Part III: Practical Conclusions and General Considerations

3.1. What improves or inhibits creative thought (intensity, caliber)

The basic parameters for improvement of creative thought (besides genetics and conditions early in life) appear to be:

• Training
• Environment
• Habit and attitude

Training:

• The plasticity of the human brain varies with age, and differently for different parts of the brain. Example: Reading and writing have to be taught early in life; unused second or third languages can be forgotten again in early adolescence.
  • All elements of creative thought can be influenced by learning:
  • The number of available associations: through teaching of images and perceptions leading to new associations.
  • The multitude of addressability: through active personal manipulation of images and perceptions in a multitude of contexts (not just listening and watching others).

The acceptance of unusual associations: through demonstration of the usefulness of the unusual.

Environment:

Most important for creative thought is an environment supportive of creative thinking. This may be the main reason for the blossoming or stagnation of cultures through history: Antique Athens, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, "socialist" countries of decades past, Europe and America over the last 150 years.

In the work environment, well-formulated, logic, assertive statements or authoritative statements by hierarchical superiors can kill creative thought by others, specifically by those subordinated to them in position or rank. This may be related to the self-confidence or independence of those addressed. It may also be related to the high "value" related to the presented thought in the mind of the listener, preventing his own thought associations (especially from the right side of the brain) to develop and compete for relative "value" and consciousness.

In many social environments (even in research-oriented groups), the announcement of substantial new ideas by one individual encounters intense critical analysis, sometimes jealous adversity and ridicule by others. Few people want to be exposed to that. Then, only the already established thinkers and authorities in that field dare to speak up or are being listened to. Creativity by less established thinkers is debilitated or does not come to light.

The same effect occurs in work environments where convincing practical solutions or approaches are already available,

More specifically, one can mention the following environmental effects on creative thought:

• Acceptance of the new and unusual by peers and supervisors
• Stimulation by other innovations (as in brainstorming)
• A certain degree of freedom and independence in the work environment
• A certain degree of demands and expectations imposed by the work environment
• Variation between stress and rest (both leading to specific, but different creativity)
• Rewards.

Habit and attitude:

Established habits of thought and behavior are basically not creative. Habits should be questioned from time to time. On the other hand, it can become a habit to question habits. It can become a habit to question all unproven statements or to question the proof of any statement.

Creativity is reduced when a person has been trained and has worked for a long time in a certain thought pattern of internal consistency (from science to theology or politics). Therefore, very experienced people are not necessarily very creative. On the other hand, many substantial, new ideas come from young people.

Common teaching and management in industry stress proper work habits as a precondition for successful work – as in proper documentation, orderliness, thoroughness and follow-up. But it is well known that some exceptionally ingenious people have disorderly work habits.

Attitudes can be changed by training, specifically in regard to obedience versus independence, shyness (risk aversion) versus curiosity. Some aspects of personal attitude are important for creative thought:

• Self-confidence and optimism versus insecurity, and depression:
  An optimistic attitude and self confidence increases creativity. An insecure and depressed attitude debilitates creativity.
• Fear versus security:
  Fear can stimulate creativity ("War is the father of all invention"). Excessive fear freezes all inventive thought. Security can lull creative thought. It can also provide the sense of freedom to pursue independent, creative thought.
• Need versus satisfaction:
  Need (as fear) does stimulate creativity. Excessive need leads to short-term, petty thoughts of survival and risk aversion. Satisfaction leads to the lulling of creativity, the desire to retain what one has. Satisfaction also frees the mind of pursuits to meet need, stimulating creativity in other areas of interest.
  The optimum in either of the last two issues may be in a middle range or (possibly more so) in ongoing change between various states.
• "Creative" attitude: Many great inventors were not motivated by money or fame but by an innate curiosity, by a desire to improve, investigate, solve problems, and invent.
• Methodology
  Example: A company produces nutcrackers. What other products could there be? "Permutation of components" as a method: What else can be cracked?
  Example: Lobsters! How else can one crack? Example: By means of a screw! Crunching as a variation to cracking! Example: Crunching of cans for disposal!
• Alertness (brain activity, effect of coffee).

It is an old argument whether knowledge and experience foster or inhibit creative thought. Obviously, both can be the case. Additional knowledge provides the possibility of additional thought associations, as when just learning something new. An encyclopedic memory may be a bore. But multifaceted knowledge, including the knowledge of unrelated categories, allows for unexpected new combinations. The right combination of creative attitude with knowledge or experience makes the difference.

Experience is supposed to prevent wrong conclusions and gives high preference to proven combinations. This can save time and resources. On the other hand, reliance on experience may prevent search for and acceptance of new thought associations. That is the reasons why young people and newcomers to a problem area (at any age) should have a better chance of bringing substantial innovation to the task. Their possible new associations are not blocked and they also bring new associations from their prior perspectives and experiences.

This leads to the advice to start creative thinking in a new area of interest spontaneously and freely on one's own, wherever one comes from, without too much guidance by experts. One should first write down ones own original ideas. Only then should one read what established experts have worked out so far, subsequently improving and expanding one’s own writing as indicated.

In general, there is a need for openness that newer thought can change older conclusions (the need to break the paradigm).

3.2. Coherence of Creative Thought

If thought sequences are merely new combinations of existing memory associations, how can there be any creative progress in thought?

The progression of practical "creative thought" presents a surprising similarity to biological evolution. In biology, ever new and more advanced manifestations of life (including the brain) evolved coherently from a given base of building blocks of molecular nature, progressing from single-cell organisms to the most complex ones. Similarly, creative thought evolves coherently out of prior given basic items in memory, progressing to the most complex systems of thought. In both cases, the path selection in the progression is the selection of the fittest from a large number of contenders. In thought progression, it is the selection of the association with the best expected consequence (strongest associative "value" signal, see above) out of all possible association paths.

As in biological evolution, thought progresses in accordance with opportunity and need, understandable in retrospect, yet unpredictable. Thought progresses in all directions, yet shows areas of dense coverage and areas of neglect. If species are compared to dogma, then the dominance of some dogma can suppress evolution of some new species of thought, which blossom only as the old dogma is eliminated.

The comparison of thought progression to biological evolution, for any individual thinker or for mankind throughout history, deserves further expansion.

The coherence of associative thought sequences along the path of highest "value" leads to the question whether thought sequences are predetermined. This touches on the question of free will. In "practical" creative thought as discussed here, there is not much need or room for free will which is more related to emotional matters and judgment involving human values. At best, free will plays a role in deliberate focusing, work attitude and risk-taking in research and inventiveness, not in the thought process itself. On the other hand, there are questions of ethics in business and ethical behavior in an industrial setting. Lately, the question of ethics in technology development, the responsibility of scientist and engineers for the outcome of their work, has been discussed, from product liability to responsibility in developing military equipment for mass destruction. Then, free will does enter into practical thought processes.

Then there is the phenomenon that all natural events show some statistical distribution. This certainly should apply to nerval signal levels, too. Consequently, path selection in sequencing or memory access of competing associations are not predictable [22]. One can visualize the parallel of a Heisenberg uncertainty principle in thought. This would provide room for the consideration of many degrees of freedom from predeterminism. Such degrees or freedom can include free will, the spontaneous occurrence of thought without association, and the intervention of God in intuition.

Another effect of randomness in statistical distribution results from the fact that the brain does not have a "clock" as in digital computers. Consequently, signals progress and correlate in the brain with somewhat random timing, giving cause to spurious signals as known in electronics. Such spurious signals can trigger spurious new thought unexpectedly, for example, even when an inhibiting synapsis is expected to prevent some neural output.

The coherence of thought can be interrupted by the perception of external phenomena, as in "discoveries: The perception of new objects (such as microscopic particles and structures made visible by means of microscopy or distant galaxies in the universe made visible by telescopes), - or the discovery of natural phenomena (electromagnetism, fields in the vacuum expanding at the speed of light, and so on) expanding the possibilities of thought.

As part of perception, the coherence of thought of an individual can be altered by new information from another individual. Usually, acceptance of foreign thought for own thought processing requires "understanding". Without understanding, such new information is combined with insecurity, resulting in a negative value association of such new memory items and resulting in unusable associations in thought. Understanding in most cases is nothing else but the establishment of intermediate associative steps with given memory items of the recipient, thereby reestablishing the coherence of thought. Such intermediate steps can be observations. In some cases, they are mental imagery provided by thought or communication with others (learning), rendering the appearance of "understanding" in one's mind a highly subjective phenomenon.

There are cases where the gaining of such understanding is difficult, such as understanding the existence of electromagnetic fields in the vacuum or of the unlimited appearance of our universe of limited size.

The gaining of understanding based on explanations received by somebody else can hardly be called creative thinking. However the gaining of understanding and insight through one's own thought in building associative linkage steps is definitely a large part of the creative thought process of scientists. The concept of "logic" falls into this area of gaining understanding in a step-by-step procedure of acceptable chains of associations. Pattern recognition is also related to "understanding" and is facilitated by prior experience.

3.3. Open questions

What if problems can not be solved but action is required? Then, decision-making is necessary. Is decision-making part of creative thought? Discussion of this question goes beyond the scope of this article.

There are some open questions regarding the physiology of thought relating to the known EEG (electroencephalography) signals. Their correlation to thought (defined as the nerval signal activities in the brain as expressed in firing rates) is not clear.

Another, more mysterious area is ESP (extrasensory perception). The most common form of ESP, telepathy or the transmittal or simultaneous occurrence of thought between two or more individuals, is not scientifically founded at this time.

3.4. Can there be too much creative thought?

Undoubtedly, creative thought can disrupt the enjoyment of things as they are and bring unrest to a social setting of satisfaction with the status quo.

In modern society, social ills are increasingly being blamed on unchecked progress and new technologies. Creativity in the service of some evil intent must be questioned (even though much progress of mankind has come out of strife and warfare).

A habit of challenging any statement and the constant thinking in alternatives and exceptions (see above) can destroy enjoyable discourse and peace of mind. There is some trade-off between stability and progress. Often, there is some risk associated with curiosity and creativity.

Obviously, there is not only the question of an optimal level of creative thought and behavior, but one of timing and variation in the course of life as well.

Then, there is the question of the direction of creative thought. What if it leads to decadence?

Not every leisure activity must be analyzed and improved in technical or economic terms,

Many industrial organizations have experienced the dangers of too much costly innovation with too little follow-through for economic success (the last years of RCA and others). It is one of the many skills of good management to control innovation to the proper level and the proper timing.

Footnotes:

[22] Buridan's ass would have made a decision as such a statistical variation in signal level between the two sides would have occurred at some time.