Creativity
Fourth Class, December 11
http://www.is.wayne.edu/drbowen/crtvyf04
12/11/04
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- may be skipped
Agenda
(Please check your name off on the list)
• Finishing up
• Einstein and Relativity
• Comparing Csikszentmihalyi and Gardner
• Gardner’s conclusions in Creating Minds
• TS Eliot
• Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET)
• Importance of Creativity
• Updates on Gardner’s seven
• Personal conclusions
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Finishing up (end is 12/15)
If you are not going to finish by the end of the
semester, your options are:
•
•
•
•
Incomplete (I – must have substantial work in)
Withdrawal (W – complete official form)
Regular grade (D or E)
Unofficial withdrawal(X)
It is important to make the best choice for
your situation - see a counselor and let me
know.
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Creating Minds
Einstein and Relativity
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Einstein:
Special Relativity. (Speed of light = 1 ft per nanosecond)
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Einstein:
° At speeds much less than the speed of light
(ordinary speeds), we see the auto as moving
the 90 feet that the railroad car moved, plus the
20 feet that the auto moved on top of the
railroad car, or 110 feet. The distances and
speeds add.
° At speeds near the speed of light, we see
something else.
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Einstein:
° What happens if we do not see the car moving
110 ft or 110% of the speed of light?
° We see the railroad car and the car as shorter;
car moves 6.6 feet instead of 20, we see it
moving moving 96.6 feet, at 96.6% of the speed
of light, instead of 110%
° People on railroad car don’t see that as shorter,
though. They see us as “thinner.”
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Einstein:
° I learned about this (Special Relativity) about
55 years later, and my jaw dropped (“He can’t
do that!”)
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Creating Minds
• Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot,
Graham, Gandhi. Not one nice person.
• Compare these seven with Csikszentmihalyi’s
91, who were so happy that the author
apologized (Creativity, Pg 16 ff)
• Can being too creative mean pulling away from
the field, losing human contact? The Faustian
Bargain.
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Creating Minds
• Another difference – Gardner’s group,
unlike Csikszentmihalyi’s all had apparently
comfortable childhoods.
• Possible conclusion: a difficult childhood
can motivate you but not support you in a
positive way.
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Creating Minds
applying Gardner’s conclusions
• People are creative within one domain, must
be accepted by a culture (focus). (The seven
worked in two of Gardner’s intelligences –
this is more than most people.)
• Regular creative activity – ten-year rule for
major breakthroughs (sustained focus)
• Self-promotion; effort at presenting
themselves as creative (raising the bar)
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Creating Minds
applying Gardner’s conclusions
• Faustian bargain (commitment)
• Personal and professional support at the
time of breakthrough (risk)
• Importance of domain in childhood (time)
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Eliot: loss of moral certainty, questioning of
authority
° From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock:
“Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Eliot:
° from The Waste Land
“I think we are in a rat’s alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”
° from The Hollow Men
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Eliot:
° from Little Gidding, Pt 5, in the Four Quartets
(retelling of Homer’s Odyssey?)
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.”
Eliot being positive?????
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Creating Minds
Special contributions (DB):
• Eliot:
° Other poetry speaks of the moral bankruptcy of
authorities – they are no better that we are.
° I think this led to our current mixing of public
and private lives. They used to be separate, but
now are mixed. Example follows
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Mixing public and private lives
• Duke of Windsor resigned as King of
England in 1936 to marry American
commoner Wallis Simpson. The British
press and royalty kept this affair silent for
eighteen months.
• Compare this with how the press and the
public handled President Clinton’s dalliance
with Monica Lewinsky.
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Student Evaluation of Teaching
Course: ISP 5660
Instructor: David Bowen
3 credits:
• Section 001
• Call Number 16905
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Dawn Chinn
Erika Martin
Sherlene McDonald
Carmelita Williams
Latisha Williams
4 credits:
• Section 002
• Call Number 16906
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Deborah Dorsey
Ebani Holbrook-Lowery
David Lazarus
Jennifer Levine
Shirley Miller
Kay Russell
Kelly Schilk
Mary Smith
Keesa Tippett
Sharon Whitty
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Importance of Creativity
• Innovation: change in material culture,
example is technology.
• Creativity: change in the symbolic culture,
example is science.
• Prior to 20th century, technology and science
developed independently
• After second half of 20th century, science
started driving technology.
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Importance of Creativity
• Examples of science driving technology (all
were theoretically predicted at least ten
years earlier:
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Laser
Nuclear chain reaction
Transistor
Electronic chip
Computer
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Importance of Creativity
• Now our economy increasingly values
theoretical knowledge and intellectual
content
° Design products on computer first
° Importance of copyright
° Intellectual property
• Creativity is replacing innovation as the key
driver of social progress
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Importance of Creativity
“9/11 Bill”
PRO
CON
• Before 9/11, not a
functioning
intelligence field
• Poor communications
from lower levels and
between agencies
• Many early clues were
available before 9/11
• Czar could fix this
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• Creativity in
imagining attacks was
lacking
• “Who could imagine
this?”
• Previous plots known
• Czar could enforce
orthodoxy, inhibit
creativity
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• General
° Gardner’s seven were among the founders of
“modernism.”
° “Postmodernism” followed – an extreme denial
of universals, progress and significance.
Everything is power of one group over another.
(Michel Foucault, for example)
° Postmodernism seems to have waned recently,
leading to new interest in Modernism and
Gardner’s seven as part of that.
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Freud
° After being abandoned, Freudian therapy
(finding childhood experiences) is now
recognized as a mode of treatment that works
for some people.
° The unconscious is still a lively concept – is it
simple and sterile (perception) or dark and
powerful (conflict and repression)?
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Einstein
° Special Relativity (1904) is routine. I was using
it on a daily basis within five years after it
dropped my jaw as an undergraduate
° General Relativity (1914) is still controversial,
still at the heart of our understanding of the
Universe.
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Graham
° Much of modern dance still derives from her
(Pina Bausch, Twyla Tharp, etc.)
° Control over her dances was settled in the
courts two years ago – her family or her dance
troupe? The dance troupe won, for a living
legacy.
° Primitive themes, other cultures
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Picasso
° Still continues as controversial.
° Large artworks – installations like Guernica
more common
° Some of his work was playful (Femme) - that
continues among artists of all types
° Primitive themes, other cultures
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Stravinsky
°
°
°
°
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Importance of rhythm
Many works still controversial
Raw emotion instead of rationality
Primitive themes, other cultures
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
Special contributions (DB):
• Gandhi: Merging of protest and publicity
using non-violence to apply moral pressure
to bring down a repressive regime. (We now
tend to think that the protesters are right.)
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Gandhi
° In many ways the closest to failure in Creating
Minds. He believed his methods would have
failed if applied to the Nazis, for example.
 Moral high ground
 No response to provocation
 Aggressively confronting the government to show it
as oppressive
 Creating dramatic events for the media (even though
Gandhi didn’t realize he was doing this)
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Gandhi
° Martin Luther King and the US civil rights
movement.
° But extended in new directions, is now often
applied to repressive regimes
° Repressive occupation by a foreign country
 Local population withholds cooperation
 Must be a loose association, else leaders taken out
 Occupation cannot operate
 Poland, Bosnia
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Gandhi
° Repressive, unpopular national government
 Mass demonstrations, tie up normal operations
 Will be accused of criminality, forceful overthrow,
terrorism, so be happy, peaceful
 Ukraine
° Modern applications involve a trained core,
good logistics, understanding of and even
infiltration of the media (New York Times
story)
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Updates on Gardner’s Seven
• Gandhi
° Rather than being a failure, Gandhi has in many
ways generated the most continuing changes
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Personal Conclusions
• Me
° Personal – improve quality of life
 Flow – live in the moment
 Creativity – find what you love
° Parents
° Administrators
• Anyone?
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Creativity
• Questions, comments?
• Done!
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