The construction of solutions through mistakes

Creativity and Problem Solving: Elements for a Model of Creativity

Souza, Bruno Carvalho C. (2001) Creativity and Problem Solving: Elements for a Model of Creativity.

Abstract

The human creativity has already been theorized in practically all sciences. Some privilege the cognitive aspects, emphasizing the architecture of the thought, while others focus the empiric approach, describing the creativity as a productive technique. This paper tries to reconcile these two visions, offering glimpses of the creativity as technique and of the involved mental processes. Finally, it proposes an “architecture of the creativity” focused on an integration in artificial intelligence systems for the learning of the creativity.

CREATIVITY AND PROBLEM SOLVING: ELEMENTS FOR A MODEL OF CREATIVITY

By

Bruno Carvalho Castro Souza

Abstract

The human creativity has already been theorized in practically all sciences. Some privilege the cognitive aspects, emphasizing the architecture of the thought, while others focus the empiric approach, describing the creativity as a productive technique. This paper tries to reconcile these two visions, offering glimpses of the creativity as technique and of the involved mental processes. Finally, it proposes an "architecture of the creativity" focused on an integration in artificial intelligence systems for the learning of the creativity.

Keywords:

creativity, artificial intelligence, cognitive models, problems (solution of)

Introduction

The creativity, for applied sciences as Management, Engineering, Publicity and Marketing, identifies itself with no-trivial problem solutions. A no-trivial problem is that in which the solution is not obvious at the beginning, nor are the means to reach it (Kim, 1990). Its approach, therefore, is elusive to the subject of the problem.

The traditional focus of the creation process for the resolution of such problems involves four identifiable phases: preparation, incubation, inspiration and verification (Wallas, 1926).

The preparation phase consists of collecting information on the problem to be solved, including researches, readings, annotations, inquiries, explorations – in short, the conscious effort (in the psychoanalytic sense) of finding a solution. After a preparation period without results (in other words, without the solution of the problem), the individual enters in the incubation phase, in which unconscious mental processes are put to work. The unconscious, "free from the literal intellect, makes the unexpected connections that constitute the essence of creation." Wallas identifies this "essence of creation" as the inspiration phase: it happens when the idea appears in the mind, in a ready way – it is the brilliant solution to the problem. This solution, however, should still be tested to verify its validity in practical terms, and that is the object of the verification phase.

Although several scientists, thinkers, professionals and general people have identified in their own creative actions the same "script'' – always in an individual way and without any research or previous references – it was never really explained why it happens in that exact way. The effects are observed and each person deduces a beginning for the individual creation without observing the causes. The process is deductive, in the Aristotelian sense, using a top-down approach. However, which we should look for is the opposite way: what causes the creative behavior or, in other words, which are the semantic components and each individual's cognitive universe that contribute to the creative thought. That is a typical application of the bottom-up approach.

A first step in that direction would be to identify and to classify the problem in accordance to its relevance. Live urgent problems, under the individual's perspective, exercise pressure towards their solution, while irrelevant problems are postponed or ignored. Once the problem is identified, we can delimit an initial field of performance – or a space of research for the solutions of the problem. In trivial problems and, for the presented definition, non-creative, the solution will appear in this first space of research. However, in problems that require creativity, the answer won't be found so easily, resulting in unacceptable answers (errors) on the initial space.

The mental associations shot by relative semantic proximity to the approached subject characterize the problem field. For instance, a problem in a Physics area can include concepts related to the Mathematics, to the Engineering, to the Chemistry, to the Computation and to the own Physics, but it won't usually include notions belonging to the Arts, to the Management or to the Economics, for instance. Another factor that composes the problem field is constituted in the experiences lived by the subject. It is known that great part of the human learning is due to those experiences and that decisions regarding situations found in the day by day are strongly influenced by such experiences.

In a no-trivial problem, the answer cannot be linked directly to the initial field of the problem. In that case, the efforts in search of the solution will constantly be frustrated, resulting in inadequate answers to the situation that originated the problem. To each new attempt, the brain executes alterations in the parameters of the field (regulations), trying to modify several variables that compose the problem, seeking to reach satisfactory results.

Piaget identifies that process as the balancing mechanism. Pict. 1 can demonstrate it

:

Picture 1: Piaget’s Balancing Mechanism

This approach of the creative process explains why creators experience moments of anguish and anxiety when involved in the solution of complex problems: such emotions are caused by the frustrated attempts of the brain in reaching the balanced state. As the emotions are important regulation instruments in the mental processes, the greater is the pressure and the more urgent the problem becomes (in other words, as larger the anguish and the anxiety provoked by the flaws of the brain in reaching a new balanced state, the stronger those emotions get). Another conclusion is that the creativity capacity grows because of mistakes by the cognitive human architecture in adapting to complex problems.

The construction of solutions through mistakes

Piaget affirms that the human mental growth is "a continuous passage of a state of smaller balance to a state of superior balance." When the brain comes across a problem, it enters in an unbalance state. If dealing with a no-trivial problem, therefore creative, the space of initial research won’t be enough for the solution, causing an impasse: all of the strategies known to obtain an answer were tried without results. As consequence, the mental mechanism needs to expand the research space. Such expansion opens new exploration possibilities, forcing the connection (including physiologic ones, involving the formation of neural connections) of initially no-related concepts. On that moment, the structuring of new processes (in the piagetian sense) begin to happen, creating new knowledge, which was obtained as a final result of a new (and enhanced) space of research. That enhancement process and restructuring continues until a satisfactory solution for the problem is obtained or the emotional aspects intervene in the control of the process, forcing its interruption.

Once reached a satisfactory solution for the problem, the mental process and the research space used are incorporate in a definitive way in the long term memory, starting to constitute the individual’s scope of lived experiences and enlarging his/her cognitive universe. On that moment, it can be said that it was reached a new balance state, superior to the one that existed before the problem, forming what Piaget defines as "major balancing of the beta type", according to Pict. 2:

Picture 2: Piaget’s Major Balancing Mechanism

A poetic form of putting the situation is that, in the creation process, in the search for the new, happiness is failure.