112, no. 3 (November 1992);
415-432.
163
Tulving, Endel, ed. Memory, Consciousness,
Philadelphia; Psychology Press, 1999.
Weiner, Jonathan.
Knopf, 1999.
Time,
Love,
Memory.
and the
New York: Alfred A,
Weiner, Robert Paul. Creativity
& Beyond:
Cultures,
Values,
and Change.
Albany, New York: State
University of New York Press, 2000.
164
Brain.