Creativity is often seen as coming up with ideas
no one had before.
This seems to indicate that new ideas materialise
mysteriously from nothing.
But research has shown that it’s possible
to always make the connection to what has
come before.
Only nothing comes from nothing.
When we think about creative individuals, we tend to picture the TV genius.
The TV genius is an individual whose thinking proceeds in leaps and bounds that can’t
be comprehended by normal humans.
They have a problem and then they see something or somebody mentions something and they’ll
shout “Eureka!” or “Of course, that’s it!”.
And a fully formed plan or piece of art materialises in their head.
We might marvel at Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or look at Darwin and
we say: “I would have never thought of that, not in a million years!”
And we get the impression that there must be a vast gulf between these geniuses and
us common people.
Surprisingly, it turns out that this is not the case.
For about a hundred years now, there have been scientists who explored how great minds
come up with ideas.
They’ve poured over notebooks, drafts, final products, letters and verbal descriptions.
What they found is: these people are just normal humans.
But if they are, in principle, the same as you and me, how does it come that we don’t
perform the same mental miracles as those people?
It turns out that, while these people are not necessarily special in their genetics
and are not touched by some divine spark, there is a significant difference between
these people and other humans.
And that’s in their behaviour.
There are several aspects to highlight here, which I will eventually discuss on this channel.
But for today I want to focus on one aspect in particular: knowledge.
Let’s go back to Coleridge and his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.
We’ll take these two stanza as an example.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
This is such rich imagery, that it’s easy to say: “I could have never come up with
something like that!”
Clearly then, this man must have been blessed by some inspiration not found in normal people?
Where could he possibly have gotten the ideas from?
Well, let’s see!
Fortunately, starting in 1795, when he was 23, Coleridge kept a journal for 3 years.
In this journal he took many notes about his experiences, discussions, plans, some ideas
for a poetic line or two... and, important for us, he copied some passages from books
he read that had struck his eye.
The scholar John Livingston Lowes scoured through the notebook and identified all the
passages that seemed to be related to the two poems “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
and “Kubla Khan”.
He then went further and dug up all the books that Coleridge had copied from and compared
their original text with what he had written down in his notebook and what, finally, made
its way into the poems.
The result of his detective works was published in 1927 in the book “The Road to Xanadu”.
From the book “Purcha’s Pilgrimage”, we have a passage that talks about sea creatures;
among them snakes of green, yellow, black and white.
William Falconer mentions in his poem “The Shipwreck” tracks of sportive dolphins and
porpoises that "gambol on the tides" whose “tracks awhile the hoary tracks pertain”.
A lengthy article published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society talks about
"Luminous appearances in the wake of ships" and mentions specifically that many fish are
making "a kind of artificial fire in the water" and that they "leave behind a luminous track"
when swimming.
In a chapter of Priestley’s Opticks, it is mentioned that some sea creatures leave
such a luminous track behind that their size and species can be determined just by observing
the tracks.
Finally, James Cook writes in his journals about sea snakes that were swimming with a
white appearance, who looked "green tinged" in the candlelight and who were "glowing like
fire in the dark".
Coleridge read even more widely about water snakes, but you get the gist.
From the books, he copied the passages which intrigued him as a poet.
And we can clearly see the parallels of his reading and what ended up in the final text.
But it is no case of plagiarism.
Neither is it a mere collage of what phrases he read.
Instead, the content is dissolved and then carefully integrated into a new whole.
The similarities are present, but they’re indirect.
We can see a similar story when we look at Darwin.
Before he embarked on his famous journey on board the Beagle, he already had a pretty
solid knowledge about geology.
And while on the journey, he read Charles Lyell’s “Principle of Geology” as it
came out.
The knowledge allowed him to correctly see that Tierra del Fuego is an extension of the
Andes.
And to propose the modern explanation for the formation of atolls among other things.
This knowledge would later also serve him well when developing his theory of evolution.
So both men had a phase when they accumulated knowledge, before they set out to do some
of their most creative works.
What’s the reason for this?
Our brain stores information by way of associations.
Association means that something is linked to something else.
If I say “flower” and you say “tulip”, then there’s a link in your mind between
these two concepts.
This linking is based on likeness.
Two associated things can be alike in meaning, in sound, in colour, in shape, in the way
they make you feel or in many other aspects.
Or it can simply be that the two are often encountered together.
When we retrieve information from our memory, we use associations to activate the correct
memory.
At the beginning of the process is a stimulus.
In our example, the stimulus is “flower”.
And whatever we think about or how we feel after we received the stimulus is called the
response.
In this case, the response is “tulip”.
Whatever we hear, see, smell or perceive with any of our other senses can become a stimulus.
But interestingly, a thought, memory or feeling can also act as a stimulus.
And so the response to one stimulus is often the stimulus that elicits the next response.
These association chains can run long and deep with many branches.
For instance: what was the happiest moment when you were a teenager?
Most likely you can see images in front of your inner eye.
You remember names, faces, feelings.
Maybe you suddenly know what the weather was like or what you had for lunch that day.
Whatever just appeared, it might have been years since you last remembered this moment.
And if I had not provided the stimulus in form of the question, you might not have remembered
that moment for many more years – maybe never again.
This is why Vera F. Birkenbihl created the metaphor of the knowledge web.
All our knowledge is connected with one another.
The threads represent the associations which we can follow when we retrieve information.
And the process of learning is equivalent with weaving new threads into our web.
This process takes time and energy.
Now consider this question: what is your favourite autopoietic system?
If you’re like most people, you never heard of the term autopoiesis before.
And that’s ok.
Please note, if you haven’t got any threads on a certain topic in your knowledge web,
you can’t produce any responses.
That doesn’t mean that you’re stupid.
Unfortunately, this is the impression that children get every time they can’t answer
a question in school.
If you want to learn more about autopoiesis, there’s a link in the descriptions.
Now, what does all of this have to do with creativity?
When we’re trying to be creative, every problem we encounter, every question we ask
and every observation we make acts as a stimulus.
Creative solutions are produced when we activate partial areas of knowledge and blend them
together, or when we explore a path through our knowledge web which we haven’t taken
before.
When Coleridge searched for how he could best describe his water snakes, bits of what he
had been reading came to his mind and were combined in a new, unusual way.
When Darwin looked at Tierra del Fuego and the Andes, he saw the same mountains as countless
people before him, but he was able to look at the data in a different way.
If you want to be creative, you need to know a lot.
And it’s not enough to memorise facts and be able to repeat them in an exam.
You need to embed them in your knowledge web.
In such a way that they’re accessible when the stimuli of your work are kicking off the
association chains that run through your mind.
Fortunately, there’re tools that can help us.
I already introduced ABC-lists and CaWas in my previous videos.
They allow us to assess the contents of our knowledge web.
When we’re looking for a flower with N, the chances that we’ll find something is
much greater than if we were only looking for flowers.
And once the words start to appear, they’ll act as stimuli for the next associations.
Therefore, more and more will float to the surface – especially if we think about the
same topic multiple times.
ABC and CaWa are simple, but powerful, tools that can be used in many different ways.
And there are other tools which can be used on their own or in combination.
I’ll introduce them as this channel progresses.
But it’s important to remember that they’re not an end in and of themselves.
In the end, any tool is only worth as much as it helps you to think deeply and creatively.
If you found this video helpful, give it a thumbs up.
And subscribe for more tools and theory on how to think deeply and creatively.
And I see you in my next video.