What is Creativity Anyway?

Posted on July 21, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

I started Creating Brains.com because I needed to read it.  I have always thought of myself as creative but through years of having little children underfoot and family-size to-do lists my creative energy shrunk.  Still I read widely and went to graduate school. Then one sunny afternoon in May my oldest daughter died suddenly and cosmic entropy ensued.  Several years later I had to admit I was no longer creative.  How could I be? I could not even remember my last novel thought.  One dark night while in the hospital expecting my last child I began this blog. I read and wrote about Creativity every day for one year.  I poured-through Applied Creativity, Biography, History, Neuroscience, Creativity Theory and insights from contemporary highly Creative people on how to live the Creative Life—from Scientists, Architects, Writers and Humanitarians.  Along the way I tinkered with practicable plans to recover for myself and my still-young children what I once thought core to human nature– the capacity to Create beyond biology.

The first book I read and claim (after reading hundreds of books on and around this topic) as my favorite, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s  Creativity, supplied the original working definition for this blog. Csikszentmihalyi defines Creativity as follows:

Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one.

And,

The definition of a creative person is:  someone whose thoughts or actions change a domain, or establish a new domain…a domain cannot be changed without explicit or implicit consent of a field responsible for it.

Not everyone will agree with Csikszentmihalyi’s definition, of course, but I love it most because it inspires as well as defines.  Others have tried to define Creativity.  Check out some of my favorite attempts below:

  • Any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one with explicit or implicit consent of the field responsible for it. (Used by M. Csikszentmihalyi)
  • Makings things from scratch. (Used by Twyla Tharp– choreographer)
  • Building on and with the works of others. (If I have seen further, it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants.– Isaac Newton). 
  • Self-expression with no editing. (Expressing with precision all the gold sparks the soul gives off. –Joan Miro, painter)

So what is Creativity then?  Is it an effect?  Is it a cause?  And why must we (still) define it anyway?

I’ll start with my last question.  Creativity must be defined and the definition must be accepted as standard so the topic may be studied scientifically rather than philosophically.  Sixty years ago historians wondered how to improve the study of history.  History was still a discipline of philosophy at the time– inexact, subjective. It lacked scientific definition and definitiveness. This is no longer the case.  Twenty-first century historians work governed by academic definitions and parameters, more science-like than philosophical. There are down-sides to definitiveness for sure. But the study of History has progressed like never before since this transition began in the late 1970′s.  The study of Creativity would benefit from a similar transition.  The Science of Creativity is becoming more, well, scientific.  With hi-tech research tools–  fMRIs and EEGs, scientists hone in on the particulars of the Creative process.  But a general, universally accepted, definition of Creativity is still at large. Eventually we’ll want to unite all we know about Creativity from history, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and more but for now a definition seems the next crucial step.

Am I right?  Let me know what you think.

And now back to my first question– What is Creativity after all?  Do you agree with Csikszentmihalyi or Miro?

Do you have a definition to contribute?  (If yes, write a new definition in the comments section below).

I love comments! I can’t wait to read what you think.

*Note:  I play with my children, work on a book-length project, teach college History and am about to return to grad school to complete my PhD in Early Modern European History so I do not post on Creating Brains.com very often these days.  Still, the topic of Creativity fascinates me — I will be back and more often soon (or at least sort-of-soon).

Filed under: creativity, Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, Idea Sharing, Ideas | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

Death and Mindset

Posted on January 5, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Sometime after the birth of my first child I read The Good Life: Scott and Ellen Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living. Self-sufficient living is a backward idea overall, but one powerful image of the Nearings’ story has stuck with me.   Scott Nearing died by choice.  He lived to 100 years of age and on his birthday decided he was ready to die. He stopped eating and weaned himself from water.  He sat on the porch of the home he and Ellen built and held her hand. Some hours were quiet, other times they talked about everything. Scott slowed down to stillness and one morning, a few days later, he stayed in bed. By midday he closed his eyes forever. Ellen wrote of his quiet death as a coda to a life of intense peace.

Recently, my eight-year-old son started making witty remarks or jokes trailed by the phrase “and then he [or she] died“.  He doesn’t stop to catch anyone’s reaction.  He just moves on. I don’t know if he’s thinking about death in any serious sense.  But a few evenings ago, my husband finished reading the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Halllows, in which various important and well-loved characters die.  I think my son is shedding some of the book’s intensity by treating the concept of death whimsically and lightly.

As a young man, French philosopher Michel de Montaigne obsessed about death and reading classical philosophers seemed to feed his morbid thoughts. Historian Sarah Bakewell says,

Death was a topic of which the ancients never tired.  Cicero summed up their principle neatly: To philosophize is to learn how to die.

When Montaigne wrote his own, now classic Essays–decades later, death was not so scary anymore.  He wrote,

If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry.  Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you.  Don’t bother your head about it.

Sarah Bakewell author of How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, says,

“Don’t worry about death”, became [Montaigne's] most fundamental, most liberating answer to the question of how to live.  It made it possible to do just that: live.

In any case, death of a loved one rocks your soul, regardless of how you have dealt with the concept of death in the past. About a month ago, I wrote about the predominance of death and loss in the lives of highly creative people. As for Montaigne, he came to his sanguinesque conclusion about death more than fifteen years after loosing his father, his wife and five of his six young children within one decade.  Other Highly Creative people stay in mourning-mode throughout the Creative process, from beginning to end. The excellent 2009 film Creation–about Charles Darwin, demonstrates this beautifully by highlighting Darwin’s intense inner struggle with the loss of his beloved nine-year old daughter, Annie.  Montaigne instead, seems to have gone through a lengthy mourning  period–fifteen years, before entering the Creative process.   Although Montaigne was one of the Renaissance’s most respected philosophers, he understood the world and analyzed it more like a Scientist– with detached fascination.  And Darwin, the father of modern biology–a scientist for sure, finally wrote down and published his theory of Natural Selection: On the Origin of Species to heal–more like a tortured, emotionally labile writer.

As I study the lives of Highly Creative people, I have come to notice creative-types enter the Creative process in either an archetypal Writer’s mindset–as Darwin did or an archetypal Scientist’s mindset, like Michel de Montaigne.

Filed under: Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, The Child, The Scientist, The Writer | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

Creativity as a Hierarchy of Processes

Posted on December 10, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Although the word Creativity actually appeared in the English dictionary only in the early twentieth century, by the 1950′s it became a popular catch-all and often overused word. Sixty years later, creativity is still ill-defined.  Today, a whimsical cook is creative, as is a finger painting toddler.

Earlier this year, Fast Company Magazine published its list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business, which includes pop star Lady Gaga, Ted Conference curator Chris Anderson and film-maker James Cameron.

But was is it that makes all these people creative?

What is the core of creativity?

Is creativity simply coming up with something new and interesting?

Is creativity insight put to good use?

Is creativity defined by its product?

Is it a state of mind?

I think all these questions steer us in the wrong direction regarding creativity.  Creativity is not just coming up with a new way to arrange musical notes, paint, eatable ingredients, business plans, words or even ideas.

Unlike plants, humans do not make their own food. Human Creativity is similar, in this aspect, to human digestion. It is not a process encompassed within a single individual in its entirety. The curry-flavored couscous I had for lunch began with ingredients that traveled for my benefit, from across the globe. So Creativity is an ingredient-rich process that builds upon so much life energy sometimes you lose sight of how everything–from early childhood experiences to spending plenty of alone time, to becoming inspired, to converging all your energies for your work, and so much more, comes together.

As I continue to think and write about Creativity, I realize there are different types of creativity, and that creativity type is party developmentally defined.  The finger painting toddler is not necessarily more creative than a coloring -book-loving, ten-year old.  Nor is the theoretical physicist about to give the world a proper Theory of Everything, more creative than a harlequin novelist.

Types of creation could be explained rather as levels.  Psychologist Abraham Maslow used a pyramid, his Hierarchy of Needs, to explain human motivation.  Creativity could also be explained rather as a hierarchy of processes that build on each other.  High Creativity is at the top of the creativity pyramid,  just as self-actualization is at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  A creative-type working at the top of the creativity pyramid is not more creative than a playing child,  but he does have a much larger base from which to Create.

So, I continue to think and write about Creativity and continue my search for a proper definition of what Creativity is. Will I ever be able to tell you, dear reader,  what Creativity is in 200 words or less?

Stay with me, be patient and leave a comment.

Filed under: General Theory of Creativity | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Defining Creativity, Part 7: Creativity as Experimentation in the Enlightenment

Posted on August 4, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Every day, for a week,  I’m writing about the definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition. Yesterday I wrote about Cultural Suppression of Creativity.

Sitting under an apple tree, Isaac Newton discovered gravity. A falling apple answered for him all questions regarding the mechanics of the Universe.  So goes the legend you read in 6th grade Science.

Yes, Newton did formulate the Universal Law of Gravitation and an apple tree may have helped fine-tune his ideas about gravitational pull and power.  But, Newton’s influence directs Western Science farther and wider than gravity itself, including ideas regarding Creativity.

Newton sought to separate natural philosophy from objective observation-based science. The Scientific Method, generally divorced from pre-conceived spiritual or magical interpretations, led  to the dichotomy between science and religion.

Enlightenment ideas of High Creativity ignored the inspiration portion of Creation, because it could not be explained via the Scientific Method.  Creativity, defined by long hours and experimentation, think Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, had little to do with magic or the unexplained.

Still, some Creators had sparkle enough to cause suspicion that a final, workable definition of Creativity had not yet arrived.

Filed under: Creativity: Historical Perspective, Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, Ideas, What is Creativity | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Defining Creativity, Part 2: Semitic Slaves and the Brain-Altering Invention

Posted on July 26, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Every day, for a week,  I’m writing about the definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition. Yesterday I wrote about Ancient Greek Artists Following the Rules.

The first pure alphabet, created by Semitic slaves to track the work of underlings, stirred little sand and much less awe from anyone in Ancient Egypt.

Egyptian dawns came only after a daily war between gods.  Gods controlled rains and winds, births and deaths.  Creativity, as an idea, did not yet exist, but creating of any kind proved the realm of gods. Not humans.

The god/Pharaoh built stuff, not with hands, but with grand ideas of how things should be and subject humans to execute his will.  The architecture  of pharaohs endures to wow the most jaded 21st century tourists and is certainly Creative.  But the first alphabet, known as abjads could reasonably trump material wonders as a precious seed for centuries of global-scale human communication and the spread of knowledge. The alphabet allowed humans to absorb language through vision.

Neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene says,

We delight in reading Nabokov and Shakespeare using a primate brain originally designed for life in the African savanna.

Even so, Dehaene says,

Brain imaging demonstrates that the adult brain contains fixed circuitry exquisitely attuned to reading.

Creators, even if not recognized as such for 3,800 years, come as lowly as the diligent worker/slaves with just enough knowledge to alter the human brain. A General Theory of Creativity must somehow encompass grand, if unknown, future effects of Creation.

Filed under: Creativity: Historical Perspective, Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, What is Creativity | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Creativity, is Not Yet Defined

Posted on July 24, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Creativity is the ability to illustrate what is outside the box from within it.  –The Ride

Today I’m spending time looking out windows.

Creativity is still a fuzzy idea.  If you are looking, you know it when you see it. But, a clear-cut definition is still at large, still outside the box of science.  A true measure of what creativity is and who has it is still out there to be discovered, uncovered, imagined or thought up.  Psychology and Science are still observing Creativity. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Creativity Scholars take notes and sketch images of what creativity looks like.  Some hypothesize and explain and inspire others to keep at this search for a General Theory of Creativity.

I’m searching too.  Case study by case study, putting myself and my five little children to the task.  I’m drawing out what Creativity looks like.  In History, in Philosophy, in Science;  Creativity comes is many colors, but my search is still on for an actual hard-set outline. There is a General Theory people in 2050 will know as common sense, like today any educated person knows everything is relative.

This week, I’m writing about the different definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition to grab and go on.

Filed under: Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, Ideas | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

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