Creativity and constraint

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 77, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 67-82

  Novitz, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149296365     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048409912348811     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (Reading: Cardinal, 1992);
2. and 'What is Creativity' in Dimensions of Creativity, ed. Margaret Boden (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), Ch. 4. Wherever possible, these works will respectively be referred to as CM and 'WIC in the text.
3. See, as well, Boden, 'Introduction' to Dimensions of Creativity, pp. 2-3.
4. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, 3rd edn. (London: Phaidon, 1968), pp. 131-152.
5. For more on this, see my 'Conventions and the Growth of Pictorial Style', The British Journal of Aesthetics 16 (1976), 324-337.
6. Compare this way of drawing the distinction with F. D'Agostino's distinction between subjective and intersubjective creativity in F. D'Agostino, Chomsky's System of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 174-5. Subjective creativity correlates with Boden's P-creativity; inter-subjective creativity roughly with her H-creativity. For reasons that are not apparent, D'Agostino associates intersubjective creativity with the product of a creative act; subjective creativity is associated with the creative act itself. This appears arbitrary since every creative product presupposes a creative act. My discussion focuses on the creative act, which is primary in any discussion of human creativity. Hence, the distinction between H-creativity and P-creativity finds its primary application with creative acts; its secondary and derivative application with creative products.
7. See, Gombrich, Art and Illusion, pp. 159-161. Like Leonardo, Gombrich believes in 'the power of "confused shapes", such as clouds or muddy water, to rouse the mind to new inventions' (p. 159). Karl R. Popper is even more explicit.
8. On his well-known view, stated in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) (London: Hutchinson, 1972), pp. 31-32, the process of invention has nothing to do with epistemology since questions about how we invent or discover new ideas are not concerned with the justification of our knowledge claims. On his view, 'there is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas. .My view may be expressed by saying that every discovery contains "an irrational element" or a "creative intuition".'
9. Boden, 'Introduction' to Dimensions of Creativity, p. 6.
10. See Johnathan W. Schooler and Joseph Melcher, "The Ineffability of Insight' in The Creative Cognition Approach, ed. Steven M. Smith, Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A. Finke (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), esp. p. 99 where the authors argue that not having excessive experience with a problem or in a field is sometimes helpful.
11. I am indebted to Kevin Melchione for drawing my attention to this article. See Jack D. Flam, Matisse on Art (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978), p. 37.
12. Cf. L. Briskman, 'Creative Product and Creative Process in Science and the Arts', The Monist 22 (1980), esp. p. 95,
13. and T. Nickles, 'Can Scientific Constraints be Violated Rationally' in Scientific Discovery. Logic, and Rationality, ed. T. Nickles (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1980), p. 288, both of whom see creativity as conceptually linked to problem-solving.
14. This claim brings D'Agostino, Chomsky's System of Ideas, p. 171, to the view that 'the degree of creativity manifested in a particular product is inversely proportional to the "strength" of the constraints on the problem for which that product is a solution'. Where the constraints strongly determine the solution to a problem, he argues, the solution is less creative than where the constraints allow the agent considerable latitude. While this is plausible for many cases of P-creativity, the strong connection made between creativity and problem-solving overlooks the fact that the explorative exercise in which Matisse engages when he paints is not directed at rinding a solution to any particular problem even in the very weak sense of problem-solving that D'Agostino isolates on p.170. It is not as if he sets out, for instance, to solve the problem of satisfying himelf. Rather, his is a playful activity performed for its own sake, not for the sake of solving a problem. Even so, it may properly be described as P-creative.
15. See Glyn Alkin, Sound Recording and Reproduction (New York: Focal Press, 1981). Edison's phonograph consisted of a revolving cylinder wrapped in tinfoil. A sharp point was pressed against the foil-wrapped cylinder. Attached to the point were a diaphragm and a large mouthpiece. The cylinder was rotated by hand. When Edison spoke into the mouthpiece, his voice made the diaphragm vibrate. This caused the sharp point to cut a trace in the tinfoil. When a needle replaced the cutting point, the talking machine reproduced Edison's original words.
16. The discovery was not H-creative. The process of vulcanization was first discovered by American Indians. See Jack Weatherford, Indian Givers (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988), pp.46-49.
17. See, for example, Ronald A. Finke, Thomas B. Ward and Steven M. Smith, Creative Cognition: Theory Research and Applications (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
18. See, as well their edited collection The Creative Cognition Approach (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).