As Scott Adam's Dilbert says in today's strip, creativity is random, and if it were anything but, "someone would have figured out the algorithm by now."
Creativity is not just making stuff up, though. If it were, innovation would be the lowest ideal instead of the highest.
In Foundations of Abnormal Psychology, psychologists Philip Jackson and Samuel Messick point to three things that make creativity differ from just making stuff up. Creativity is Apposite, Transformative, and Poetic. Creativity must seem necessary and obvious, offer a new view on things, and offer ideas in a poetic way.
We can say that a child with an active imagination is creative, when in reality it might not be. Anyone can lie wildly. If the lie actually makes sense, though, then we might believe it. If it seems like the truth, then we treat it as truth. This is why Picasso said, art is lies that tell the truth. We treat the lie as truth because that's how we treat Art. So while creativity in one sense is just making stuff up, it is also having the made up things fit together in a believable manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment