11/120/04creatiivity, third class1 creativity third class, november 20

11/120/04 Creatiivity, Third Class 1

Creativity

Third Class, November 20

http://www.is.wayne.edu/drbowen/crtvyf04


Agenda

(Please check your name off on the list)

• Finishing up

• Creativity as a course topic – the essays

• Types of creativity

• Why is creativity important?

• Grammar

• Review of reading


Finishing up (end is 12/15)If you are not going to finish by the end of the semester, your options are:• Incomplete (I – must have substantial work in)• Withdrawal (W – complete official form)• Regular grade (D or E)• Unofficial withdrawal(X)

It is important to make the best choice for your situation - see a counselor and let me know.


Ambiguity of Creativity

• What exactly is Creativity?

• At this point, best criterion we have to to watch for its effects on other people. The two ideas about creativity both have this aspect– Something new that meets a need or solves a

problem.– A change in the culture


Ambiguity of Creativity

• At this point, we do not know enough to manage an objective criterion.

• The same idea, too early, will not engage the field (Darwin, Wegener).

• The same idea, too late, will not be thought of as creative, even if it was developed independently.


Conditions for Creativity

• Some spare time / effort / attention

• Autonomy

• Focus

• Basic skills in Domain

• Access to Field

• Something you like, something you pay attention to, keep coming back to


Types of Creativity• Flow (internal state, may be no product, can

be very important for individual quality of life)

• Everyday problem-solving

• Innovation (in material culture)

• Little c (but can add up) (in symbolic culture)

• Big C (in symbolic culture)


Csikszentmihalyi Doesn’t Say It, But…

Why does Creativity require complexity? Isn’t simplicity better?• We solve hard problems by dividing them into

pieces• More connections to be made, these are a raw

material for Creativity


1. Why is Creativity important?

• Stages of society – how did we develop?– Hunter-gatherer– Agricultural– Industrial– ?

• We know quite a bit about agricultural and industrial societies, but not so much about hunter-gatherers. So…


2. Social ChangesTimes’ Harvest, ISP 3360

Status of religion

Wealth comes from…

Basis for marriage

Agricultural

Industrial

State religion

Owning land

Arranged

Multiple churches

Owning means of

production

Romantic love


3. Sectors of CultureIn all cultures, as soon as artifacts become durable, we see:• Social organization• Economy: production, distribution• Who are we, how did we get here, why are we

here? (Religion, myth, modern science)• Art and personal adornment• Music, narrative and performance• Systematic observation of nature (experimental

science)


4. The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Forida

• Start: map of fast-growing US regions

• Met gay grad students who had gay-friendly map

• The two maps were virtually identical!

• Not that gays are necessarily creative, but that creative people seek diversity

• These days, corporations follow them, rather than people moving towards employers


5. Simple Ideas About Economy• Demo – the $1 economy• Wheel-shaped economy – producers and

consumers– Kick the wheel and make it spin, and we’re fat

and happy– Hesitate, and we all get laid off

• Other sectors work in similar ways• How to find what we want – Creativity

provides raw materials, we decide


6. So…

• Creativity is a key driver of historical and economic progress

• In turn, progress and economic growth provide a complex society, excess effort, ability to focus (hunter-gatherers had to be generalists) for more creativity

• Not a vicious cycle but a virtuous circle


Grammar 1

• Essays a generally very good

• Have read and understood

• Good form and organization

• Mechanics is the weak are


Grammar 2

• A sentence° Verb (action)° Noun (who or what takes the action)° (Expresses a complete thought)° Examples:

John hit the ball (sentence) Because John hit the ball (not a sentence)

• Its Vs it’s Vs its’


Grammar 3

• Subject-verb number agreement° Subject and verb should agree as to whether the

subject and verb in a sentence (and between sentences) as to singular or plural

° Examples Eliot write/writes that… We understand/understands that… A group of authors say/says that…


Grammar 4• Showing possession

° ‘s is possession by a single person Never for plural unless there is no alternative

s’ is possession by more than one person Exceptions:

Its is already possessive Other words also inherently possessive – their, our

Examples: Belonging to one company – to several?


Grammar 5• Compound adjectives get joined with a

hyphen. Examples:° just-released movie° newly-formed friendship

• Set off non-restrictive phrases with commas° non-restrictive: not needed to understand

sentence. Example: Marina, who was the president of the club, was the

first to speak


Grammar 6• Joining sentences

° It is never wrong to leave two complete sentences separate.

° Two disparate sentences should never be joined.

° To emphasize a connection, you may join tow complete sentences with: a semicolon (;) a joining word (and, but, so etc.) and comma (,)


Grammar 7

• Joining sentences (continued)° Examples of joining sentences

“I do” sounds simple, but it is a lifetime commitment.

John went to the store; he bought orange juice.

° An incomplete sentence must be joined to a complete sentence with a comma. Example: Because we are growing quickly, our company has

to move often.


Grammar 8

• In-class exercise…


From Flow (audiotape)

• My notes from audiotape on on course wb site

• (1A.88) The amateur gardener

• (2A.15) Comparing enjoyment and pleasure

• (2A.157) Aspects of a complex personality

• (2A.324) The assembly-line worker


Review of Reading


Corporate Creativity

• Good reception in this class

• Often, people in this class are surprised to think that a corporation could be creative

• Actually, for most of the day, 100% of our surroundings are due to corporate creativity



Advantages a corporation may have• Diversity, including job rotation

° But focus and experience are also necessary (DB at Ford)

• More resources, including people• Different personalities – innovator doesn’t

have to be all things in bringing idea to fruition



Alignment:

• Two-say agreement on goals

• Must have some level of inspiration° Tom Peters: Nobody even got excited about

“we’re no worse than anybody else.”


Creating Minds• Gardner also wrote “multiple Intelligences”

° Pg 363

• Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, Gandhi. Not one nice person.° “made” modernism° Cognitive – what is going on inside the mind?° Pervasive influence, they influence you even if

you don’t know them or like their work° Really revolutionary (web page about this)


Creating Minds• Creative within one domain, must be

accepted by a culture

• Regular creative activity – ten-year rule for major breakthroughs

• Effort at presenting themselves as creative

• Faustian bargain

• Personal and professional support at the time of breakthrough


Creating Minds• Can be viewed as going back to child-like

content and methods

• (DB) Often mastered classical and romantic methods before innovating° Picasso – book

• (DB) General contribution: incorporation of ancient images (Stravinsky, Graham, Picasso)


Creating MindsSpecial contributions (DB):• Freud: unconscious• Einstein: relativity – see later• Picasso: art depicts, not the objective world,

but our subjective reaction to it• Stravinsky: rhythm in music• Graham: freeform dance, expressiveness,

rise of American arts and America generally


Creating MindsSpecial contributions (DB):

• Eliot: loss of moral certainty, questioning of authority° From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock:

“Let us go then, you and IWhen the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table.”



• Eliot:° from The Waste Land

“I think we are in a rat’s alleyWhere the dead men lost their bones.”

° from The Hollow Men“This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.”



• Eliot:° from Little Gidding, Pt 5, in the Four Quartets

(retelling of Homer’s Odyssey?)“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd to know the place for the first time.”Eliot being positive?????



• Eliot:° Other poetry spekas of the moral bankruptcy of

authorities – they are no better that we are.° I think this led to our current mixing of public

and private lives. They used to be separate, but now are mixed. Example follows


Mixing public and private lives

• Duke of Windsor resigned as King of England in 1936 to marry American commoner Wallis Simpson. The British press and royalty kept this affair silent for eighteen months.

• Compare this with how the press and the public handled President Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.


Creating Minds

Special contributions (DB):

• Gandhi: Merging of protest and publicity using non-violence to apply moral pressure to bring down a repressive regine. (We now tend to think that the protesters are right.)



• Einstein:

Special Relativity. (Speed of light = 1 ft per nanosecond)


Creating MindsSpecial contributions (DB):• Einstein:

° What happens if we do not see the car moving at 110% of the speed of light?

° We see the railroad car and the car as shorter, car moves 6.6 feet instead of 20, we see it moving at 96.6% of the speed of light, instead of 110%

° People on railroad car don’t see it as shorter, though. They see us as “thinner.”


Creativity

• Questions, comments?

• Done!

11/120/04creatiivity, third class1 creativity third class, november 20

Documents

creativity important

creative people

creative class

symbolic culturecreatiivity

best criterion

symbolic culturebig

material culturelittle

social organizationeconomy