Creativity, History and You

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Creativity, History and You
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Historical Examination of Creativity (Case study
method)

• Look at people and times to understand creativity
  better
• What traits made creative people creative?
• What environmental conditions existed?
• What was the process of creativity?

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Creativity and Society

• Creativity affects society "Creativity is the
  engine that drives cultural evolution."
  -M. Csikszentmihalyi
  in Handbook of Creativity, Robert J. Sternberg
  (ed.), 1999, 320.
• 2. Society affects creativity "There are indeed
  certain instances in which social/cultural
  realities largely determine the possibility or
  lack of possibility for developing creativity in
  a given field."
  -D. H. Feldman
  in Handbook of Creativity, Robert J. Sternberg
  (ed.), 1999, 179.

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Beginnings River Societies

• Mesopotamia
• Egypt
• Indus River Valley
• Yellow River Valley

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Mesopotamian Creativity

• Contributions
• Agriculture, Plow
• Cities
• Bronze and iron ages
• Wheeled vehicles
• Writing (Cuneiform)
• Mathematics (60 and 360)
• Astronomy and zodiac
• Bible and monotheism
• Why were they creative?
• War brought new cultures which expanded and
  blended
• When did they stop being creative?
• When the Greeks overlaid their culture.

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Egyptian Creativity

• Contributions
• Pyramids
• Papyrus
• Hieroglyphics
• Calendar
• Art
• Number system
• Queen Hatshepsut
• Why were they creative?
• Making a nation
• When did they stop being creative?
• Priests took control

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Indian and Chinese Creativity

• Contributions
• Caste system (not all creativity is good)
• Hinduism, Jainism
• Buddhism
• Character writing
• Paper
• Gunpowder
• Compass
• Confucianism, Taoism
• Why were they creative?
• Interactions
• When did they stop being creative?
• When isolated

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Greeks Formative Period

• Alphabet
• Homer
• Aesop
• Science
• Thales, Pythagoras, Xeno, Democritus
• Golden Mean
• Government
• Draco
• Solon

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Greeks Classical Period

• Architecture
• Drama
• Philosophy/Science

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Greeks Hellenistic Period

• Alexander
• Art
• Lifestyle
• Science

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Greek Society

• Minoans (Crete)
• Mycenaeans (Trojan War)
• Formative Period
• Golden Age
• Humanism
• Philosophy
• Art and science
• Hellenism
• Why were the Greeks creative?
• Trade
• Idea "We can understand"

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Roman Society

• Roman Republic
• Roman Empire
• Romans art and science
• Greece provided the blueprint
• Practical application
• Government
• Technology
• Art
• Roman Creativity
• Thieves or innovators?

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Byzantium

• Centered in Constantinople
• Continued the Roman Empire but lost direction
  (only thought of preserving the past) and,
  therefore, lost creativity

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Islamic Society

• Islam's foundation
• Islam's expansion
• Highly creative in making a new culture
• Religion
• Art
• Architecture
• Science
• Literature
• Islam's decline
• Desire is to recapture past glories

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Middle Ages

• Creativity lost
• Catastrophe (weather and plague)
• Absence of rule of law
• Absence of leisure time
• Absence of learning
• Corruption in the Catholic church
• Minor revival in days of Charlemagne

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Late Middle Ages

• Positives
• Nations
• Scholasticism
• Gothic
• Dante
• Chaucer
• Discovery
• Negatives
• Great schism in Catholic church
• Warfare that consumed resources

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Renaissance

• Architecture
• Sculpture
• Painting
• Science
• Creativity
• Re-instituted Classical thinking

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Renaissance Painting
Realism
Perspective, Background
Chiascurro, Sfumato, Arrangement
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Leonardo DaVinci
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Reformation

• What caused the creativity?
• Courage to think new thoughts and break with
  tradition

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Baroque Glory

• Art, sculpture
• Architecture
• Music (Handel, Bach)
• What motivated the creativity?
• Glory to God or king or people

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Scientific Awakening Enlightenment

• Bacon
• Newton
• Descartes
• Locke
• Voltaire
• Rousseau
• Creativity in thinking
• New methods
• New applications

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Classical

• Music Haydn, Mozart
• Art David
• Creativity
• In the rules

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Romantic

• MusicBeethoven, Tchaikowsky, Liszt, Wagner
• ArtGoya, Delacroix
• LiteratureGoethe, Scott, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dumas
• Creativity themes
• Personal emotion
• Country
• Nature
• Exoticism

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Impressionism and Post-impressionism

• ArtMonet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, Van
  Gogh, Dali
• MusicDebussy, Ravel, Stravinsky
• Creativity based on?
• Technique

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Modern

• Art
• Music
• Dance
• Literature
• Creativity?
• No rules
• Beyond emotion of artist
• Viewer finds meaning

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Creativity Trends Throughout History

• War versus peace
• Interactions with other societies
• Borrow and improve
• Leisure time, safety, chaos
• Sponsorship
• Rules
• Individualism
• Purpose

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Renaissance through Today

• National Prominence
• 15th CenturyItaly
• 16th CenturySpain
• 17th CenturyFrance
• 18th CenturyEngland
• 19th CenturyGermany
• 20th CenturyAmerica
• 21st Century?

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• "The illiterate of the twenty-first century will
  not be those who cannot read and write, but those
  who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
• Toffler, Alvin (author of Future Shock), quoted
  in Thorpe, Scott, How to Think Like Einstein,
  Barnes Noble Books, Inc., 2000, p. 26.

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• The psychological conditions which make a
  society or an epoch creative and consistently
  original have been little studied, but it seems
  likely that social conditions analogous to those
  seen in individual creativity are important.
  Freedom of expression and movement, lack of fear
  of dissent and contradiction, a willingness to
  break with custom, a spirit of play as well as of
  dedication to work, purpose on a grand scale
  these are some of the attributes which a creative
  social entity, whether vast or tiny, can be
  expected to have.
• Frank Barron, Institute of Personality
  Assessment and Research, University of
  California, Berkeley

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Creativity aspectsSkill, Talent, and Personality

• How to improve all three areas

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Improving Creativity Skills

• Thinking better
• Linear and lateral
• Conscious and subconscious

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Enhancing Linear Thinking

• Build Associative Barriers
• These are patterns (paradigms) that help us
  proceed in a specific area
• These patterns give context to our thinking
• Example My chemistry research is done within the
  context of the atomic model of matter
• When I do research, I interpret results in light
  of my paradigm

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Enhancing Linear Thinking

• Seek Depth
• Stay Current
• Understand better
• Explain difficult concepts to people outside the
  domain
• Be focused

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Enhancing Lateral Thinking

• Break down Associative Barriers
• Expose yourself to a range of cultures
• Learn differently
• Reverse assumptions
• Look at multiple perspective

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Enhancing Lateral Thinking

• Learn art
• Travel extensively
• Read widely and avidly
• Study outside your primary domain
• Practice making unusual and unexpected mental
  associations
• Be perceptive
• Practice humor

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Be Perceptive

• Rely on intuition, imagination and impetuousness
• Envision the consequences
• Mozart
• Michelangelo
• Slow down, look at the big picture

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Creativity and Humor

• Atheism is a non-prophet organization
• No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldnt
  work anyway.
• I used to think I was indecisive, but now Im not
  sure.
• Editing is a rewording activity
• My reality check just bounced
• What if there were no hypothetical questions?

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Creativity and Humor

• Specialized Humor
• Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
• Entropy isnt what it used to be.
• 186,000 miles/sec not just a good idea, its the
  LAW!
• Santas elves are just a bunch of subordinate
  Clauses.
• Clones are people, two.
• Dyslexics have more fnu
• Help stamp out and eradicate superfluous
  redundancy.
• Air pollution is a mist-demeanor.
• Microbiology Lab Staph.

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Creativity aspectsSkill, Talent, and Personality

• How to improve all three areas

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Brain control

• Choosing left and right as the situation dictates
• Choosing conscious or subconscious as the
  situation dictates

Example Napoleon Napoleon was the only
member of the French Mathematical Society that
was not a working mathematician Napoleon's
brain control "Different subjects and different
affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard.
When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I
shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to
sleep? I simply close all the drawers and there I
am asleep." Napoleon (http//www.geocities.com
/Area51/2162/napmem.html)
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Creativity AspectsSkill, Talent, and Personality

• How to improve all three areas

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Creative Personality

• Confident
• Not afraid of criticism
• Hard working
• Self-motivated

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• "I have no special gift. I am only passionately
  curious."
• Einstein, quoted in Thorpe, Scott, How to Think
  Like Einstein, Barnes Noble Books, Inc., 2000,
  p. 115.

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Be Confident

• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never
  tried anything new.
• --Albert Einstein

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Be Self-Motivated
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Putting it all togetherSkill, Talent, and
Personality

• Skills
• Think better
• Linear
• Depth and focus
• Lateral
• Art, travel, reading, new areas, practice new
  thinking, perceptive
• Conscious/subconscious
• Talent
• Balance and choose attributes for the moment
• Personality
• Confident
• Hard working
• Self-motivated

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Thank You