Tidy Thoughts On Creativity

• In Event: Something from Nothing: Exploring Non-discovery and Negative Claims

Abstract

Neuroscientific research on creative cognition entail the very problem of scientific, quantitative measurement methods and suitable conceptualizations. Creative cognition in terms of solving (inherently) difficult problems deals, by design, with prospective openness; however, those issues are not only objective but intrinsic for creativity research itself. Hence, such research features great contrasts for studying practices of (Latourian) “modern tidiness” within (neuro)science: separating crossings of creativity and rationality, of creative not-yet-rationalities beyond and scientific rationalities within given heuristic boundaries. Thus, creativity research is ‘tidying’ its own creative efforts corresponding to scientific dispassion and technicity ideals; on the inside, the tentative breaching of creative thought is, at the same time, highlighted and yet reconstructed as plain, cognitive mechanisms, merely grounded within the individual. Due to this “tidying work” the dynamics and constitutive role of problem-solution-relations for heuristic setups are barely visible, leaving Wittgensteinian language issues.
An STS inspired discourse analysis was applied: studying neuroscientific publications concerning explanations or measurements of creativity and comparing them with papers from other disciplines, e.g. ergonomics. To broaden the empirical contrast, ethnographic observations of practices that, vice versa, emphasize their creativity over rational orderliness are also taken into account.
This research contributes descriptions of the modern, scientific performances of rationality and struggles at its boundaries of formalization, trivialization and rationalization. Furthermore, this “tidying” of human cognition takes place within the ongoing conceptualization of human mind, which reaches out to other areas that try to imitate human cognition, e.g. AI.

Author

• Peter Müller, Technical University Munich