I'm unable to contribute to this discussion with any authority or  
continuity, but I want to bring to the attention of the list a useful  
reference. I recently heard  Richard Sennett speak at Loughborough  
University, and am currently reading his book 'The Craftsman'. He  
argues that the word 'creativity' carries 'too much Romantic baggage— 
the mystery of inspiration, the claims of genius' (2009, p. 290). To  
help our understanding, he attempts to show us how intuitive leaps  
happen through 'reformatting, adjacency, surprise, and gravity' (p.  
212). Anybody interested in 'educating for creativity' might want to  
consider putting the book on their reading list. I'm finding it full  
of insight into a subject that, in my view, must be at the very heart  
of what we do, as well as think.

Sennett, R. (2009), The Craftsman. Penguin Books.

Robert.

Robert Harland    Lecturer    Loughborough University    School of Art  
and Design    +44 (0)1509 228980    [log in to unmask]
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ac/mainpages/Research/staffpages/harland/harland.htm




On 24 Jul 2009, at 12:47, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

> Could be, but i think my debate was less about the nature of  
> creativity, than just conceptual clarity in regards to perceptions  
> of language, conceptual schema, etc.
>
> in regards to creativity....  i have to say... it happens... i can't  
> get two people together and have a conversation without one of the  
> two, and probably both being creative in some way... it is just so  
> hard to quash.  either they will use novel constructs of language in  
> some playful way, or they will have some idea neither has thought of  
> before or they will take some idea and improve upon it.  mind you,  
> sometimes much of this occurs in the realm of the every day and some  
> might even be in the realm of the seemingly inane, but... I've never  
> not really seen creativity happen in my recent memory when people  
> were communicating in a social manner.
>
> The problem with that is that it is a creativity is everywhere and  
> creativity is universal thesis.  this of course makes the analytic  
> use of the term sort of pointless.  Pointing at some action x as  
> creativity versus some action y... well that's a hard ball game  
> given that if you take x and y and put them into the middle of say a  
> footie match and almost anything would x or y if debated openly  
> during a footie match on the field would likely become novel and  
> creative... perhaps even rising the the level of performance art.   
> So the whole issue of context matters, as others have pointed  
> out...  but really.... does it?  must it?  can't we just accept that  
> people are, if given a chance, creative beings... homo poesis and  
> all that... same with innovation really, though i might claim that  
> to be more conventionally oriented.
>
> In general what I'd want to say about creativity is that it is much  
> like the concept language game.... almost everything communicated  
> can be a language game and likely to some people, everything is, and  
> it is in this gameness... this rule-makingness or this orderingness  
> that we find the spaces for the obverses, complements, and  
> contrariness of rules and ordering that is mashes them, mixes them,  
> and more often than not just forgets them in order to prefer  
> something else, even in passing, to whatever it is that is at this  
> moment... to use a colloquial saying... meh.
>
> here I'm thinking of storper and salais  worlds of production: the  
> action frameworks of the economy which considers the question of the  
> economic system in relation to the social convention, which ... to  
> me is really what we are talking about usually with creativity... we  
> are talking about 'conventions and anti-conventions'  that is  
> normally we'd expect person y to do x, and surprise they do z, but z  
> is only surprising because the set of acceptable conventions x to x  
> prime excludes z... however, if z persists, then it merely become x  
> prime prime, etc.  such is life for the creative individual/social  
> system.
>
>
> On Jul 24, 2009, at 9:12 PM, Tiiu Poldma wrote:
>
>> Hello Jeremy and all,
>>
>> I have unfortunately missed this thread BUT will jump in with two  
>> cents
>> worth...
>>
>> Some time ago I was studying the nature of creativity and found 30+
>> concepts, philosophies, meanings and constructs emanating from  
>> several
>> diverse viewpoints in different disciplines...and a supervisor  
>> whose wisdom
>> sent me a clear message that 'creativity' is a well studied and  
>> deep field
>> with multiple positions and ideas.
>>
>> All to say... I see creativity as something not necessarily  
>> 'captured' nor
>> 'constructed', and recall how it can emanate from what psychologist  
>> Howard
>> Gardner terms 'multiple intelligences', existing in multiple forms.
>> Creativity can be intuitive or serendipitous, backed by logic or  
>> not, and
>> might be honed and developed over time and using techniques, and  
>> may have
>> different thinking underscoring how it develops. I remember another
>> psychologist Robert Ornstein saying that for the multiple ideas  
>> developed
>> through creative thinking, creative acts and by 'being creative',  
>> the ones
>> that fly depend on hard work, being in the 'right place at the  
>> right time'
>> or on the capacity of people being able to put the ideas into  
>> action to
>> solve problems or improving a situation or need...aka design! This  
>> requires
>> judgement and design thinking.....useful when guiding students  
>> through the
>> design process in education.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Tiiu
>>
>> Tiiu Poldma
>> University of Montreal
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and  
>> related
>> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of  
>> jeremy
>> hunsinger
>> Sent: July-22-09 9:32 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Educating for Creativity
>>
>> should be noted that all 'social constructs' exist, either as real
>> things like roads, or as conceptual things that are coming to be real
>> things in some form or set of assemblages.
>>
>> I think the difference is not so much ontological here, 'exists'
>> versus 'constructed', as in that case constructed just merely means
>> exists.   But it is how we describe the reality we are dealing with,
>> i'm thinking that the 'what it is?' questions tend to be issues of
>> essences and essential qualities, like aristotle defines man as a
>> social being with reason, it is a definitional system highlighting
>> essences.  That's fine and good if you think essences exist and are
>> real properties of things apart from any interpretive faculty that
>> interacts with them.  Some people accept that, and most people i'd  
>> say
>> operate on some construct of that ideation of non-modality of
>> essences.  Others don't, and that is where I think you would call it
>> 'constructed' but perhaps a better term is realism but that realism  
>> is
>> predicated on a different construction of what exists.  In the latter
>> case, what exists is not 'properties' of things'  but 'relations'
>> amongst things.  These relations are almost always positions capable
>> of being interpreted.  For instance, as umberto eco mentions in
>> ancient rome... the sun was blood red, as were lemons.... as they had
>> not 'natural' category of 'yellow' or 'orange', that essay is in
>> Blonsky's On Signs and I don't think i'm taking too much liberty with
>> my memory of it.  So in what you might call the 'constructed' system
>> what we have instead are real things being perceived, which creates a
>> relation between the thing, which producing signs within a system of
>> signs which provide context and meaning to the sign it produces, and
>> the interpreter, which is trying to fit the information in the sign,
>> 'the message' into his or her current fields of understanding that
>> comprise their everyday life, then usually as these intepreters  
>> likely
>> sign themselves, reproduce aspects of the original in a variety of
>> modes of production that yield communal interpretations.   It is like
>> the story that Terry Pratchett uses to make fun of a famous
>> interaction that Bertrand Russell had.... two ancient people are
>> sitting next to a pond and they see a turtle go 'plop' into the
>> water.   the one person says to the other.... i think that is how it
>> works, the the other says... what works... and the first says
>> 'everything', and the other says... 'everything?'', 'yes, everything
>> is on the back of a turtle and the turtle holds it up'.... and upon
>> consideration of the plop, both come to the consideration that the  
>> end
>> of the world is going to happen sometime and it will happen with a
>> resounding plop...  heh... it is turtle's all the way down Dr.
>> Russell...  So with the 'constructivist' the 'reality' exists in the
>> social relations also, in the metanarratives that structure and  
>> inform
>> the narratives, which structure and inform our everyday lives as we
>> perceive the relations amongst the world, which are real.  So what we
>> have is merely the problem of how we describe relations, either as
>> relations, or as properties which is really more of a question of
>> epistemology and philosophy of language than anything else.  Of  
>> course
>> the solutions i'd argue run the gamut from positivist to
>> interpretivist and likely other spectrums also...
>>
>> So what is creativity?  we have one position that assumes it is what
>> might be referred to as a 'social fact' or 'brute fact' of existence
>> and another that starts off with.... looking at where meaning is
>> produced and referred to as creativity...  I think I agree that they
>> generate different questions....
>>
>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
>>> related
>>> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>>> David
>>> Sless
>>> Sent: Thursday, 23 July 2009 12:50 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Educating for Creativity
>>>
>>> There are at least two starting points for research on creativity
>>> (probably
>>> many more, but two will do for the moment.)
>>>
>>> In the first, researchers start from the proposition that creativity
>>> is
>>> something that exists. The job of research then is to establish
>>> exactly what
>>> it is, what gives rise to it, what nurtures it, what destroys it,
>>> and so on.
>>> I take Charles Burnette to be starting from that position.
>>>
>>> The second starting position is to suggest that 'creativity' is a
>>> social
>>> construct, something we can talk about, with a history of
>>> conversations
>>> traceable through the many texts on the subject. The task of
>>> research then
>>> is to investigate the history of the idea: the many ways, over time,
>>> that we
>>> have articulated ideas about creativity, and the social contexts in
>>> which we
>>> have done so. I take Amanda Bill as starting from that position.
>>> These two
>>> positions are not mutually exclusive but they do lead in different
>>> directions and give priority to different questions. At certain
>>> points these
>>> differing starting positions have nothing to say to each other.
>>