Previously in Series: Recognizing Intelligence

Creativity, we've all been told, is about Jumping Out Of The System, as Hofstadter calls it (JOOTSing for short). Questioned assumptions, violated expectations.

Fire is dangerous: the rule of fire is to run away from it. What must have gone through the mind of the first hominid to domesticate fire? The rule of milk is that it spoils quickly and then you can't drink it - who first turned milk into cheese? The rule of computers is that they're made with vacuum tubes, fill a room and are so expensive that only corporations can own them. Wasn't the transistor a surprise...

Who, then, could put laws on creativity? Who could bound it, who could circumscribe it, even with a concept boundary that distinguishes "creativity" from "not creativity"? No matter what system you try to lay down, mightn't a more clever person JOOTS right out of it? If you say "This, this, and this is 'creative'" aren't you just making up the sort of rule that creative minds love to violate?

Why, look at all the rules that smart people have violated throughout history, to the enormous profit of humanity. Indeed, the most amazing acts of creativity are those that violate the rules that we would least expect to be violated.

Is there not even creativity on the level of how to think? Wasn't the invention of Science a creative act that violated old beliefs about rationality? Who, then, can lay down a law of creativity?

But there is one law of creativity which cannot be violated...

Ordinarily, if you took a horse-and-buggy, unstrapped the horses, put a large amount of highly combustible fluid on board, and then set fire to the fluid, you would expect the buggy to burn. You certainly wouldn't expect the buggy to move forward at a high rate of speed, for the convenience of its passengers.

How unexpected was the internal combustion engine! How surprising! What a creative act, to violate the rule that you shouldn't start a fire inside your vehicle!

But now suppose that I unstrapped the horses from a buggy, put gasoline in the buggy, and set fire to the gasoline, and it did just explode.

Then there would be no element of "creative surprise" about that. More experienced engineers would just shake their heads wisely and say, "That's why we use horses, kiddo."

Creativity is surprisi...

Caledonian4

Caledonian4

Caledonian4

Caledonian4

Caledonian4

Caledonian4