Hi Kevin, 



With you on the maths, but I am not sure that I buy your reductionist

take on synergy. 



First because history is littered with ideas being 'of a particular

time' with creative solutions being arrived at in parallel. If you are

'creative' and riding the zeitgeist, there is a strong likelihood that

someone else in a similar discipline has caught the same wave. 



Second, because synergy is not infrequently demonstrated in team sports

or cooperative art in many forms -such as when a football team moves

seamlessly and with near-telepathic grace or performer partnerships

crackle with electricity (Tracey/Hepburn, Fonteyn/Nureyov,

Laurel/Hardy?) or a jazz ensemble hits their stride - such special

performances show ideas being played out in real time, creating a

synergistic whole.  In short this is when a group acts as a brain;

bouncing individual ideas together to generate new ideas in the moment –

I would argue there are few more satisfying moments available to us as

human beings. High fives need an opposing hand… 



 



Perhaps this leads to an interesting point: Timescale of creativity...



 



Carol



	-----Original Message----- 

	From: List for people wishing to share knowledge experiences of

curriculum design on behalf of Kevin Byron 

	Sent: Mon 20/07/2009 19:57 

	To: [log in to unmask] 

	Cc: 

	Subject: Re: FW: How drafts reveal the creative process?

	

	



	In spite of the popularity of the multiple intelligences model

as yet

	another way of slicing and dicing the person (in this case

preferred

	learning styles), I think it is flawed in that these

intelligences have big

	overlaps with each other and in common with other 'typing' tools

eg MBTI, we

	incessantly swish and swash around from one to another and to

another.

	

	We are different things to different people and we draw on

different

	intelligences in different situations. Though this is not to

suggest we are

	all things to all people. The simplicity of that model can be

questioned

	further when creativity is brought in to the picture. For

instance why

	logical and mathematical are con-joined by a hyphen defeats me.

There's

	absolutely nothing logical about doing mathematics except in

retrospect and

	this is where the importance of drafting comes in especially for

students.

	

	So when we look at a text book of mathematics and we see a proof

let's take

	something as basic as Pythagoras'theorem do we see any

creativity ? - no -

	just a series of logical steps that lead from a hypothesis to a

conclusion

	and confirmation of the hypothesis. Is that how people do maths

? -

	absolutely not. When you don't know the destination you keep

trying

	different routes (drafting) and it may take years to get there

but what is

	left behind and what gets published is the one clear path that

led to the

	conclusion and it looks so obvious in retrospect. So it is with

scientific

	research too. We teach maths in a logical fashion but it doesn't

make you a

	better mathematician - it's creative skills that make a good

mathematician.

	

	With regard to the idea of group creativity - I am not so sure

about this.

	To be reductionist about it a good idea only happens in an

individuals'

	brain when two neural networks connect and produce something

bigger than the

	sum of the parts. Most of the time something lesser than the sum

of parts

	arises and the connection is weakened. When we collaborate we

make social

	connections and this can facilitate more ideas but no two people

can have

	the same idea except extremely rarely. The group may agree

something is a

	good idea and it may have built on many earlier ideas by

individuals but

	only one person can have a good idea. Maybe we need a different

concept for

	what has been described here as 'group creativity'. In my view

groups

	collaborate: they share and communicate ideas and stimulate

further ideas

	but the group as a whole don't have an idea - but individuals

do.

	

	Cheers,

	

	Kevin Byron

	University of Leicester

	

	    

	

	 

	 

	           

	

	-----Original Message-----

	From: List for people wishing to share knowledge experiences of

curriculum

	design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On

Behalf Of

	Kleiman, Paul

	Sent: 20 July 2009 14:55

	To: [log in to unmask]

	Subject: Re: FW: How drafts reveal the creative process?

	

	It occurs to me that there may be something here that ties in

with

	Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences i.e. multiple creative

	intelligences.

	

	Of the original seven intelligences (now 8, with the possibility

of a

	ninth) it is only the first two that, traditionally, have been

regarded

	as essential to education - Linguistic, and Logical-Mathematical

- hence

	the focus on the 3Rs (or 1R, 1W and 1A, so much for 'linguistic'

	intelligence!)

	

	Higher education research is framed almost entirely within the

	Linguistic and Logical-Mathematical (witness all the problems

with

	Practice-as-Research), and demands that whatever our various

process

	e.g. making marks on paper, making and composing sounds, moving

in

	space, we present it, or at least demonstrate its worth, within

the

	confines of those two intelligences.

	

	Paul