Creativity (45 page)

Intrinsic rewards also can help or hinder a talented person’s commitment to a domain. There are times when a dull discipline becomes suddenly exciting, or when the reverse happens. Every scientist talks with starry-eyed nostalgia about the glory days of physics in the first third of this century; computer sciences or molecular biology today attract the same enthusiasm from bright young people. Not because these domains promise wealth and fame, but because they are so interesting, so intellectually challenging—and therefore rewarding.

Intrinsic motivation can be easily stifled. Boring schools, insensitive mentoring, rigid work environments, too many pressures and bureaucratic requirements can turn an exciting intellectual adventure into a chore and extinguish the sparks of creativity. Alan Kay, whose
inventions were central to the development of personal computers, claims semi-seriously that the firm he worked for lost tens of millions of dollars by refusing to install a $14,000 shower in a corner of his office, because most of his new ideas came while showering. Perhaps the most immediate improvement in the flow of creativity is to make the pursuit of a given domain more intrinsically rewarding. Relatively easy and inexpensive interventions are possible, and the anticipated results could be great.

But many will argue that nothing the field can do will make a difference. A creative person is precisely the one who despite all obstacles prevails. This equation may be true, but its converse is not. There is no evidence that training and reward do not increase creative contributions.

In my view of the situation, if the systems model of creativity is accurate, then it follows that creativity can be enhanced just as much by changing the field—by making it more sensitive and supportive of new ideas—as by producing a greater number of creative individuals. Better training, higher expectations, more accurate recognition, a greater availability of opportunities, and stronger rewards are among the conditions that facilitate the production and the assimilation of potentially useful new ideas.

C
ONTRIBUTIONS OF THE
D
OMAIN

It is easy to see how creative contributions might increase if there were more people acting creatively, and it is also relatively easy to comprehend how the field might help in this regard. It is less clear what the role of the domain could be. Does the way information is coded and preserved have anything to do with how easy or difficult it is to make a creative change in a discipline?

The Accessibility of Information

For many centuries European science, and knowledge in general, was recorded in Latin—a language that no one spoke any longer and that had to be learned in schools. Very few individuals, probably less than 1 percent, had the means to study Latin enough to read books in that language and therefore to participate in the intellectual discourse of the times. Moreover, few people had access to books, which were handwritten, scarce, and expensive. The great explosion of scientific
creativity in Europe was certainly helped by the sudden spread of information brought about by Gutenberg’s use of movable type in printing and by the legitimation of everyday languages, which rapidly replaced Latin as the medium of discourse. In sixteenth-century Europe it became much easier to make a creative contribution not necessarily because more creative individuals were born then than in previous centuries or because social supports became more favorable, but because information became more widely accessible and easier to add to.

This historical example is just one of many that have influenced the rate of creativity at different times. Often intellectual or power elites hide their knowledge on purpose, to keep to themselves the advantages that go with the information. To accomplish this they develop arcane languages, mysterious symbols, and secret codes that are meaningless to those not initiated into the guild. The priestly castes of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Chinese bureaucrats, the clerical hierarchies of Europe were not particularly interested in sharing their knowledge with all comers. Thus they were
not motivated to make the representation of their knowledge transparent.

Some of this desire for exclusive control of knowledge survives. And even those who have the most selfless and democratic views about the information they control often unwittingly make what they know inaccessible by using a language, a style, or a method of exposition that a layperson cannot understand. Sometimes such obscurantism is inevitable, but often it is an unnecessary habit left over from the past, or a shortcut that makes one’s thoughts more accessible to the initiated while putting them out of anyone else’s reach.

A colleague in the English Department of our university regularly consults with some of the large law firms in the city, whose senior partners retain him to teach young lawyers how to communicate in English instead of lawyerese. It is easy in law school to slip into a technical jargon that stupefies even other lawyers—and cannot be understood at all by those who are not trained in law. The same applies to other domains: Graduate students in psychology are taught to write in the awkward prose of the specialized journals. This helps to make communication within the field faster and clearer—if
arguably less rich and evocative. In any case, the speed and clarity thus gained make the information almost inaccessible to those who are not initiated into the language of the domain.

Linguistic obfuscation is only one means by which domains become isolated. The more general problem is that each domain is becoming increasingly specialized not only in its vocabulary but also in the conceptual organization of its rules and procedures. Recently a professor of chemistry sent an article dealing with some of the broader implications of the second law of thermodynamics to a philosophical journal. The editor, in turn, sent it out to two referees for evaluation; both referees thought that the article did not deserve publication. Then the editor, who liked the piece, call
ed up the author to give him the bad news: “I really cannot publish your article, because the two physicists I sent it to for review both advised against it.”“You sent my article to two
physicists
?” asked the author in disbelief. “Physicists don’t understand thermodynamics. You should ask some chemists for advice.” And, in fact, when chemists were asked, the negative opinion was reversed.

The laws of thermodynamics are of course central to both physics and chemistry. Yet the processes denoted by these “laws” appear sufficiently different so that if one looks from the perspective of physics one might derive consequences that are trivial or even wrong from the perspective of chemistry, and vice versa. What makes this breakdown in communication among disciplines so danger
ous is that, as we have repeatedly seen, most creative achievements depend on making connections among disparate domains. The more obscure and separate knowledge becomes, the fewer the chances that creativity can reveal itself.

It is also true, however, that some recent technological advances help trends moving in the opposite direction. The availability of personal computers might yet level the field of play as much as the printing press did five centuries ago. When everyone can access immediately scholarly references, unpublished scientific articles, news reports, multimedia presentations of works of art, and personal ideas in progress through information networks, a great variety of new voices might join the specialized discourse of the disciplines. And, presumably, creativity will benefit from it.

The Organization of Knowledge

Whether it is easy or difficult to recognize novelty in a domain depends in large part on how the memes and the rules of the domain are organized. It was easier to reach a consensus on whether a given
painting was or was not an improvement on the art of the period when communities shared common criteria of beauty. It is easier to recognize creativity in music when one can compare each new composition to an established canon. Conversely, when aesthetic criteria become fragmented and largely idiosyncratic, as they have become since World War I, it is more difficult to be sure whether a new painting or piece of music deserves to be remembered and passed on to the next generation or whether it is just a novelty to be forgotten as soon as possible.

Similarly, it should be easier to tell whether a new way of doing things is better than the old in mathematics, which is an extremely coherent domain; it would be slightly more difficult in physics, and even more so in biology and economics; it would be most difficult in the other social sciences and philosophy, which are not as tightly connected by an internal network of laws. When the domain is not strictly integrated by logical rules, it is difficult for the field to judge whether novelty is valuable, and thus whether it should be included in the domain. (Of course, the fact tha
t a domain is more integrated does not necessarily mean it is
better
. Chess is a very logical domain, and if anyone were to discover a new opening combination or effective endgame, the discovery would be instantly adopted by players all around the globe. This does not mean that chess is preferable to philosophy just because it is potentially easier to be creative in it.)

Domains wax and wane in their ability to generate novelty. A century ago many scientists believed that there was not much new one could say about physics. Most physicists believed that all they could do was help tidy up a neat Newtonian universe. This, of course, was just before a sequence of new discoveries and perspectives ushered in the most dramatically creative period of physics in the first three decades of the twentieth century; a period after which all the old physics had to be rewritten from a different perspective.

A domain generates novelty only when there is a convergence between an instability within it and the mind of a person who is able to cope with the problem. Therefore, even the most creative persons usually contribute only a few, sometimes only one, great new idea—the one they were prepared for, the one for which the timing was right. Because of the impact of his early papers on relativity, Einstein was expected to keep astonishing the world as long as he lived. But the great convergence between Einstein’s mind and the domain of
physics was effectively over before he was forty years old, and in the second half of life his contributions made little difference to it.

Sometimes the domain is changed by a new way of thinking, by better measurements, or by new instruments that allow better observations. Usually all of these are involved. The Ptolemaic view of the universe was replaced by the current one in part because Tycho Brahe spent untold hours in his observatory charting the path of stars, in part because Copernicus found an elegant model to represent the movement of the planets, and in part because Galileo improved the telescope enough to be able to see the moons of Jupiter. Whenever a better way of representing reality is found, it opens u
p new paths of exploration and discovery.

The organization of knowledge is especially important when it comes to passing it down to the next generation. To be creative, a person must first understand the domain. If the knowledge in the domain is nearly incomprehensible, few young people will bother learning it, and thus the chances of creative innovations will be less. But sometimes there are equally valid conflicting claims about how knowledge should be transmitted. The Suzuki method of teaching music results in impressive performance by children, but some claim that its rigidity discourages musical expression and innovat
ion. Anyone who has seen the before-and-after works of children taught by the methods sponsored by the Getty Center for Education in the Arts must marvel at the sudden maturity and professionalism of the drawings; again, however, critics wonder if the fidelity in the transmission of the craft will reduce innovation. Conversely, the many new versions of math taught in U.S. schools claim to emphasize mathematical thinking and understanding at the expense of memorizing rigid rules and focusing on a single way of solving a problem. To more traditional parents and teachers, these efforts only serve to “
dumb down” math and further erode our children’s comparative standing in this important domain.

Who is right? Which method is more likely to pass on the requisite knowledge? Which is more likely to lead to creative achievements? The likely answer to these questions is to be found in the unglamorous middle ground. To cope well with numbers it is essential to automate as many mental operations as possible—and this requires some memorizing and practicing. On the other hand, to use numbers effectively in real life one must also have a good intuitive
grasp of how to approximate, how to round, when and how to use different operations. Perhaps the most important thing to remember in this debate is that there is no single right way to teach a domain and that the way knowledge is transmitted should be appropriate to the skills of the learner. It would be ridiculous to teach math to a four-year-old who has learned calculus on his own—and apparently there are such children—the same way one teaches the rest of the class.

If there is more than one right way to pass on knowledge, there are many more wrong ways of doing it. Whenever the information is untrue, illogical, superficial, redundant, disconnected, confusing, or—especially—dull, the chances of its getting across to students is diminished, and so is the likelihood of a creative response.

Flow and Learning

The origins of culture can easily be explained by necessity. Technology, science, even the arts were defensive adaptations our ancestors discovered to improve their chances of survival, or in order to increase their comfort. While sharks developed stronger teeth and antelopes faster legs, we built weapons and cars. Some birds use colorful plumage or elaborate nests to impress the competition and woo the opposite sex; we display our desirability through fashionable clothes, expensive homes, and refined manners. In this sense, it is perfectly true that necessity is the mother of invention.

These primitive reasons for having a culture are still operative. We are motivated to learn, to become experts, to innovate and strike out in new directions in large part because to do so promises very real material advantages. We no longer compete, as our ancestors did, primarily in terms of physical prowess or simple skills. The ability to run fast, to kill a wolf, or to bring down a buck are of marginal significance. What counts more is the ability to do well in the cultural arena, where the relevant skills are defined by complex domains. And success in a creative cultural endea
vor—a Nobel Prize or a best-selling novel—brings with it wealth and respect, admiration and power.