Primer on Natural Resource Science

Chapter 6. Creativity

CHAPTER 6 Creativity Every human achievement is the result of an initial act of creativity. —Ron Hale-Evans (2006:71) [T]he human brain is genetically disposed toward organization, yet if not tightly controlled, will link one imagerial fragment to another on the flimsiest of pretense and in the most freewheeling manner, as if it takes a kind of organic pleasure in creative association, without regard for logic or chronological sequence. —Tom Robbins (2000:7) What facilitates thought impoverishes imagination. —Robert Kaplan (2000:34) Creativity is a hallmark of the human condition. We know human creativity started at least 40,000 years ago (probably much earlier) with cave paintings by Cro-Magnons. By the late twentieth century, it gave us The Beatles and Bob Dylan. You see my bias here. The bluebloods among us might think of creativity in terms of Mozarts and Renoirs, Shakespeares and Einsteins. Indeed, we often think the trail to creativity is marked by the spoor of genius, but creativity is prevalent among us tomfools, too. We see it in everything from country-and-western songs to Superbowl commercials. Creativity improves the quality of our lives and fosters progress, and it is no less important in science than in the general human experience. If science did not have creative input, scientists would end up studying the same things into the indefinite future. Under this scenario, knowledge accumulation would slow to a dribble; new knowledge would consist of finer and finer detail on matters mostly known and understood. Science would be quite boring. It is possible that, in the limit, science would effectively end without creativity. That would be too bad for scientists and too bad for the consumers of scientific information. Moreover, the knowledge amassed in the absence of creativity would to some extent be incomplete and misleading. These problems would occur because, for example, a creative act in science is to discover new and better interpretations of nature, such that old and incomplete beliefs are eliminated. Scientists make mistakes, and those mistakes might persist unless challenged by creative alternatives. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss creativity in natural resource science. I start with examples of creative acts to show certain 56 Perspectives goalsofcreativity.Ithenturntoinhibitors(especiallyknowledge)and releasers of creativity and discuss how to set up creative thoughts. Examples of Creative Acts To be creative, you must first have examples of creative acts so that you will know your goal. The following list provides several examples from natural resource science; the list undoubtedly is incomplete, but the examples are important. 1. Recognize a pattern in nature that no one has ever recognized. Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements (chapter 1) provides an example. 2. Ask a question about nature that nobody has ever thought to ask. Albert Einstein is said to have asked, “What would the clock in the town square look like if I was traveling away from it at the speed of light?” He realized that time would stand still, and he formalized the thinking in his theories of relativity. It is surprisingly difficult to bring something commonplace to thought consciousness . If that step can be taken, the next question may be how or why. Those questions may lead to original ideas. 3. Discover a useful method of classifying objects or phenomena . Sometimes it is mentally trying to organize ideas in a manner that is accurate and general. Such organization requires the same type of thinking you use when developing a lucid outline for a paper. The Linnaean system of nomenclature is not exactly the type of classification I am implying. The original idea of classifying organisms was, well, quite original, but the classification per se was rather mechanical. A good example of inspired classification comes from linguistics . Somebody recognized a pattern in the several tens of thousands of words that make up the English language, namely, that all the words could be classified into 8 types. These are the parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions , and interjections. Whoever realized that words could be so classed made an original, brilliant discovery. 4. Discover new interpretations of old beliefs and principles; disprove old beliefs (dogma) and principles. This is sometimes a matter of simply negating some concept and thinking through the consequences of such negation. For example, density-dependent 57 Creativity predator avoidance is a sort of negative of...