Creative Thinking Pieces

A few writing samples from Creative Thinking where I am responding to readings with my own interpretations and new insights...

Einstein’s Letter to Jacques Hadamard

Just as Chaucer and Shakespeare can express their art in 14 lines, Einstein can confuse and enlighten in just a few. The letter to Jacques Hadamard explains Einstein’s unique thought process, which uses little to no actual words or letters. His thinking seems as visual and fluid as an artist, but as meticulous and data filled as a scientist. He states, “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements of thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined.” This thought makes me question my own problem solving, if I step away from the physical words and try and focus on more abstract visuals along with the known data, I will understand different ways to solve problems I would have never imagined otherwise. And Einstein did just that.

His idea of Combinatory play as the, “essential feature in productive thought”, made me confused, yet curious. When I thought about combinatory play, I thought first of loosing ones self in their own thoughts while combining seemingly different ideas to form a new answer, or rework an old answer. I tried to perform this exercise on myself while cooking dinner for my roommates and me tonight. While still using the ingredients we always have lying around, I took different spices and foods from separate dishes we all liked and made a new hybrid meal. It turned out delicious!

Uncertainty & Atoms in Motion

A man on contradiction, Robert Brown, torpedoed our way of thinking about atoms, matter, motion, ect. through a little act called curiosity. To the naked eye we see just objects, water, rock, wood, but under the help of a microscope the object moves about wildly as if alive; this observation was first called animalcules. After a “very unexpected fact of seemingly vitality” Brown took his observations further to discover even inorganic objects had ‘living’ animalcules in them. Brown did not consider himself a philosopher so his findings were left up to future scientist to make sense of and explain.

That is where physics of today come in. We are taught that everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we do not know all the laws of science yet, and therefore things must be learned only to be unlearned again. But we must be curious and use our imagination to gain this advanced knowledge. “Experiment helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these thinks the great generalizations.” That being said, scientists across centuries have experimented to discover the acts of atoms and explanations of their behavior. We use images and behaviors observed by these atoms to imagine and guess at more information to make and expand laws.

While reading these two passages I found myself constantly asking, “what if?” as I believe the scientist did while curiously experimenting with the atoms and finding new laws. While relating to this topic of atoms, which I am unfamiliar with, I tried to think of it as my curiosity for film editing. I experiment with different shots, cuts, effects to make a great piece of film I hope people will understand as well as take into their collective subconscious to expand on a new skill that I have shown them.

Grounding the Teaching of Design in Creativity

Creativity is defined as “the process of sensing problems or gaps in information, forming ideas or hypothesizes, testing and modifying these hypotheses, and communicating the results”. It is often defined either in terms of the product, person, or process. Original thinking, openness to new ideas, ability to tolerate uncertainty and adapt to change, and self-esteem, self-motivation, persistence, and enjoying something for its own sake are some components that make a creative person. The most encouraging idea to students in a creative class is that creative thinking is innate and can be nurtured. The only problem is that most teachers tell students to be creative without helping know how. Through many of the ways written in this article teachers and students can tap into their creative abilities more effectively.

I do find it interesting that the article explains ways to teach creativity, and that everyone has the ability to be creative; yet when conducting the research to prove their ideas, there were no significant differences in originality and abstractness of titles in the students before and after the design course. I am still not convinced that everyone can tap into their creative thinking abilities, some people have it, and some don’t.

The Marketing Imagination

Your marketing imagination makes data realistic, creates your strategic plan, and gets your business to its desired results in the market. Data needs to be used in a way that relates to your customers, competitors, and market, in a compelling way. So to make your business money, you need data to prove creative. I think Levitt’s most compelling note in this section is, “The most important and challenging work involves thinking up the possibilities from among which choices may have to be made.” He goes on to say a possibility must be created before it can be chosen; sounds simple, but easy to forget during brainstorming. To form an effective strategy you need to know what your customers want, before they even know what they want. To be successful the strategy needs to be simple, short, and commonly understood. If you want your business to make money, make your marketing strategy imaginative and purposeful.