Creativity As an Exact Science PDF

Preface

It is not easy today to astonish anyone by the idea of controlling a particular process. Controlling thermonuclear energy? What is the problem? It is only a matter of the next few years before this is controlled. Controlling inheritance? How can you even ask? Haven't we genetic engineering already? Controlling the weather? Can there be any doubt? We shall certainly be able to order rain. Controlling the movement of the stars? Granted it is not an easy problem, but in principle there are no obstacles and, we shall learn how to control the stars, it is only a question of time. Any idea of controlling something that is not yet controlled today is received calmly. We will find means of controlling it, we shall control it. Yet only the idea of controlling the process of creativity as a rule encounters hefty resistance.

"Everyone knows that the act of creativity is not arbitrary", writes the playwright, Rosoy. "It does not respond even to the mightiest effort of will or peremptory command. However paradoxical it might seem, at the moment of creation the artist does not think as it were, since thought would kill creativity... It seems to me that the artist thinks right up to the moment of creation and also afterwards, but at the time of the act of creation itself he does not consciously reflect on it. Things are naturally more complex in scientific creativity. But it too is kin to the artistic - possibly even a blood sister. A few years ago I read a note in an article of the effect that the starting point of the greatest achievements and discoveries in all spheres of culture, science, technology and art is the sudden moment enlightenment which occurs unexpected and without evident cause. This is what creativity is" (Question of Philosophy, 1975, No 8, p.151).

Author: Altshuller