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115-521: The story is often alluded to when discussing creativity . The term has also been used as the trade name of a tangram puzzle and several mechanical puzzles . The Columbus egg story may have originated with Italian historian and traveler Girolamo Benzoni . In his book History of the New World , published in 1565, he wrote: Trovandosi adunque Colombo in un convito con molti nobili Spagnuoli, dove si ragionaua (come si costuma,) dell'Indie; uno di loro hebbe

230-499: A scientific theory , a literary work , a musical composition , a joke ), a physical object (e.g., an invention , a dish or meal, an item of jewelry , a costume , or a painting ). Creativity may also describe the ability to find new solutions to problems, or new methods of performing a task or reaching a goal. Therefore, creativity enables people to solve problems in new or innovative ways. Most ancient cultures (including Ancient Greece , Ancient China , and Ancient India ) lacked

345-412: A "four C" model of creativity. The four "C's" are the following: This model was intended to help accommodate models and theories of creativity that stressed competence as an essential component and the historical transformation of a creative domain as the highest mark of creativity. It also, the authors argued, made a useful framework for analyzing creative processes in individuals. The contrast between

460-434: A chair be used?"). Divergent thinking is sometimes used as a synonym for creativity in psychology literature or is considered the necessary precursor to creativity. However, as Runco points out, there is a clear distinction between creative thinking and divergent thinking. Creative thinking focuses on the production, combination, and assessment of ideas to formulate something new and unique, while divergent thinking focuses on

575-414: A complex idea may not have any corresponding physical object, though its particular constituent elements may severally be the reproductions of actual perceptions. Thus the idea of a centaur is a complex mental picture composed of the ideas of man and horse , that of a mermaid of a woman and a fish . "Ideas are to objects [of perception] as constellations are to stars," writes Walter Benjamin in

690-584: A desired outcome. Spontaneous behaviors by living creatures are thought to reflect past learned behaviors. In this way, a behaviorist may say that prior learning caused novel behaviors to be reinforced many times over, and the individual has been shaped to produce increasingly novel behaviors. A creative person, according to this definition, is someone who has been reinforced more often for novel behaviors than others. Behaviorists suggest that anyone can be creative, they just need to be reinforced to learn to produce novel behaviors. Another theory about creative people

805-960: A dire. Signor Christofano ancora che voi non haveste trovato l'Indie, non sarebbe mancato ch'il simile hauesse tentanto, come voi, quà nella nostra Spagna; come quella che è de grand'huomini giudiciosi ripiena, cosmografi, & letterati. Non rispose Colombo à queste parole cosa alcuna, ma fattosi portare un'ovo, lo pose in tavola, dicendo; io voglio, Signori, con qual si voglia di voi giuocare una scomessa chen non farete stare quest'ovo in piedi come farò io, ma nudo senza cosa alcuna. Pruovaronsi tutti, & à nessuno successe il farlo stare in piedi; come alle mani del Colombo egli venne, dandogli una battuta su la tavola lo fermò, stricciando cosi un poco della punta; onde tutti restarono smarriti, intendendo che voleva dire; che dopo il fatto ciascuno sà fare, che dovevano prima cercare l'Indie, & non ridersi di chi le cercava innanzi, come un pezzo s'erano risi, & maravigliati, come cosa impossibile à essere. Columbus being at

920-401: A direct relationship to ideas. In some cases, authors can be granted limited legal monopolies on the manner in which certain works are expressed. This is known colloquially as copyright , although the term intellectual property is used mistakenly in place of copyright . Copyright law regulating the aforementioned monopolies generally does not cover the actual ideas. The law does not bestow

1035-526: A farlo star ritto, nessuno sapeva il modo. Fu da loro detto a Filippo ch'e' lo fermasse, et egli con grazia lo prese e datoli un colpo del culo in sul piano del marmo, lo fece star ritto. Romoreggiando gl'artefici che similmente arebbono fatto essi, rispose loro Filippo ridendo che egli averebbono ancora saputo voltare la cupola, vedendo il modello o il disegno. E cosí fu risoluto che egli avessi carico di questa opera, e ne informasse meglio i Consoli e gli operai. ...that whosoever could make an egg stand upright on

1150-703: A few original cultures, the Adam of the Bible, or several cultural circles that overlap. Evolutionary diffusion theory holds that cultures are influenced by one another but that similar ideas can be developed in isolation. In the mid-20th century, social scientists began to study how and why ideas spread from one person or culture to another. Everett Rogers pioneered diffusion of innovations studies, using research to prove factors in adoption and profiles of adopters of ideas. In 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene , Richard Dawkins suggested applying biological evolutionary theories to

1265-409: A flat piece of marble should build the cupola, since thus each man's intellect would be discerned. Taking an egg, therefore, all those Masters sought to make it stand upright, but not one could find a way. Whereupon Filippo, being told to make it stand, took it graciously, and, giving one end of it a blow on the flat piece of marble, made it stand upright. The craftsmen protested that they could have done

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1380-486: A framework for understanding creativity in problem solving , namely the Explicit-Implicit Interaction (EII) theory of creativity. This theory attempts to provide a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of incubation and insight ). The EII theory relies mainly on five basic principles: A computational implementation of

1495-407: A general agreement that creativity involves the production of novel , useful products." In Robert Sternberg 's words, creativity produces "something original and worthwhile". Authors have diverged dramatically in their precise definitions beyond these general commonalities: Peter Meusburger estimates that over a hundred different definitions can be found in the literature, typically elaborating on

1610-470: A general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society. Patent law regulates various aspects related to the functional manifestation of inventions based on new ideas or incremental improvements to existing ones. Thus, patents have

1725-437: A neurobiological description of creative cognition. This interdisciplinary framework integrates theoretical principles and empirical results from neuroeconomics , reinforcement learning , cognitive neuroscience , and neurotransmission research on the locus coeruleus system. It describes how decision-making processes studied by neuroeconomists as well as activity in the locus coeruleus system underlie creative cognition and

1840-480: A number of disciplines, primarily psychology , business studies , and cognitive science ; however, it is also present in education, the humanities (including philosophy and the arts ), theology , and the social sciences (such as sociology , linguistics, and economics ), as well as engineering , technology , and mathematics. Subjects of study include the relationships between creativity and general intelligence, personality, neural processes, and mental health ;

1955-557: A painter that he makes something?" he answers, "Certainly not, he merely imitates ." It is commonly argued that the notion of "creativity" originated in Western cultures through Christianity, as a matter of divine inspiration . According to scholars, "the earliest Western conception of creativity was the Biblical story of the creation given in Genesis ." However, this is not creativity in

2070-587: A party with many noble Spaniards, where, as was customary, the subject of conversation was the Indies: one of them undertook to say: "Mr. Christopher, even if you had not found the Indies, we should not have been devoid of a man who would have attempted the same that you did, here in our own country of Spain, as it is full of great men clever in cosmography and literature." Columbus said nothing in answer to these words, but having desired an egg to be brought to him, he placed it on

2185-434: A perception are by various authorities contrasted in various ways. "Difference in degree of intensity", "comparative absence of bodily movement on the part of the subject", "comparative dependence on mental activity", are suggested by psychologists as characteristic of an idea as compared with a perception . An idea, in the narrower and generally accepted sense of a mental reproduction, is frequently composite. That is, as in

2300-427: A piece of music, for example, can both be called 'art' without belonging to the same substance. They are related as forms of art (the term 'art' in this illustration would be a 'mode of relations'). In this way, Locke concluded that the formal ambiguity around ideas he initially sought to clarify had been resolved. Hume differs from Locke by limiting idea to only one of two possible types of perception. The other one

2415-451: A potentiality state, because how it will actualize depends on the different internally or externally generated contexts it interacts with. Honing theory is held to explain certain phenomena not dealt with by other theories of creativity—for example, how different works by the same creator exhibit a recognizable style or "voice" even in different creative outlets. This is not predicted by theories of creativity that emphasize chance processes or

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2530-544: A problem may aid creative problem-solving. Early work proposed that creative solutions to problems arise mysteriously from the unconscious mind while the conscious mind is occupied on other tasks. This hypothesis is discussed in Csikszentmihalyi 's five-phase model of the creative process which describes incubation as a time when your unconscious takes over. This was supposed to allow for unique connections to be made without our consciousness trying to make logical order out of

2645-404: A simple computational principle for measuring and optimizing learning progress. Idea In common usage and in philosophy , ideas are the results of thought . Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object . Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being . The capacity to create and understand

2760-542: A sub-stage. Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, which allowed humans to quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments. Simonton provides an updated perspective on this view in his book, Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on creativity . In 1927, Alfred North Whitehead gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, later published as Process and Reality . He

2875-425: A subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by

2990-495: A way to explain possible benefits of creativity on mental health. The theory also addresses challenges not addressed by other theories of creativity, such as the factors guiding restructuring and the evolution of creative works. A central feature of honing theory is the notion of a potential state. Honing theory posits that creative thought proceeds not by searching through and randomly "mutating" predefined possibilities but by drawing upon associations that exist due to overlap in

3105-422: A word in which this word has become, and performs, as a symbol." as George Steiner summarizes. In this way techne-- art and technology—may be represented, ideally, as "discrete, fully autonomous objects...[thus entering] into fusion without losing their identity." Diffusion studies explore the spread of ideas from culture to culture. Some anthropological theories hold that all cultures imitate ideas from one or

3220-468: A worldview to attempt to resolve dissonance and seek internal consistency amongst its components, whether they be ideas, attitudes, or bits of knowledge. Dissonance in a person's worldview is, in some cases, generated by viewing their peers' creative outputs, and so people pursue their own creative endeavors to restructure their worldviews and reduce dissonance. This shift in worldview and cognitive restructuring through creative acts has also been considered as

3335-526: Is ." "That's so." "And, moreover, we say that the former are seen, but not intellected, while the ideas are intellected but not seen." Descartes often wrote of the meaning of the idea as an image or representation, often but not necessarily "in the mind", which was well known in the vernacular . Despite Descartes' invention of the non-Platonic use of the term, he at first followed this vernacular use. In his Meditations on First Philosophy he says, "Some of my thoughts are like images of things, and it

3450-688: Is a product of culture and that our social interactions evolve our culture in way that promotes creativity. In everyday thought, people often spontaneously imagine alternatives to reality when they think "if only...". Their counterfactual thinking is viewed as an example of everyday creative processes. It has been proposed that the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality depends on similar cognitive processes to rational thought. Imaginative thought in everyday life can be categorized based on whether it involves perceptual/motor related mental imagery, novel combinatorial processing, or altered psychological states. This classification aids in understanding

3565-512: Is about transforming those ideas into tangible outcomes that have a practical application. The distinction is critical because creativity without implementation remains an idea, whereas innovation leads to real-world impact. There is also emotional creativity, which is described as a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. Most ancient cultures, including Ancient Greece , Ancient China , and Ancient India , lacked

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3680-412: Is an interaction between one's conception of the task and one's worldview. The conception of the task changes through interaction with the worldview, and the worldview changes through interaction with the task. This interaction is reiterated until the task is complete, at which point the task is conceived of differently and the worldview is subtly or drastically transformed, following the natural tendency of

3795-577: Is called "impression", and is more lively: these are perceptions we have "when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will." Ideas are more complex and are built upon these more basic and more grounded perceptions. Hume shared with Locke the basic empiricist premise that it is only from life experiences (whether their own or others') that humans' knowledge of the existence of anything outside of themselves can be ultimately derived, that they shall carry on doing what they are prompted to do by their emotional drives of varying kinds. In choosing

3910-531: Is credited with having coined the term "creativity" to serve as the ultimate category of his metaphysical scheme: "Whitehead actually coined the term—our term, still the preferred currency of exchange among literature, science, and the arts—a term that quickly became so popular, so omnipresent, that its invention within living memory, and by Alfred North Whitehead of all people, quickly became occluded". Although psychometric studies of creativity had been conducted by The London School of Psychology as early as 1927 with

4025-402: Is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for

4140-473: Is disseminated the word "idea" begins to take on connotations that would be more familiarly associated with the term today. In the fifth book of his Republic , Plato defines philosophy as the love of this formal (as opposed to visual) way of seeing. Plato advances the theory that perceived but immaterial objects of awareness constituted a realm of deathless forms or ideas from which the material world emanated. Aristotle challenges Plato in this area, positing that

4255-488: Is divided into audience and affordance , which consider the interdependence of the creative individual with the social and material world, respectively. Although not supplanting the four Ps model in creativity research, the five As model has exerted influence over the direction of some creativity research, and has been credited with bringing coherence to studies across a number of creative domains. There has been much empirical study in psychology and cognitive science of

4370-411: Is his principles of mutually enhanced contrasts and of assimilation and dissimilation (i.e. in color and form perception and his advocacy of objective methods of expression and of recording results, especially in language. Another is the principle of heterogony of ends — that multiply motivated acts lead to unintended side effects which in turn become motives for new actions. C. S. Peirce published

4485-440: Is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking; And I could not avoid frequently using it." He said he regarded the contribution offered in his essay as necessary to examine our own abilities and discern what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. In this style of ideal conception other outstanding figures followed in his footsteps — Hume and Kant in

4600-411: Is said to be obscure. He argued that to understand an idea clearly we should ask ourselves what difference its application would make to our evaluation of a proposed solution to the problem at hand. Pragmatism (a term he appropriated for use in this context), he defended, was a method for ascertaining the meaning of terms (as a theory of meaning). The originality of his ideas is in their rejection of what

4715-513: Is the investment theory of creativity . This approach suggests that many individual and environmental factors must exist in precise ways for extremely high levels of creativity opposed to average levels of creativity to result. In the investment sense, a person with their particular characteristics in their particular environment may see an opportunity to devote their time and energy into something that has been overlooked by others. The creative person develops an undervalued or under-recognized idea to

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4830-591: Is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over

4945-423: Is the ideas which distinguish mere opinion from knowledge, for unlike material things which are transient and liable to contrary properties, ideas are unchanging and nothing but just what they are. Consequently, Plato seems to assert forcefully that material things can only be the objects of opinion; real knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas. Furthermore, ideas for Plato appear to serve as universals; consider

5060-401: Is to these alone that the name 'idea' properly belongs." He sometimes maintained that ideas were innate and uses of the term idea diverge from the original primary scholastic use. He provides multiple non-equivalent definitions of the term, uses it to refer to as many as six distinct kinds of entities, and divides ideas inconsistently into various genetic categories. For him knowledge took

5175-699: The Latin terms creare (meaning 'to create') and facere (meaning 'to make'). Its derivational suffixes also comes from Latin. The word "create" appeared in English as early as the 14th century—notably in Chaucer's The Parson's Tale to indicate divine creation. The modern meaning of creativity in reference to human creation did not emerge until after the Enlightenment . In a summary of scientific research into creativity, Michael Mumford suggests, "We seem to have reached

5290-425: The determinism of the empirical subject. Kant felt that it is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy exists. The business of philosophy he thought was not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgement of good common sense. Whereas Kant declares limits to knowledge ("we can never know the thing in itself"), in his epistemological work, Rudolf Steiner sees ideas as "objects of experience" which

5405-487: The large-scale brain network dynamics associated with creativity. It suggests that creativity is an optimization and utility-maximization problem that requires individuals to determine the optimal way to exploit and explore ideas (the multi-armed bandit problem ). This utility maximization process is thought to be mediated by the locus coeruleus system, and this creativity framework describes how tonic and phasic locus coeruleus activity work in conjunction to facilitate

5520-407: The phenomenal world of ideas arises as mental composites of remembered observations. Though it is anachronistic to apply these terms to thinkers from antiquity, it clarifies the argument between Plato and Aristotle if we call Plato an idealist thinker and Aristotle an empiricist thinker. This antagonism between empiricism and idealism generally characterizes the dynamism of the argument over

5635-594: The "Geneplore" model, in which creativity takes place in two phases: a generative phase, where an individual constructs mental representations called "preinventive" structures, and an exploratory phase where those structures are used to come up with creative ideas. Some evidence shows that when people use their imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are structured in predictable ways by the properties of existing categories and concepts. Weisberg argued, by contrast, that creativity involves ordinary cognitive processes yielding extraordinary results. Helie and Sun proposed

5750-833: The 18th century, Arthur Schopenhauer in the 19th century, and Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein , and Karl Popper in the 20th century. Locke always believed in the good sense — not pushing things to extremes and while taking fully into account the plain facts of the matter. He prioritized common-sense ideas that struck him as "good-tempered, moderate, and down-to-earth." As John Locke studied humans in his work "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" he continually referenced Descartes for ideas as he asked this fundamental question: "When we are concerned with something about which we have no certain knowledge, what rules or standards should guide how confident we allow ourselves to be that our opinions are right?" Put in another way, he inquired into how humans might verify their ideas, and considered

5865-579: The Americas) by painter and architect Giorgio Vasari . According to Vasari, the young Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi had designed an unusually large and heavy dome for Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence , Italy. City officials had asked to see his model, but he refused, proposing instead: ...che chi fermasse in sur un marmo piano un uovo ritto, quello facesse la cupola, che quivi si vedrebbe lo ingegno loro. Fu tolto uno uovo, e da tutti que' maestri provato

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5980-628: The Four P model as individualistic, static, and decontextualized, Vlad Petre Glăveanu proposed a "five A's" model consisting of actor, action, artifact, audience, and affordance. In this model, the actor is the person with attributes but also located within social networks; action is the process of creativity not only in internal cognitive terms but also external, bridging the gap between ideation and implementation; artifacts emphasize how creative products typically represent cumulative innovations over time rather than abrupt discontinuities; and "press/place"

6095-519: The Renaissance that creativity was first observed, not as a conduit for the divine, but from the abilities of " great men ". The development of the modern concept of creativity began in the Renaissance, when creation began to be perceived as having originated from the abilities of the individual and not God. This could be attributed to the leading intellectual movement of the time, aptly named humanism , which developed an intensely human-centric outlook on

6210-410: The accumulation of expertise, but it is predicted by honing theory, according to which personal style reflects the creator's uniquely structured worldview. Another example is the environmental stimulus for creativity. Creativity is commonly considered to be fostered by a supportive, nurturing, and trustworthy environment conducive to self-actualization. In line with this idea, Gabora posits that creativity

6325-477: The act of conceiving of a variety of ideas that are not necessarily new or unique. Other researchers have occasionally used the terms flexible thinking or fluid intelligence , which are also roughly similar to (but not synonymous with) creativity. While convergent and divergent thinking differ greatly in terms of approach to problem solving, it is believed that both are employed to some degree when solving most real-world problems. In 1992, Finke et al. proposed

6440-532: The brain cooperate during creative tasks, suggesting a complex interaction between these networks in facilitating everyday imaginative thought. The term "dialectical theory of creativity" dates back to psychoanalyst Daniel Dervin and was later developed into an interdisciplinary theory. The dialectical theory of creativity starts with the ancient concept that creativity takes place in an interplay between order and chaos. Similar ideas can be found in neuroscience and psychology. Neurobiologically, it can be shown that

6555-419: The career trajectories of eminent creative people in order to map patterns and predictors of creative productivity. Theories of creativity (and empirical investigations of why some people are more creative than others) have focused on a variety of aspects. The dominant factors are usually identified as "the four P's", a framework first put forward by Mel Rhodes : In 2013, based on a sociocultural critique of

6670-450: The concept of an external creative " daemon " (Greek) or " genius " (Latin), linked to the sacred or the divine. However, none of these views are similar to the modern concept of creativity, and the rejection of creativity in favor of discovery and the belief that individual creation was a conduit of the divine would dominate the West probably until the Renaissance and even later. It was during

6785-451: The concept of creativity, seeing art as a form of discovery and not creation. The ancient Greeks had no terms corresponding to "to create" or "creator" except for the expression " poiein " ("to make"), which only applied to poiesis (poetry) and to the poietes (poet, or "maker" who made it. Plato did not believe in art as a form of creation. Asked in the Republic , "Will we say of

6900-523: The concept of creativity, seeing art as a form of discovery, rather than a form of creation. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, creativity was seen as the sole province of God, and human creativity was considered an expression of God's work; the modern conception of creativity came about during the Renaissance , influenced by humanist ideas. Scholarly interest in creativity is found in

7015-442: The context (field, organization, environment, etc.) that determines the originality and/or appropriateness of the created object and the processes through which it came about. As an illustration, one definition given by Dr. E. Paul Torrance in the context of assessing an individual's creative ability is "a process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying

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7130-455: The creative process by pioneering theorists such as Graham Wallas and Max Wertheimer . In his work Art of Thought , published in 1926, Wallas presented one of the first models of the creative process. In the Wallas stage model, creative insights and illuminations may be explained by a process consisting of five stages: Wallas' model is also often treated as four stages, with "intimation" seen as

7245-657: The creative process takes place in a dynamic interplay between coherence and incoherence that leads to new and usable neuronal networks. Psychology shows how the dialectics of convergent and focused thinking with divergent and associative thinking leads to new ideas and products. Personality traits like the "Big Five" seem to be dialectically intertwined in the creative process: emotional instability vs. stability, extraversion vs. introversion, openness vs. reserve, agreeableness vs. antagonism, and disinhibition vs. constraint. The dialectical theory of creativity applies also to counseling and psychotherapy. Lin and Vartanian developed

7360-400: The deed is done, everybody knows how to do it; that they ought first to have sought for the Indies, and not laugh at him who had sought for it first, while they for some time had been laughing, and wondered at it as an impossibility. The factual accuracy of this story is called into question by its similarity to another tale published fifteen years earlier (while Benzoni was still travelling in

7475-429: The difference between creativity and originality. Götz asserted that one can be creative without necessarily being original. When someone creates something, they are certainly creative at that point, but they may not be original in the case that their creation is not something new. However, originality and creativity can go hand-in-hand. Creativity in general is usually distinguished from innovation in particular, where

7590-513: The difficulty; searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies: testing and retesting these hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results." Ignacio L. Götz, following the etymology of the word, argues that creativity is not necessarily "making". He confines it to the act of creating without thinking about the end product. While many definitions of creativity seem almost synonymous with originality, he also emphasized

7705-463: The distinctions between different types of ideas. Locke found that an idea "can simply mean some sort of brute experience." He shows that there are "No innate principles in the mind." Thus, he concludes that "our ideas are all experienced in nature." An experience can either be a sensation or a reflection: "consider whether there are any innate ideas in the mind before any are brought in by the impression from sensation or reflection." Therefore, an idea

7820-406: The distributed neural cell assemblies that participate in the encoding of experiences in memory. Midway through the creative process, one may have made associations between the current task and previous experiences but not yet disambiguated which aspects of those previous experiences are relevant to the current task. Thus, the creative idea may feel "half-baked.". At that point, it can be said to be in

7935-459: The empirical object is not prior to its perception by a knowledgeable subject, in other words. He also published many papers on logic in relation to ideas . G. F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin , in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , define the idea as "the reproduction with a more or less adequate image , of an object not actually present to the senses." They point out that an idea and

8050-408: The example given above of the idea of a chair, a great many objects, differing materially in detail, all call a single idea. When a man, for example, has obtained an idea of chairs in general by comparison with which he can say "This is a chair, that is a stool", he has what is known as an "abstract idea" distinct from the reproduction in his mind of any particular chair (see abstraction ). Furthermore,

8165-441: The example of beauty as a mode. He points to combinations of color and form as qualities constitutive of this mode. Substances , however, are distinct from modes. Substances convey the underlying formal unity of certain objects, such as dogs, cats, or tables. Relations represent the relationship between two or more ideas that contain analogous elements to one another without the implication of underlying formal unity. A painting or

8280-458: The experimental method failed, he turned to other objectively valuable aids , specifically to those products of cultural communal life which lead one to infer particular mental motives. Outstanding among these are speech, myth, and social custom. Wundt designed the basic mental activity apperception — a unifying function which should be understood as an activity of the will. Many aspects of his empirical physiological psychology are used today. One

8395-476: The exploiting and exploring of creative ideas. This framework not only explains previous empirical results but also makes novel and falsifiable predictions at different levels of analysis (ranging from neurobiological to cognitive and personality differences). B.F. Skinner attributed creativity to accidental behaviors that are reinforced by the environment. In behaviorism, creativity can be understood as novel or unusual behaviors that are reinforced if they produce

8510-458: The external world . In so doing, he includes not only ideas of memory and imagination , but also perceptual processes, whereas other psychologists confine the term to the first two groups. One of Wundt's main concerns was to investigate conscious processes in their own context by experiment and introspection . He regarded both of these as exact methods , interrelated in that experimentation created optimal conditions for introspection. Where

8625-428: The first full statement of pragmatism in his important works " How to Make Our Ideas Clear " (1878) and " The Fixation of Belief " (1877). In "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" he proposed that a clear idea (in his study he uses concept and idea as synonymic) is defined as one, when it is apprehended such as it will be recognized wherever it is met, and no other will be mistaken for it. If it fails of this clearness, it

8740-491: The following passage from the Republic : "We both assert that there are," I said, "and distinguish in speech, many fair things, many good things, and so on for each kind of thing." "Yes, so we do." "And we also assert that there is a fair itself, a good itself, and so on for all things that we set down as many. Now, again, we refer to them as one idea of each as though the idea were one; and we address it as that which really

8855-412: The form of ideas and philosophical investigation is devoted to the consideration of these entities. John Locke 's use of idea stands in striking contrast to Plato's. In his Introduction to An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke defines idea as "that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever

8970-424: The globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be

9085-452: The individual attributes of a person, such as their aesthetic taste, while Chinese people view creativity more in terms of the social influence of creative people (i.e., what they can contribute to society). Mpofu et al. surveyed 28 African languages and found that 27 had no word which directly translated to "creativity" (the exception being Arabic). The linguistic relativity hypothesis (i.e., that language can affect thought) suggests that

9200-427: The intersection of two quite different frames of reference. In the 1990s, various approaches in cognitive science that dealt with metaphor , analogy , and structure mapping converged, and a new integrative approach to the study of creativity in science, art, and humor emerged under the label conceptual blending . Honing theory, developed principally by psychologist Liane Gabora , posits that creativity arises due to

9315-420: The introduction to his The Origin of German Tragic Drama . "The set of concepts which assist in the representation of an idea lend it actuality as such a configuration. For phenomena are not incorporated into ideas. They are not contained in them. Ideas are, rather, their objective virtual arrangement, their objective interpretation." Benjamin advances, "That an idea is that moment in the substance and being of

9430-611: The lack of an equivalent word for "creativity" may affect the views of creativity among speakers of such languages. However, more research would be needed to establish this, and there is certainly no suggestion that this linguistic difference makes people any less, or more, creative. Nevertheless, it is true that there has been very little research on creativity in Africa, and there has also been very little research on creativity in Latin America. Creativity has been more thoroughly researched in

9545-432: The legal status of property upon ideas per se. Instead, laws purport to regulate events related to the usage, copying, production, sale and other forms of exploitation of the fundamental expression of a work, that may or may not carry ideas. Copyright law is fundamentally different from patent law in this respect: patents do grant monopolies on ideas (more on this below). A copyright is meant to regulate some aspects of

9660-449: The meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings . An idea arises in a reflexive, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection , for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place. A new or an original idea can often lead to innovation . The word idea comes from Greek ἰδέα idea "form, pattern", from the root of ἰδεῖν idein , "to see." The argument over

9775-407: The means to those ends, they shall follow their accustomed associations of ideas. Hume has contended and defended the notion that "reason alone is merely the 'slave of the passions'." Immanuel Kant defines ideas by distinguishing them from concepts . Concepts arise by the compositing of experience into abstract categorial representations of presumed or encountered empirical objects whereas

9890-481: The mind apprehends, much as the eye apprehends light. In Goethean Science (1883), he declares, "Thinking ... is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye of perception perceives colors and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." He holds this to be the premise upon which Goethe made his natural-scientific observations. Wundt widens the term from Kant's usage to include conscious representation of some object or process of

10005-526: The modern sense, which did not arise until the Renaissance . In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, creativity was the sole province of God; humans were not considered to have the ability to create something new except as an expression of God's work. A concept similar to that in Christianity existed in Greek culture. For instance, Muses were seen as mediating inspiration from the gods. Romans and Greeks invoked

10120-444: The moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it

10235-442: The neural foundations and practical implications of imagination. Creative thinking is a central aspect of everyday life, encompassing both controlled and undirected processes. This includes divergent thinking and stage models, highlighting the importance of extra- and meta-cognitive contributions to imaginative thought. Brain network dynamics play a crucial role in creative cognition. The default and executive control networks in

10350-529: The northern hemisphere, but here again there are cultural differences, even between countries or groups of countries in close proximity. For example, in Scandinavian countries, creativity is seen as an individual attitude which helps in coping with life's challenges, while in Germany, creativity is seen more as a process that can be applied to help solve problems. James C. Kaufman and Ronald A. Beghetto introduced

10465-411: The origin of ideas, for Kant, is a priori to experience. Regulative ideas , for example, are ideals that one must tend towards, but by definition may not be completely realized as objects of empirical experience. Liberty , according to Kant, is an idea whereas "tree" (as an abstraction covering all species of trees) is a concept . The autonomy of the rational and universal subject is opposed to

10580-544: The point that it is established as a new and creative idea. Just like in the financial world, some investments are worth the buy-in, while others are less productive and do not build to the extent that the investor expected. This investment theory of creativity asserts that creativity might rely to some extent on the right investment of effort being added to a field at the right time in the right way. Jürgen Schmidhuber 's formal theory of creativity postulates that creativity, curiosity, and interestingness are by-products of

10695-440: The potential for fostering creativity through education, training, and organizational practices; the factors that determine how creativity is evaluated and perceived; and the fostering of creativity for national economic benefit. According to Harvard Business School , creativity benefits business by encouraging innovation, boosting productivity, enabling adaptability, and fostering growth. The English word "creativity" comes from

10810-463: The problem. J. P. Guilford drew a distinction between convergent and divergent production (commonly renamed convergent and divergent thinking ). Convergent thinking involves aiming for a single, correct, or best solution to a problem (e.g., "How can we get a crewed rocket to land on the moon safely and within budget?"). Divergent thinking, on the other hand, involves the creative generation of multiple answers to an open-ended prompt (e.g., "How can

10925-412: The problem. Ward lists various hypotheses that have been advanced to explain why incubation may aid creative problem-solving and notes how some empirical evidence is consistent with a different hypothesis: Incubation aids creative problems in that it enables "forgetting" of misleading clues. The absence of incubation may lead the problem solver to become fixated on inappropriate strategies of solving

11040-464: The processes through which creativity occurs. Interpretation of the results of these studies has led to several possible explanations of the sources and methods of creativity. "Incubation" is a temporary break from creative problem solving that can result in insight. Empirical research has investigated whether, as the concept of "incubation" in Wallas 's model implies, a period of interruption or rest from

11155-531: The recognition of creativity (as measured) as a separate aspect of human cognition from IQ -type intelligence, into which it had previously been subsumed. Guilford's work suggested that above a threshold level of IQ, the relationship between creativity and classically measured intelligence broke down. Creativity is viewed differently in different countries. For example, cross-cultural research centered in Hong Kong found that Westerners view creativity more in terms of

11270-487: The same; but Filippo answered, laughing, that they could also have raised the cupola, if they had seen the model or the design. And so it was resolved that he should be commissioned to carry out this work. When the church was finally built it had the shape of half an egg slightly flattened at the top. Creativity Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one's imagination . Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g., an idea,

11385-428: The self-organizing, self-mending nature of a worldview. The creative process is a way in which the individual hones (and re-hones) an integrated worldview. Honing theory places emphasis not only on the externally visible creative outcome but also on the internal cognitive restructuring and repair of the worldview brought about by the creative process and production. When one is faced with a creatively demanding task, there

11500-440: The separation being made between talent (productive, but not new ground) and genius. As an independent topic of study, creativity effectively received little attention until the 19th century. Runco and Albert argue that creativity as the subject of proper study began seriously to emerge in the late 19th century with the increased interest in individual differences inspired by the arrival of Darwinism . In particular, they refer to

11615-471: The spread of ideas. He coined the term meme to describe an abstract unit of selection , equivalent to the gene in evolutionary biology . It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property

11730-573: The stress is on implementation. For example, Teresa Amabile and Pratt define creativity as the production of novel and useful ideas and innovation as the implementation of creative ideas, while the OECD and Eurostat state that "[i]nnovation is more than a new idea or an invention. An innovation requires implementation, either by being put into active use or by being made available for use by other parties, firms, individuals, or organizations." Therefore, while creativity involves generating new ideas, innovation

11845-432: The table saying: "Gentlemen, I will lay a wager with any of you, that you will not make this egg stand up as I will, naked and without anything at all." They all tried, and no one succeeded in making it stand up. When the egg came round to the hands of Columbus, by beating it down on the table he fixed it, having thus crushed a little of one end; wherefore all remained confused, understanding what he would have said: that after

11960-683: The terms "Big C" and "Little C" has been widely used. Kozbelt, Beghetto, and Runco use a little-c/Big-C model to review major theories of creativity. Margaret Boden distinguishes between h-creativity (historical) and p-creativity (personal). Ken Robinson and Anna Craft focused on creativity in a general population, particularly with respect to education. Craft makes a similar distinction between "high" and "little c" creativity and cites Robinson as referring to "high" and "democratic" creativity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined creativity in terms of individuals judged to have made significant creative, perhaps domain-changing contributions. Simonton analyzed

12075-498: The theory of ideas up to the present. This schism in theory has never been resolved to the satisfaction of thinkers from both sides of the disagreement and is represented today in the split between analytic and continental schools of philosophy. Persistent contradictions between classical physics and quantum mechanics may be pointed to as a rough analogy for the gap between the two schools of thought. Plato in Ancient Greece

12190-448: The theory was developed based on the CLARION cognitive architecture and used to simulate relevant human data. This work is an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related phenomena. In The Act of Creation , Arthur Koestler introduced the concept of bisociation – that creativity arises as a result of

12305-410: The underlying nature of ideas is opened by Plato , whose exposition of his theory of forms —which recurs and accumulates over the course of his many dialogs—appropriates and adds a new sense to the Greek word for things that are "seen" (re. εἶδος) that highlights those elements of perception which are encountered without material or objective reference available to the eyes (re. ἰδέα ). As this argument

12420-462: The usage of expressions of a work, not an idea. Thus, copyrights have a negative relationship to ideas. Work means a tangible medium of expression. It may be an original or derivative work of art, be it literary, dramatic, musical recitation, artistic, related to sound recording, etc. In (at least) countries adhering to the Berne Convention , copyright automatically starts covering the work upon

12535-471: The work of Francis Galton , who, through his eugenicist outlook took a keen interest in the heritability of intelligence, with creativity taken as an aspect of genius. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading mathematicians and scientists such as Hermann von Helmholtz (1896) and Henri Poincaré (1908) began to reflect on and publicly discuss their creative processes. The insights of Poincaré and von Helmholtz were built on in early accounts of

12650-585: The work of H.L. Hargreaves into the Faculty of Imagination, the formal psychometric measurement of creativity, from the standpoint of orthodox psychological literature, is usually considered to have begun with J.P. Guilford 's address to the American Psychological Association in 1950. The address helped to popularize the study of creativity and to focus attention on scientific approaches to conceptualizing creativity. Statistical analyzes led to

12765-412: The world, valuing the intellect and achievement of the individual. From this philosophy arose the Renaissance man (or polymath), an individual who embodies the principles of humanism in their ceaseless courtship with knowledge and creation. One of the most well-known and immensely accomplished examples is Leonardo da Vinci . However, the shift from divine inspiration to the abilities of the individual

12880-411: Was accepted as a view and understanding of knowledge as impersonal facts which had been accepted by scientists for some 250 years. Peirce contended that we acquire knowledge as participants , not as spectators . He felt "the real", sooner or later, is composed of information that has been acquired through ideas and knowledge and ordered by the application of logical reasoning. The rational distinction of

12995-513: Was an experience in which the human mind apprehended something. In a Lockean view, there are really two types of ideas: complex and simple. Simple ideas are the building blocks for more complex ideas, and "While the mind is wholly passive in the reception of simple ideas, it is very active in the building of complex ideas…" Complex ideas, therefore, can either be modes , substances , or relations . Modes combine simpler ideas in order to convey new information. For instance, David Banach gives

13110-529: Was gradual and would not become immediately apparent until the Enlightenment . By the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment, mention of creativity (notably in aesthetics ), linked with the concept of imagination, became more frequent. In the writing of Thomas Hobbes , imagination became a key element of human cognition; William Duff was one of the first to identify imagination as a quality of genius, typifying

13225-517: Was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed discussion of ideas and of the thinking process (in Plato's Greek the word idea carries a rather different sense of our modern English term). Plato argued in dialogues such as the Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , and Timaeus that there is a realm of ideas or forms ( eidei ), which exist independently of anyone who may have thoughts on these ideas, and it

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