The Act of Creation (94 page)

 

 

In one of Maier's ingenious experiments the problem set to the subject
was to catch hold at the same time of two thin strings hung from the
ceiling so wide apart that he could only get hold of one at a time. The
only available tool was a pair of pliers. The solution is to tie the
pliers to one string and set it into pendular motion. The crucial point
of the experiment, however, is described as follows: [5]

 

If the subject had not spontaneously solved the problem within ten
minutes, Maier supplied him with a hint; he would "accidentally"
brush against one of the strings, causing it to swing gently. Of those
who solved the problem after this hint, the average interval between
hint and solution was only forty-two seconds . . . . Most of
those subjects who solved the problem immediately after the hint did
so without any realization that they had been given one. The "idea"
of making a pendulum with pliers seemed to arise spontaneously.
(My italics.)

 

Here we have a beautifully ambiguous example of what looks like
'unconscious' guidance. Obviously there is a world of difference between
this kind of thing, and the nature of the sub-conscious processes which
produce Kekulé's serpent dream or Poincaré's discovery
of the Fuchsian functions. Maier's subjects seem to have 'cottoned
on' to the solution on the pre-conscious or fringe-conscious level of
awareness. Poincaré's inspiration was derived from the creative
powers of the 'underground'.

 

 

Nevertheless, we notice that while trivial tasks, in so far as they
require any reflection at all, are solved in full daylight as it were,
with the focus of awareness on the target, even problems of moderate
difficulty, such as Maier's, require a type of guidance on a different
level. Frequently the difficulty arises not from the objective novelty
of the problem, but from its 'embeddedness' in the subject's mind.
In Book One (
p. 189
) I have described an experiment
of Duncker's in which an object was so embedded in its visible role as a
'pendulunl weight' that the student was unable to conceive of it in the
role of a 'hammer'. 'Embeddedness' is a trivial version of the occasional
'snowblindness' of genius. In both cases the difficulty lies in going
against routine -- in discarding the most obvious or likely matrix
that offers itself and thus gets into the way of the more unlikely one
which will do the job. But again there is more than a mere difference
in degrees between overcoming the perceptual attachment of the weight
to the string, and overcoming the millennial attachment of the human
mind to the all-too-plausible axioms of Aristotelian physics.

 

 

'Thinking aside' also occurs on all intermediate levels of difficulty.
It may take the form of switching to visual imagery -- as in the problem
of the Buddhist monk (Book One,
p. 183
); or of
re-stating the problem in different terms; or letting one's attention
wander, guided by some nascent, cloudy analogy. A good example is the
Duncker-puzzle about the two trains and the bird. Two goods-trains,
a hundred miles apart, start moving towards each other, each at a speed
of twenty miles per hour. A silly bird, frightened by the starting hiss
of one of the trains, flies away at thirty miles per hour in a straight
line along the railway track until it meets the other train; it reverses
its direction until it meets the first train, then turns again, and so
forth. What distance will the bird cover in its flight to and fro until
the two trains meet?

 

 

To compute the sum of the series of flight-stretches is a rather
complicated task. But if we think aside, forget about the distances
covered by the bird, and compute the time until the two trains will
meet -- two and a half hours -- we see at once that the bird has also
flown for two and a half hours and hence covered a total of seventy-five
miles. The puzzle reflects in miniature Galileo's epocal discovery of
the laws of free fall -- by switching his attention from the spatial
'to the temporal aspects of the process.

 

 

Another famous Duncker problem is how to bring up exactly six pints of
water from a river, when you have only two containers, one measuring nine,
the other four pints. You fiddle around, decant in your imagination the
big container twice into the smaller one, throwing the water each time
back into the river. This leaves you with one pint which you can keep in
the bigger or put into the smaller container -- but that does not help
because now you cannot isolate the five pints to which the single pint
must be added. The solution is simply to switch from
addition
to
subtraction
: you keep your pint in the smaller container, and
fill it up from the larger one -- it will now only take 4 - 1 = 3 pints,
leaving 9 - 3 = 6 pints in the large jug. Different people solve this
problem by different methods. Polya gives an analytical explanation;
personally I found that with most people the click occurs through the
reversal of the direction of thought from addition to subtraction --
from figure to background -- a phenomenon we frequently met in discovery.

 

 

At a certain level of problem-solving even a healthy kind of illogicality,
of disregarding apparent contradictions, makes its appearance -- as
in the image of the monk meeting his alter-ego. But enough has been
said to show that as the challenge becomes more provoking, the nature
of the guidance which directs the search for the right type of matrix
to bear on the problem, becomes more intuitive, more remote from the
normal routine of thinking, and that extra-conscious processes play an
increasingly important part. And thus, having started from the base of
the hierarchy, we arrive at last at the roof, which we have surveyed in
the first volume but had left hanging in the air: the act of discovery.

 

 

 

The term 'bisociation' is meant to point to the independent, autonomous
character of the matrices which are brought into contact in the creative
act, whereas associative thought operates among members of a single
pre-existing matrix. But we have seen that this is a relative, not
an absolute criterion, because the members of a matrix are sub-skills,
i.e. matrices in their own right on a subordinate level of the hierarchy,
and the degree of their integration, i.e. the coherence of the matrix,
varies according to case. In matrices which have become fully automatized,
the code alone determines which member shall act in which order -- the
pedant always takes the same route to his office, his strategy is fixed
once and for all, and has become incorporated into the code. But the
more flexible a skill, the greater the part played by strategy. Thus in
the problem about the trains and the bird, the subject must compute the
distance D flown by the bird, and he knows that distances are computed
by the rule of the game D = v.t. The velocity v of the bird is given,
and he could get the t in a jiffy by substituting for it the time taken
by the trains until they crash (t = 100/40 = 2½). Both the formula,
and the process of substitution, are familiar sub-skills in the
subject's repertory of habits, and should function as members of the
matrix. However, owing to the unusual lie of the land -- i.e. the way
the data are presented -- his strategy breaks down, the matrix goes to
pieces, and its members function as independent entities. Once this has
occurred it would require a certain originality to combine them again. We
might even be generous and say, that to re-combine them would be a minor
bisociative act.

 

 

Thus the degree of independence of the matrices or submatrices which
combine in the solution of a problem, can only be judged with reference
to the subject's mental organization. Any boy of the sixth form can
derive the Pythagorean theorem, which he has previously learned, as a
matter of routine; but to discover it for himself would require a high
degree of originality.

 

 

I hope I have laid sufficient emphasis on the fact that originality
must be measured on subjective scales and that any self-taught novelty
is a minor bisociative act. This taken for granted, let me recapitulate
the criteria which distinguish bisociative originality from associative
routine.

 

 

 

Association and Bisociation

 

 

The first criterion was the previous independence of the mental skills
or universes of discourse which are transformed and integrated into the
novel synthesis of the creative act. The student solving the train-bird
problem is entitled to shout Eureka because his mathematical skills are
so poorly integrated (or so easily dislocated) that the act of 'hooking
them together' appears to him a novel discovery. The more unlikely or
'far-fetched' the mediating matrix M2 -- i.e. the more independent from
M1 -- the more unexpected and impressive the achievement. The creative
act could be described as the highest form of learning because of the
high improbability (or anti-chance probability) of the solution.

 

 

If we now turn from subjective originality to discoveries which are
new in actual fact, we again find the previous independence of the
components that went into the 'good combination' to be a measure of
achievement. Historically speaking, the frames of reference of magnetism
and electricity, of physics and chemistry, of corpuscles and waves,
developed separately and independently, both in the individual and the
collective mind, until the frontiers broke down. And this breakdown
was not caused by establishing gradual, tentative connections between
individual members of the separate matrices, but by the amalgamation of
two realms as wholes, and the integration of the laws of both realms
into a unified code of greater universality. Multiple discoveries and
priority disputes do not diminish the objective, historical novelty
produced by these major bisociative events -- they merely prove that
the time was ripe for that particular synthesis.

 

 

Minor, subjective bisociative processes do occur on all levels, and are
the main vehicle of untutored learning. But objective novelty comes into
being only when subjective originality operates on the highest level of
the hierarchies of existing knowledge.

 

 

The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we
can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it. When two frames of
reference have become integrated into one it becomes difficult to imagine
that previously they existed separately. The synthesis looks deceptively
self-evident, and does not betray the imaginative effort it needed to put
its component parts together. In this respect the artist gets a better
deal than the scientist. The changes of style in the representative arts,
the discoveries which altered our frames of perception, stand out as
great landmarks for all to see. The true creativity of the innovator in
the arts is more dramatically evident and more easily distinguished from
the routine of the mere practitioner than in the sciences, because art
(and humour) operate primarily through the transitory
juxtaposition
of matrices, whereas science achieves their permanent integration into a
cumulative and hierarchic order. Laurence Olivier in Hamlet is perceived
as Olivier and as Hamlet at the same time; but when the curtain goes down,
the two personae separate again, and do not become amalgamated into a
higher unit which is later combined with others into still higher units.

 

 

A further criterion of the creative act was that it involves several
levels of consciousness
. In problem-solving pre- and extra-conscious
guidance makes itself increasingly felt as the difficulty increases; but
in the truly creative act both in science and art, underground levels
of the hierarchy which are normally inhibited in the waking state play
a decisive part. It is perhaps significant that the German word for
the Creator is "Schöpfer", and for creating "schöpfen" --
'to scoop' in the sense of drawing water in buckets from a well. The
Creator is thus visualized as creating the world out of His own depth,
and the creative mind with a small c is supposed to apply a similar
procedure. But whatever the inner sources on which the Lord of Genesis
drew while his spirit hovered over the dark waters, in the case of humble
mortals the sources are in the phylogenetically and ontogenetically
older, underground layers of his mind. He can only reach them through a
temporary regression to earlier, more primitive, less specialized levels
of mentation, through a
reculer pour mieux sauter
. In this respect
the creative act parallels the process of biological regeneration --
the liberation of genetic potentials normally under restraint, through
the de-differentiation of damaged tissues. Thus the creative process
involves levels of the mind separated by a much wider span than in any
other mental activity -- except in pathological states, which represent
a
reculer sans sauter
. The emotional manifestations of the Eureka
act -- sudden illumination followed by abreaction and catharsis -- also
testify to its subconscious origins; they are to some extent comparable
to the cathartic effects of the analyst's method of bringing 'repressed
complexes' into the patient's consciousness.

 

 

The re-structuring of mental organization effected by the new discovery
implies that the creative act has a revolutionary or
destructive
side. The path of history is strewn with its victims: the discarded isms
of art, the epicycles and phlogistons of science.

 

 

Associative skills, on the other hand, even of the sophisticated
kind which require a high degree of concentration, do not display
the above features. Their biological equivalents are the activities
of the organism while in a state of dynamic equilibrium with the
environment -- as distinct from the more spectacular manifestations
of its regenerative potentials. The skills of reasoning rely on habit,
governed by well-established rules of the game; the 'reasonable person' --
used as a standard norm in English common law -- is level-headed instead
of multi-level-headed; adaptive and not destructive; an enlightened
conservative, not a revolutionary; willing to learn under proper guidance,
but unable to be guided by his dreams.