Where Does Creativity Come From and How to Foster It: Stories
Investigating creativity by looking at the most creative people
To better grasp what true creativity is, and how it arises, it is a good idea to scrutinize how the most creative individuals came up with their ideas. I am mainly interested in what kind of previous knowledge or inspiration enabled their biggest inventions and what environment was nourishing them during that time.
My take is that true creativity comes from:
- Deep knowledge
- Vast knowledge
- Space and time to be creative
I will develop my arguments in the coming paragraphs, by investigating the works and records of prominent figures from the history of science. I see them as particularly interesting cases to scrutinize.
How groups and environment influence creativity
Stefan Banach is the man behind multiple significant contributions to the field of functional analysis. Some of their key inventions were named by his surname, Banach Spaces, Banach Algebras, and Banach Fixed-Point Theorem. He also collaborated with others and defined the Banach-Tarski paradox, Banach-Steinhaus theorem, and many more. To put it shortly, he was one of the best, if not the best, polish mathematicians and there are several contributions he made that prove this.
Despite so many scientific findings, his lifestyle was quite unusual. Being a prominent figure in the Lviv School of Mathematics, he developed ideas in collaboration. But he rarely collaborated within closed doors of academia. He enjoyed being outside, with others. "Kawiarnia Szkocka" (direct translation - Scotch Caffe) was the cafe in Lviv that Banach, together with some of the greatest minds of the 20th century, gathered and discussed. In the cafe, the scientist often drank and smoked, with Stefan being the most prominent drinker of them all. Some went as far as calling him an alcoholic.
His work ethic seemed, to an outsider, questionable at most. He would often be found surrounded by people and noise. But in this environment, he was able to discuss his ideas with other brilliant minds that were around him. His behavior surely seemed eccentric, but I believe there was, within it, hidden an important part of the puzzle. Banach tremendously benefited from the multiple meetings at "Kawiarnia Szkocka" thanks to his ability to crystallize ideas that were prompted during his discussions with fellow mathematicians.
The tables in the cafeteria contained many answers. They did it quite literally because the mathematicians would often thrust in unexpected bursts of creative thoughts and would note them down as soon as possible, on the table tops by which they were currently seated. Often the next day, around 11 am students would come to the Caffe, to rewrite the problems their masters jotted down the day before. These bursts show a huge amount of inspiration that was gathered during the discussions that took place in the cafe.
You need to be made aware of the kinds of people that participated in these discussions. Stanisław Ulam was one of the most prominent students of Lviv's Mathematics school. Later on, he went on to become the father of the Hydrogen Bomb - together with Edward Teller, to whom most of the credit is given today. He was also the inventor of the Monte Carlo method. Stanisław Mazur often accompanied Banach and Ulam at the same table. They used to form the trio seated at the most important table. He was a brilliant mathematician who made numerous contributions to the geometrical methods in functional analysis, a field that was very popular in Lviv at that time. After the Second World War, he held many important academic positions in the recovering Poland.
The intellectual atmosphere that dominated the noisy and fumy insides of "Kawiarnia Szkocka" was an ideal place for great creative talent to flourish. Arguably, it was the discussions that were constantly ongoing there, that contributed to multiple discoveries, the people which visited that place ever did. It inspired multiple of them to look for and create similar hotspots in their later work. Ulam, in his diaries, noted that the atmosphere that was created in Lviv was only ever matched by the one in Los Alamos, where he was working on the Manhattan Project.
Olympia Academy
Szkocka was not the only example of a group of people coming together, that sparked grand ideas. Many people are aware that Einstein's most productive time, referred to as his Annus Mirabilis took place when he was employed as a patent clerk in 1905. It was during that time he published 4 papers that went on to change how we view the world. Remarkably, he had a lot of time to hone his thinking about physics while employed there.
Fewer people are cognizant of another, one could argue that an even more important factor, led the famous genius to such inventions. This fact is that he was a part of what he referred to as Olympia Academy. The group was mainly composed of Einstein, Conrad Habicht who was a mathematician, and Maurice Solovine, a student of philosophy. The trio used to hold wide-ranging discussions tackling the biggest intellectual ideas and works of their time. They discussed and deeply considered the thoughts of David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, John Stuart Mill, and Henri Poincaré to name a few.
What they would do is engage in a lively and long-lasting debate on the fundamental questions from science and philosophy. The topics they discussed, and the atmosphere that was sparked, invited Einstein to refine his arguments more and more while receiving critical feedback. This engagement fostered Einstein's critical thinking and years down the road he would with pride remember and acknowledge them.
Places such as the ones above enable individuals to create a deep understanding of fundamental topics. Through continuous discussion and the need for refining one's arguments, one can develop skills that are crucial to making discoveries.
The vastness of knowledge
Being a part of an intellectual group surely helps with developing ideas. But the intellectual curiosity doesn't stop there. There is another feature that prevails among creative individuals. The development of vast knowledge is of tremendous help in doing original work.
Bertrand Russel was a Welsh philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He received a Nobel Prize in Literature and made several contributions to logic, such as coauthoring "Principia Mathematica", and other fields. He was also known for his pacifist and anti-war activism. In one of his essays, he explains his reasons for gathering seemingly useless knowledge, from numerous areas.
Developing a contemplative habit of mind is one of the main causes he argues for in "The Praise of Idleness and Other Essays". He worries, that his contemporary world, with its tendency to organize thoughts, accepts knowledge only as far as it can be applied and used. It is as if the value of knowledge is measured solely by what we can do with its outputs. He sees and is concerned about, the trajectory to kill craftsmanship and esthetic values.
While Russell mainly pushes the case of gathering knowledge for one's enjoyment, I want to emphasize the effects it has on creativity. It opens up plenty of ways that we can relate, seemingly unrelated, concepts from different fields. It enables one to see analogies from nature and get inspired to create something of equivalent use in their domain of interest.
As previously mentioned Ulam, in his autobiography, quotes Banach as saying:
Good mathematicians see analogies between theorems or theories, the very best ones see analogies between analogies.
I believe this holds in many other fields. When you possess such a vast amount of knowledge in different domains, it is not a problem to come up with a link between two, superficially not dependent, ideas. By establishing such a vault of information from which you can draw at will, you develop a mind map that expands quickly. Today this method is common in terms of building a second brain, or a Zettelkasten. Of course, a physical representation of your knowledge bank can foster creativity, but at its root lies the pursuit of a broad understanding of topics.
Now the other thing that Russell argues for, idleness, forms an ideal point for the last ingredient to mix in to arrive at great creativity.
Space and time to be creative
While we are idle our subconscious mind often works hard. That is part of the reason the term shower thoughts was coined. These are the realizations that dawn upon you while you are not focused on a specific problem actively. Your mind comes up with ideas or solutions to obstacles that you used to think about intensively, in times when you are no longer doing that.
It is often only once we give ourselves some downtime, that we come up with great ideas. Daniel Kahneman, in his book "Thinking Fast and Slow", explains the division he came up with of the human mind. It is a two-system model. The first, System 1, is responsible for quick, automatic operations that take little to no effort and do not feel under our control. It is based on intuitions, associations, and emotions. The second, System 2, is turned on in periods of concentrated attention. It can allocate the brain's resources to focus on a specific task and handle it.
System 1 is the one that sparks creativity. It can generate ideas constantly. They often surface as spontaneous thoughts, sometimes feeling like "Aha!" moments. Kahneman points to intuition as the source of such reflections. He says that once an idea is activated, there is a cascade of related ideas rushing through your memory. In Kahneman's definition, creativity can be described as the ability of associative memory to work exceptionally well. This means linking very remote ideas by unusual connections between concepts.
Kahneman's work shows that consciously blocking out time, to simply think, can be tremendously helpful in coming up with original ideas. During this downtime our System 1 can work relentlessly on the creation process of so many useful insights. It should be no wonder that thinkers such as Nietzsche often went on long walks to crystallize their ideas. They found that to be an essential part of their intellectual process, probably because their creative thinking was at its peak during that time.
Final thoughts
Although the findings that I went over might seem quite cliché at first, huge value can be derived from following a few simple rules. Sticking to them will open up multiple pathways to becoming more creative.
- Go deep, into the things that you learn about,
- Discover a broad range of topics, even though they sometimes seem useless,
- And take time to properly develop your ideas, whether it would be through solitary pondering or an enlightening discussion.
Let's stay critical when learning new stuff, and dive deeply into it, employing the best of our critical thinking capabilities. Maybe one day we'll come up with concepts as world-changing as Einstein's.