Цитаты из книги Science, Order and Creativity

Some insight into the nature of this block can be gained from the work of Desmond Morris, published in The Biology of Art. In one experiment chimpanzees were given canvas and paint and immediately began to apply themselves to make balanced patterns of color, somewhat reminiscent of certain forms of modern art, such as abstract expressionism. The significant point about this experiment is that the animals became so interested in painting and it absorbed them so completely that they had comparatively little interest left for food, sex, or the other activities that normally hold them strongly. Additional experiments showed somewhat similar results for other primates. When very young children are given paints, their behavior is remarkably like that of the chimpanzees. This seems to indicate that creativity is a natural potential. Yet somehow, in most cases, the urge to create fades as the human being gets older. Or at best it continues in certain limited areas, such as science, music, or painting. Why should this happen? An extension of Morris’s experiment involved rewarding the chimpanzees for producing their paintings. Very soon their work began to degenerate until they produced the bare minimum that would satisfy the experimenter. A similar behavior can be observed in young children as they become “self-conscious” of the kind of painting they believe they are “supposed” to do. This is generally indicated to them by subtle and implicit rewards, such as praise and approval, and by the need to conform to what other children around them are doing. Thus creativity appears to be incompatible with external and internal rewards or punishments. The reason is clear. In order to do something for a reward, the whole order of the activity, and the energy required for it, are determined by arbitrary requirements that are extraneous to the creative activity itself. This activity then turns into something mechanical and repetitious, or else it mechanically seeks change for its own sake. The state of intense passion and vibrant tension that goes with creative perception in the way discussed in Chapter 1 then dies away. The whole thing becomes boring and uninteresting, so that the kind of energy needed for creative perception and action is lacking. As a result, even greater rewards, or punishments, are needed to keep the activity going. Basically, the setting of goals and patterns of behavior, which are imposed mechanically or externally, and without understanding, produces a rigid structure in consciousness that blocks the free play of thought and the free movement of awareness and attention that are necessary for creativity to act.

It is useful to visualize the analogy of an obstruction which causes water to back up, sometimes a long way toward the origin of a stream, and in this way profoundly modifies its flow downstream. Rigidly fixed ideas similarly obstruct the flowing of the “stream” in the space of the mind. To free this flow therefore requires the removal of the obstruction. But how can this take place? The suggestion here is that if such a free flow comes about in any area, such as the observation of nature, then through proper attention to the whole question, a similar flowing movement can, as it were by analogy, come about in other areas and will act to remove the obstructions that operate there.

The word intelligence is often used in a general and fairly loose way today, but something of its original force can be found in the Latin root intelligere, which carries the sense of “to gather in between.” It recalls the colloquialism “to read between the lines.” In this sense, intelligence is the mind’s ability to perceive what lies “in between” and to create new categories. This notion of intelligence, which acts as the key creative factor in the formation of new categories, can be contrasted with the intellect. The past participle of intelligere is in fact intellect, which could then be thought of as “what has been gathered.” Intellect, therefore, is relatively fixed, for it is based primarily on an already existing scheme of categories. While the intelligence is a dynamic and creative act of perception through the mind, the intellect is something more limited and static. This distinction can be highlighted by suggesting that the IQ test should be more properly said to measure an intellect quotient than an intelligence quotient.