Sunday, March 11, 2012

Is creative thinking an oxymoron?

Eckhart Tolle quotes Einstein in his bestseller “The power of now” that goes – “Thinking plays only a subordinate part in the brief decisive phase of the creative act itself”. And then Tolle writes further, “So I would say that the simple reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don’t know how to think but because they don’t know how to stop thinking!” Contrast this with Edward de Bono, famous for his work on lateral thinking. De Bono is the proponent of creativity as a learnable skill and his thinking tools are part of school curriculum in over twenty countries. de Bono says, “Creativity should be producible on demand. Formation and design of new ideas can’t merely be left to chance.” Is creative thinking a skill that can be learnt like de Bono says or is thinking a hindrance to creativity as Tolle says? Let’s explore.

Let me start with one of my favourite stories on creativity in the last 25 years – Andrew Wiles proving Fermat’s Last Theorem on 15th Oct 1994 – a famous mathematical problem open for 350 years. This is how Andrew views the process leading to the moment of insight: “Often you write something down to clarify your thoughts. In particular when you’ve reached a real impasse, when there’s a real problem that you want to overcome, then the routine kind of (mathematical) thinking is of no use to you. Leading up to that kind of new idea there has to be a long period of tremendous focus on the problem without any distraction. You have to think about nothing but that problem – just concentrate on it. Then you stop. Afterwards there seems to be a kind of period of relaxation during which the subconscious appears to take over, and it’s during that time that some new insight comes.”

Andrew’s version of the moment of insight looks closer to what Tolle & Einstein are saying. In particular, Andrew is saying that there comes a time when one type of thinking (he calls it routine kind of thinking) stops and another type of thinking (he calls subconscious thinking) takes over. Daniel Kahneman calls the former – slow mode of thinking or system-2 thinking or rule governed thinking. And the latter – fast mode of thinking or system-1 thinking or intuitive thinking.

The intuitive thinking involves brain reaching out to a vast associative network of ideas already present in our memory. In the last one year before Andrew published his final proof, he had been struggling to solve one glitch in the proof that was discovered by one of the manuscript reviewers. The technique that finally helped Andrew overcome the issue was something Andrew had worked on and abandoned a few years ago i.e. the technique was present in his vast associative network of ideas all the time he was struggling. He remembers the moment, “I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it.”

Kahneman advocates following definition of creativity attributed to Sarnoff Mednick: Creativity is associative memory that works exceptionally well. Mednick’s definition of creativity connects both Tolle and de Bono. When Tolle says that thinking should stop, I feel he means that the interference due to the slow mode of thinking (system-2 or rule governed) should stop and let the intuitive thinking take over. Similarly, de Bono’s six thinking hats technique is trying to help you reach out to those areas of your associative network that you will not go to in the normal course.

In short, whether creative thinking is an oxymoron would depend upon the type of thinking involved.

Sources:

Einstein quote from “The power of now” by Eckhart Tolle, p 20

Andrew Wiles quote from “Fermat’s last theorem” by Simon Singh, p228

Kahneman’s definition of creativity is from his “Thinking, fast and slow” p 67

Impossible problems and successful approaches: story of Fermat’s last theorem (my blog, Oct 2008)

7 comments:

  1. ‎Vinay, I like your process of simplifying. And in such a short way!

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  2. I loved the quote "Creativity is associative memory that works exceptionally well. Mednick’s definition of creativity connects both Tolle and de Bono. When Tolle says that thinking should stop, I feel he means that the interference due to the slow mode of thinking (system-2 or rule governed) should stop and let the intuitive thinking take over.." .. very well written and interesting article.

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    1. Thanks Shali. I like Mednick's definition of creativity too.

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  3. "creative thinking is an oxymoron would depend upon the type of thinking involved."

    My 2 cents. IMHO, both Einstein and Bono are right. The problem is with the phrase "creative thinking". To me, its not an oxymoron but an union of two different words which are actually two different stages of what we call, a "thought". I guess, Einstein is talking about plain "creativity" (or intuition) whereas Bono is actually talking more about "thinking" than "creativity" (although about different ways of thinking about the same thing). Can thinking systematically about the same problem in different ways be called "creativity"? Not according to Einstein it seems, as he is talking about a step further, actually.

    So, what's the relation between creativity and thinking? After one has thought about the same thing in different ways (which, btw, requires training as Bono suggests, but IMHO is not same as "creativity") and exhausted all the ways of thinking; "creativity"/"intuition" can take over if one can keep his/her mind open. "Thinking" comes first, followed by "creativity" and both these are two different stages of a "thought" (or how a "thought" gets generated).

    Somewhere Einstein had mentioned that the real "intuition" / "creativity" moments for him amount to not more than 3-5 minutes cumulative, for all of his work. For "normal" (non-Einstein and still "prolific") researchers, it is said that it amount to around 1-2 mins. All other lifetime is spent to prepare oneself for those moments spanning 1-2 mins and understanding/documenting/presenting results received in those moments. Ramanujan mentioned that Goddess Namagiri tells him the mathematical identities and proofs. That was actually the creativity at the highest order.

    Can one train oneself so as to get these moments more often? Maybe. Can we short-circuit the process and directly become "creative" without a need to develop different ways of systematic thinking? Ramanujan was, maybe, one such example, but this may not be true for mere mortals. But, without getting any of the intuitive moments, one can still master different ways of thinking and become successful everywhere.

    Famous mathematician Paul Erdos used to call the God as "The Fascist", because HE has kept the most creative mathematical proofs to himself in his "The Book". Maybe the God decides to choose the moments and people when HE can pass some of those beautiful secrets and to whom. :-)

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  4. Thanks for sharing these views, Ravindra. I liked the "3-5 min cumulative" moments of insights for Einstein. In my opinion Ramanujan did not short-circuit the process of preparation for becoming creative. He had easily spent more than 10,000 hours of rigorous practice before he started solving complex problems in his dream. For more on this check out the blog: Marvels and flaws of expert intuition: story of Ramanujan's first letter to Hardy

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  5. In "Where Good Ideas come from", Steven Johnson argues that the Eureka moment doesn't happen without years and years of engaging with a problem. Perhaps the brain continues to work even when "conscious thinking" has stopped or been suspended.

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