Week 9 Post 2 - Can You Be Creative Without Using Prior Knowledge And Ideas?
Henry Romain
People revered as innovators often consider themselves to not be innovators, rather they have just applied prior ideas in history to contemporary problems. Henry Ford is a great example of someone who revolutionized the automobile industry. He integrated the concept of an assembly line to produce cars much faster in the factories. While he was the first to use assembly lines for cars, he says he simply used the discoveries of other men in a contemporary way. Cigarette manufacturing companies had been doing this long before Ford has in their own factories. This use of prior knowledge in a seemingly new way suggests that one concept of creativity is that it is the ability to rearrange and recycle prior knowledge. "Just as nature modifies existing animals to create new creatures, so too the brain works from precedent. More than 400 years ago, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs … Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own.” Or as modern science historian Steven Johnson puts it, “We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across, and we jigger them together into some new shape”"(S2). If this is true, could you be creative without tapping into prior knowledge? One case suggests that you cannot. "Graphic artist Lonni Sue Johnson, a prolific illustrator who made covers for the New Yorker. In 2007, she suffered a nearly fatal infection that crippled her memory. She survived, but found herself living in a fifteen-minute window of time, unable to recall her marriage, her divorce, or even people she’d met earlier in the day. The basin of her memories was largely emptied, and the ecosystem of her creativity dried up. She stopped painting because she could think of nothing to paint. No internal models swirled inside her head, no new ideas for the next combination of things she’d seen before. When she sat down in front of her paper, there was nothing but a blank. She needed the past to be able to create the future. She had nothing to draw upon, and therefore nothing to draw. Creativity relies on memory"(S2).
Can you be considered creative if what you are doing is simply applying prior knowledge and ideas to contemporary problems? Henry Ford is rightly considered an innovator in the automobile industry due to his use of an assembly line in his factories, but Ford admits that all he has really done is apply ideas from other men in history and in other industries to the automobile industry. Could he be considered creative because he had the idea to use other ideas in a new way? Is that what creativity is? "Just as nature modifies existing animals to create new creatures, so too the brain works from precedent. More than 400 years ago, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs … Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own.” Or as modern science historian Steven Johnson puts it, “We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across, and we jigger them together into some new shape”"(S2). Is it possible to "come up with" new ideas seemingly out of nowhere? To lack any prior knowledge and influence? One artists seems to support the idea that prior knowledge is needed for creativity. "Graphic artist Lonni Sue Johnson, a prolific illustrator who made covers for the New Yorker. In 2007, she suffered a nearly fatal infection that crippled her memory. She survived, but found herself living in a fifteen-minute window of time, unable to recall her marriage, her divorce, or even people she’d met earlier in the day. The basin of her memories was largely emptied, and the ecosystem of her creativity dried up. She stopped painting because she could think of nothing to paint. No internal models swirled inside her head, no new ideas for the next combination of things she’d seen before. When she sat down in front of her paper, there was nothing but a blank. She needed the past to be able to create the future. She had nothing to draw upon, and therefore nothing to draw. Creativity relies on memory"(S2). But if creativity requires prior knowledge, where did the absolute first creative idea come from? It is the problem of "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" If you apparently need prior knowledge of other ideas to be creative, what spawned those ideas? And what spawned the ideas that spawned those ideas?
People revered as innovators often consider themselves to not be innovators, rather they have just applied prior ideas in history to contemporary problems. Henry Ford is a great example of someone who revolutionized the automobile industry. He integrated the concept of an assembly line to produce cars much faster in the factories. While he was the first to use assembly lines for cars, he says he simply used the discoveries of other men in a contemporary way. Cigarette manufacturing companies had been doing this long before Ford has in their own factories. This use of prior knowledge in a seemingly new way suggests that one concept of creativity is that it is the ability to rearrange and recycle prior knowledge. "Just as nature modifies existing animals to create new creatures, so too the brain works from precedent. More than 400 years ago, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs … Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own.” Or as modern science historian Steven Johnson puts it, “We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across, and we jigger them together into some new shape”"(S2). If this is true, could you be creative without tapping into prior knowledge? One case suggests that you cannot. "Graphic artist Lonni Sue Johnson, a prolific illustrator who made covers for the New Yorker. In 2007, she suffered a nearly fatal infection that crippled her memory. She survived, but found herself living in a fifteen-minute window of time, unable to recall her marriage, her divorce, or even people she’d met earlier in the day. The basin of her memories was largely emptied, and the ecosystem of her creativity dried up. She stopped painting because she could think of nothing to paint. No internal models swirled inside her head, no new ideas for the next combination of things she’d seen before. When she sat down in front of her paper, there was nothing but a blank. She needed the past to be able to create the future. She had nothing to draw upon, and therefore nothing to draw. Creativity relies on memory"(S2).
Can you be considered creative if what you are doing is simply applying prior knowledge and ideas to contemporary problems? Henry Ford is rightly considered an innovator in the automobile industry due to his use of an assembly line in his factories, but Ford admits that all he has really done is apply ideas from other men in history and in other industries to the automobile industry. Could he be considered creative because he had the idea to use other ideas in a new way? Is that what creativity is? "Just as nature modifies existing animals to create new creatures, so too the brain works from precedent. More than 400 years ago, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs … Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own.” Or as modern science historian Steven Johnson puts it, “We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across, and we jigger them together into some new shape”"(S2). Is it possible to "come up with" new ideas seemingly out of nowhere? To lack any prior knowledge and influence? One artists seems to support the idea that prior knowledge is needed for creativity. "Graphic artist Lonni Sue Johnson, a prolific illustrator who made covers for the New Yorker. In 2007, she suffered a nearly fatal infection that crippled her memory. She survived, but found herself living in a fifteen-minute window of time, unable to recall her marriage, her divorce, or even people she’d met earlier in the day. The basin of her memories was largely emptied, and the ecosystem of her creativity dried up. She stopped painting because she could think of nothing to paint. No internal models swirled inside her head, no new ideas for the next combination of things she’d seen before. When she sat down in front of her paper, there was nothing but a blank. She needed the past to be able to create the future. She had nothing to draw upon, and therefore nothing to draw. Creativity relies on memory"(S2). But if creativity requires prior knowledge, where did the absolute first creative idea come from? It is the problem of "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" If you apparently need prior knowledge of other ideas to be creative, what spawned those ideas? And what spawned the ideas that spawned those ideas?
What are your thoughts about creativity needing prior knowledge?
ReplyDeleteSubjectively I could say that truly creative things do not require prior knowledge, but that is psychologically impossible. It sounds like it goes against the fundamentals of innovation, when in reality you need to know what has been made in order to create something that you know is new.
ReplyDelete