It may be because of how much we like stories about creation, that at times we find creativity to be mystical. We remember that Archimedes was given a crown by Hieron, the king of Siracuse, and asked to prove whether it was made of pure gold, or figure out if the goldsmith had mixed other metals in it. Not coming up with a solution to that, Archimedes prepared for a bath.
Possibly not a very ecological spirit, Archimedes noticed that his bathtub spilled when he got in it. And, with his mind still engaged to some level in the problem, he realized that he’s found a solution – if his body would have been the crown (and we should all love our bodies at least as much as jewellery), the water displacement would have been able to tell him the density of the object. Thus Archimedes, a guy of many achievements, is most remembered for that one time when he allegedly got over enthusiastic about his discovery and run naked through the streets of Syracuse, shouting “Eureka”.
Of course, the ancient Greeks didn’t help either. They had this idea that creativity “came” to one through divine spirits, which they called “Daemons”. Not helpful due to the evil religious connotations of the word in modern times. Even good old Socrates was regularly “speaking to his Daemon” about things, you know, for inspiration. (I guess good old journaling just doesn’t cut it for some people)
Continuing to blame their creativity on otherworldly forces, the Romans called this mystical spirit that could feed you ideas a “Genius”. They were possibly not yet arrogant enough to believe that people themselves could be geniuses too (or trying to distance themselves from ideas that “seemed good at the time”). And of course “muses”, while not responsible for the creative ideas themselves, are the sources of inspiration for it. Possibly because they were goddesses, which still largely put them in the category of females, and they needed someone else to explain these ideas they were triggering.
To top off this tradition of considering creativity external, magical and divine, we have a great supply of stories of creation we are fascinated by. Stories about scientists falling asleep and coming up with great ideas (who doesn’t like a low hanging fruit? or assigning their naps to the work category?). And stories about people accidentally discovering things, through being messy and then studying the colonies of mould that have grown in their absence (oh, the permissiveness – perhaps if I leave things laying around I will revolutionise medical science too).
Of course we love these stories. They have many of the elements we like in a good story. The unexpected. The hero winning. The defiance of the hero winning unexpectedly, when the problem seemed unsolvable. A great creative (re)solution as an outcome, which is sometimes beautiful and surprising in and of itself, through its construction. And at times through its delusive simplicity (because simplicity of result does not imply simplicity of process). The feeling of hope that we too could perhaps discover overnight a solution to some of the problems we have been facing for a long time (or perhaps be fed one by the muses).
We think of creativity as mystical because we feel it is out of our control. We cannot directly wield it, in the same way as we decide to go to work, or attack some of the most annoying difficulties in our projects. We cannot use acts of bravery of pure willpower to get our creativity out there (or so we feel). And we think it’s mystical because we don’t know how it works.
However, cognitive science, studying how the human mind works, is tackling creativity too. It aims to understand creative processes – what is our mind doing differently when we are creative? As a creativity scientist, I know this is a great and very rich field of research. And as an AI scientist, I can tell you that we are working to replicate some of these creative processes we are discovering. To understand better how we humans work, and what it would take to have the machines and software around help us be more creative.
However, as soon as we discover how a creativity process works, this takes the mystical away. Gone are the muses and demons – in are the flowcharts and pseudocode (or whatever it takes us explaining how we program it). When we show people creative outputs from machines they are amazed. When we tell them how the process of creation works, they are relieved: okay, so it is a process – the logic goes, this must not be “the” creativity that is so mystical and lives in our brains. If it’s a process, it’s a gadget – we can control it. If it is explainable and we can produce it through some predefined mechanisms, it cannot be the creativity we consider magical, and which we cannot call upon at will.
This is because some people think that, if we understand how something works, it takes the magic away. But creativity was not magic to start with. It is just something we are in awe of, because of its amazing results, and because it is not a dog, like grit or willpower – it doesn’t follow us around, rather it comes when “it wants to”, taking us by surprise, and letting us feel like another agency than our own is involved.
Creativity is a set of processes, a very rich one, which we are barely starting to understand. And work on understanding it, given that it is a bit of a slippery, lateral, rational but not entirely logical (in the classical sense) process, requires us to throw droves of our own creativity as scientists, programmers and just people at it. It requires us to think of new ways to program, of new ways to design experiments, of new ways to “catch it” and have it show a side of its face. This is also true for many other good topics in science.
Us understanding creativity will help us summon the “muse” more often. Behind the “muse”, there may be “super-muses”. The research that we do, the tech that we build, is so that all of us, collectively, can reach a state of higher creativity. And be more in touch with our creativity too. The way we have reached a state of being better informed, or at least informed with more ease, because of media and the internet. The way we have reached a state of being overall healthier, and living longer, because of medical, biology and pharmacological advances. The way we are safer because of civil engineering and police and justice and forensics.
Creativity was not mystical to start with, before science and AI got their paws on it. I’m gonna definitely keep on enjoying mine, even if we understand more and more of its factors with science and AI. I’m gonna keep on enjoying my creativity, with a sandwich of great stories about discoveries, new tech and gadgets created by the DIY gal next door from just flour and a bit of string. And I am gonna enjoy it because creativity is not mystical, because it’s “just” a cognitive skill of our amazing minds, and the amazing minds we share the planet with. And that is enough for me to be in awe anyway.
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Author: Dr. Dr. Ana-Maria Olteteanu