The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 2

Articles In This Section:

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 1

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 2

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 3

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 4

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 5

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 6

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 7

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 8

· The Nature of Creative Thought - Part 9

· 1 • Use of the Familiar

· 2 • The Ability to Hypothesize and Suspend

· 3 • Involvement and Withdrawal

· 4 • Recognition of Autonomy

· 5 • Permission to Develop

Similar descriptions of the surface changes brought about by years of specialized thinking patterns can be, and have been, made for artists, scientists, musicians, and other types of creative personalities. But these do not adequately picture the creative minds in action. There are people who resist any attempts to paint such basic pictures. They feel that creativity must have a certain "mystery" to be truly creative. They use such words as aesthetic, phantasy, intuition, fancy, and vision in trying to describe it themselves. And they may be partly right.

But the fact that the great creative men of the past practiced idea production by intuition, does not mean that the art or science or procedures or whatever you choose to call them cannot be learned. If a young man does not happen to have been born with the intuitive sense of a Marconi, there is still no reason why he cannot study the science of ether waves and make himself proficient in communications electronics. And the same holds true of creative thought processes in general: it is possible to point out similarities and generalizations in the way creative minds work, and there is no reason why someone else cannot study these and try to adapt or adopt them in solving his own problems.