The creative process: phenomenology and dynamics. Creativity concept. creative process and its stages. creative personality and its qualities The creative process is brief

Ability. The simple definition is that creativity is the ability to invent or invent something new. As we will see below, creativity is not the ability to create something out of nothing (only God can do this), but the ability to generate new ideas by combining, modifying, or reusing existing ones. Some creative ideas are amazing and brilliant, while others are just simple, useful, practical ideas that no one else has thought of.

Believe it or not, everyone has significant creativity. It is enough to see how creatively the children are. In adults, creativity has often been suppressed during education, but it still exists and can be reawakened. Often, all that is needed in order to be creative is to set yourself a task in creativity and take time for it.

Position. Creativity is also a position: the ability to perceive change and novelty, the willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, the flexibility of the worldview, the habit of using the good, and at the same time the continuous process of finding ways to improve. We are accustomed to accept only a small number of permitted or common things, such as chocolate-covered strawberries. The creative person understands that there are other possibilities, such as peanut butter and banana sandwiches or chocolate-covered prunes.

Process. Creative people work hard and constantly improve ideas and solutions by gradually reworking and improving their works. Contrary to the myths surrounding creativity, very, very few works that are creatively superior were created with one brilliant stroke or frantically quick action. Much closer to the real truth - the stories of companies that had to remove the invention from the inventor in order to sell it, because the inventor does not stop fine-tuning and hone his creation, always striving to make it a little better.

A creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.

Creation - a process of activity that creates qualitatively new material and spiritual values \u200b\u200bor the result of creating an objectively new one. The main criterion that distinguishes creativity from manufacturing (production) is the uniqueness of its result. The result of creativity cannot be directly deduced from the initial conditions. Nobody, except perhaps the author, can get exactly the same result if you create the same initial situation for him. Thus, in the process of creativity, the author puts into the material some possibilities that are not reducible to labor operations or a logical conclusion, and in the end result expresses some aspects of his personality. It is this fact that gives the products of creativity additional value in comparison with the products of production.

CREATIVE PROCESS

Ironically - and in a rebuke to modern cognitive science - no major theory has emerged in the past 20 years (as has been the case with memory or perception) that can integrate scattered and sometimes conflicting studies of creativity. The absence of a general theory indicates both the difficulty of this topic and the insufficient attention to it from the general scientific community. Yet this topic is widely advertised as an important part everyday life and education. Many years ago in the history of cognitive psychology, Wallas (1926) described four successive stages of the creative process:

1. Preparation: Formulation of the problem and initial attempts to solve it.
2. Incubation: Distracting from the task and switching to another subject.
3. Enlightenment. Intuitive insight into the problem.
4. Verification: Testing and / or implementing a solution.

Wallace's four stages have received little empirical support; however, the psychological literature is replete with accounts of the introspection of people who generated creative thought. The most famous of these explanations comes from Poincare (1913), a French mathematician who discovered the properties of automorphic functions. After working on the equations for a while and making some important discoveries (preparatory stage), he decided to go on a geological excursion. During the trip, he "forgot" about his mathematical work (incubation stage). Poincaré then writes about the dramatic moment of insight. “When we arrived at Coutance, we got into an omnibus to go somewhere else. And at the moment when I put my foot on the bandwagon, the idea came to me without any visible preparation of thought that the transformations that I used in defining automorphic functions are identical to the transformations of non-Euclidean geometry. " The author writes that when he returned home, he checked these results at his leisure.
Wallace's four-step model of the creative process gave us a conceptual framework for analyzing creativity. Let's take a quick look at each of the stages.

TRAINING

Poincaré mentioned in his notes that he worked intensively on this problem for two weeks. During this time, he apparently tried and for various reasons rejected several possible solutions. But it would certainly be wrong to assume that the preparatory period lasted two weeks. His entire professional life as a mathematician, and possibly also a significant part of his childhood, can be seen as part of the preparatory period. A common theme in biographies of many famous people is that even in early childhood they developed ideas, acquired knowledge and tried to develop their thoughts in a specific direction.
Under the influence of such early ideas, the most distant destiny of a creative person is often formed. One of the many mysteries in this process remains why other individuals in a similar stimulus environment (and in many cases, deprivation) fail to gain recognition for their creative talent. Plato assumed that creativity can be the work of much more compelling forces than the forces of the environment. Maybe it would be worth paying attention to the genetic basis of creativity.

INCUBATION

Why is it that creative breakthrough often follows a period during which the problem may remain "plowed into steam"? Perhaps the most pragmatic explanation for this is that much of our life is spent relaxing, watching TV, scuba diving, playing, traveling, or lying in the sun and watching the clouds float instead of perseveringly thinking about a problem. requiring a creative solution. So creative acts often follow periods of sleep or idleness, most likely simply because these periods take a long time. Posner (1973) offers several hypotheses regarding the incubation phase. According to one of his assumptions, the incubation period allows a person to recover from the fatigue associated with solving a problem Taking a break from a difficult problem also allows you to forget inappropriate approaches to the given problem. As we have already seen, functional fixation can impede the solution of the problem, and it is possible that during the incubation period people forget old and unsuccessful ways to solve it. Another hypothesis that explains how incubation can help the creative process suggests that during this period we actually continue to work on the task unconsciously. This view is consistent with the famous thesis of William James "We learn to swim in winter and skate in summer" Finally, during a break in the process of solving a problem, material reorganization can occur.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Incubation does not always lead to enlightenment (we all know many people who have been in incubation for most of their lives, but have not yet achieved enlightenment). However, when this happens, it is impossible to be mistaken in sensations. Suddenly "light comes on". A creative person can feel a rush of excitement when all the bits and pieces of an idea suddenly fall into place. All relevant ideas are consistent with each other, and insignificant thoughts are ignored. There are many examples of enlightenment in the history of creative breakthroughs. The discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule, the discovery of the benzene ring, the invention of the telephone, the completion of the symphony, the plot of the story - all these are examples of how, at the moment of enlightenment, a creative solution to an old annoying problem comes to mind.

CHECK

Following the excitement that sometimes accompanies insightful discovery, it is time to test a new idea. Verification is a kind of “laundering” of a creative product when it is checked for its legitimacy. Often, after careful study, a solution that appears to be a creative discovery turns out to be intellectual "samovar gold." This step can be quite short, as in the case of rechecking calculations or a trial run of a new design; however, in some cases, the verification of an idea may require a lifetime of research, testing and rechecking.

CREATIVE PROCESS(eng. creativeprocess). Many genius people reported that their discoveries are the result of the fact that the decision "somehow by itself" arises in their minds and that they can only write down the "heard" or "seen". Similar circumstances accompanied, for example, the birth of D. I. Mendeleev's idea Periodic table elements and it. chemist A. Kekule of the cyclic formula of the benzene nucleus. The mystery of the act of "illumination" has long been associated with the presence of an external, sometimes divine source of creative inspirations.

Using data introspectionfamous scientists (for example, G. Helmholtz and A. Poincaré), Amer. psychologist Graham Wallace (1926) developed a scheme of 4 stages of T. n. According to this scheme, in the course of solving complex problems, people first go through
1st stagelong and laborious analysis of the problem, accumulation and processing of information, attempts to consciously solve the problem. As a rule, this phase ends in vain and the person retreats, “forgetting” about the problem for days and weeks. During this time,
2nd

stageT. p. - maturation ( incubation). It is characterized by the lack of visible progress in solving the problem. Then follows
3rd

stage- insight ( insight), followed by
4th stage- checking the correctness of the decision. see also Thinking productive(stages).

During the ripening stage, active work seems to be essential
subconscious.
According to self-observation, a person, outwardly forgetting about the task, occupies his consciousness and attention with other things. Nevertheless, after some time, the "creative" task appears on its own in the mind, and it often turns out that if not a solution, then at least the understanding of the problem turned out to be advanced. Thus, the impression arises of unconsciously occurring decision processes. However
important prerequisiteproductive work of the subconscious is the 1st stage - persistent conscious attempts to solve the problem.

The analysis of self-observation shows that the process of "enlightenment" is often not a one-time flash, but, as it were, is distributed in time. Through a persistent, conscious decision process, elements of understanding and movement in the right direction emerge. Thus, the condition of the so-called. "Insight" is usually hard work. Conscious efforts, as it were, set in motion, "spin up" a powerful, but rather inertial machine of the unconscious creativity. The same facts that sometimes the solution occurs during periods of rest, idleness, in the morning after sleepor during breakfast, it is perhaps only said that these periods usually take a long time for a person.

In research interhemispheric organization of mental processesit has been suggested that the frontal lobes of the right and left hemispheres make different contributions to the implementation of individual phases of T. n. The phases of maturation and insight, according to this hypothesis, are associated with the work of the frontal lobe of the right hemisphere, the phases of primary accumulation of information and critical consideration of the products of creativity - with work the frontal lobe of the left (dominant) hemisphere.

The ability to create ( creativity) is not strongly correlated with intellectual ability, although outstanding creative personalities undoubtedly have very high iQ. From t. Sp. theory semantic networks, the fundamental difference between intellectual and creative activity, apparently, lies in the focus on solving different types tasks: understanding the meaning and generating new meaning. The correlation of these activities is obvious, although there are examples of their independent existence. Creativity is often manifested with external intellectual "inhibition", but more often the presence of good intellectual abilities without developed creativity is noted.

One of the options for interpreting the terms "understand" and "generate" m. B. linked to trail. reasoning. The term "understand" implies the ability to follow the course of other people's reasoning, that is, the ability of a person to form new connections between acquaintances during learning conceptsand the new concepts themselves. The word "form" in this contextused in the sense of "shape by instructions". "A person who understands" must constantly follow the external carrier of these
ideals and concepts, eg. following a teacher, a book, etc. He must also have precise recipes for his step-by-step mental actions.

“Creative man”, on the contrary, has the ability to generate concepts that are not outwardly conditioned by anything, the ability to draw conclusions that are unexpected for most people, which do not follow directly from anywhere and are considered as some kind of “leaps” of thinking (conscious or unconscious), breaks in the usual, standard logic of reasoning. In this regard, we note that a well-structured area knowledgeusually represented as a semantic network, the nodes of which are not located near each other; rather, they create whimsical s. sp. topologies and fundamentally non-compact structures. Dr. In other words, it can be assumed that if some well-established system of facts and theoretical propositions over time takes the form of a compact section of the network, then
aftersome unexpected, strange and, therefore, remote (in the original space) knowledge nodes are included in this network when a certain creative act is performed. In terms of understanding the mechanisms of T. n., The analogy between the structure of a semantic network and the structure of a neural ensemble is appropriate.

When comparing the acts of "generation" and "understanding", a certain paradox is revealed. Characteristic feature “A person who understands” consists in the ability to assimilate a certain system of knowledge, that is, to form
copyconnections between concepts, created earlier by "creative man". this work copying a section of the semantic network is not a purely mechanical act and requires the implementation of a number of complex preliminary operations of formation: initial concepts, lists of attributes (properties) of these concepts, a new system of priorities among attributes, etc. Thus, the difference between understanding and creativity is, at best, the difference between the original and the copy! In fact, this is the difference between the act of creating the original, which for an external observer appears as a miracle, and the act of conscientious, laborious, but devoid of any secret of copying.

The effectiveness of the technique in terms of the mechanisms of semantic networks is possibly associated with a combination of several factors (abilities).

1. Ability to quickly and, most importantly, constantly going through a variety of options for connections between existing concepts (network nodes). It should be borne in mind that in this model, each network node is a set or list of attributes describing this concept, and the implementation of a full search requires, generally speaking, catastrophically rapidly growing time and memory costs. In this regard, the way out of the problem of enumeration is associated with the presence of abilities that determine the possibility of forming procedures for "truncated", incomplete, selective enumeration. Several types of footprint are important in this regard. abilities.

2. The ability to form an open, in the sense of a constantly generated (supplemented and modified), list of attributes k.-l. phenomena or concepts. Obviously, the lists of attributes and their priorities should change depending on the task and the subject area. This ability is important in view of the fact that the characteristics of the studied phenomena are sets of initial parameters used to enumerate combinations.

3. The ability to form a successful system of priorities among the options for links, prepared for enumeration. The mechanism of this process, in particular, m. B. associated with the establishment of pairs of well-combined attributes, where the pair includes one attribute from each concept included in the relationship. At the same time, priority systems should change depending on the problem being solved (subject area).

4. Ability to form new concepts (nodes). This procedure can be considered as a cyclical (iterative) process of forming a method for constructing deductive and / or inductive reasoning based on existing facts and concepts, i.e., based on previously formed network sections and connections between them.

Within the framework of such a model, both individual differences in creativity and differences in creative success among the same people in different subject areas become clear. Indeed, suppose that on K.-L. At the stage of reasoning, a certain person has developed a “successful” system of priorities of options for enumerating features (or other elements of reasoning). As a result, this person in this situation will show himself as a creative person. However, if p

Creativity is an activity that generates something new, unique. Scientists believe that the ability to create is a common property of humans as a biological species. It is inherent in different people to a different extent: there are more, there are less creative people. Creativity as a phenomenal property of a person consists in the ability to create both objectively new (what previously did not exist in the world at all) and subjectively new (what already exists, but for a given person is new, is created for the first time, without focusing on existing analogues).

There is an opinion that in any activity there is an element of creativity, that is, the moment of a new, original approach to its implementation. In this case, any stage of activity can act as a creative element - from posing a problem to finding ways to perform actions. When creativity is aimed at finding a new, optimal, possibly previously unknown solution, it acquires the status of an activity and is a complex multi-level system. In this system, specific motives, goals, methods of action are distinguished, the features of their dynamics are fixed.

The ancient philosopher Plato identified creativity with the god Eros and understood it as a kind of man's aspiration or obsession to achieve a higher or "smart" contemplation of the world. In the Middle Ages, the concept of creativity was associated with the concept of God as a person who freely creates the world, calling being out of non-being. In the Renaissance, the cult of genius arises, the creative act itself becomes the object of knowledge. However, in the same period, Giordano Bruno, who proclaimed the idea of \u200b\u200ba new creative or "passionate" person, paid for it with his life at the stake of the Inquisition.

When the idea of \u200b\u200ba future work is embodied, the personality is included in artistic creation, which appears as one of the varieties of the process of modeling reality. Moreover, in any literary and journalistic work, models of two objects - the phenomenon of reality and the personality of the author - can be simultaneously presented. By engaging in artistic creation, creators integrate, according to L.N. Stolovich, different kinds of human activity arising in the "force field" of diverse subject-object and personal-social relations:

• 1. Cognitive activity, as a result of which the artist reflects objective reality, learns the relationship between the individual and society in each specific historical epoch.
• 2. Transformative activity, consisting in the fact that the artist, in the process of creativity, transforms in the image he creates natural material (colors, shapes, sounds, etc.) and the material of human life and society, transforming it in various plot-compositional relations, modifying space-time connections for expressing the author's concept.
• 3. Educational activity - the desire to influence the spiritual world of the recipients.
• 4. Evaluative activity, thanks to which the artist expresses his value perception of the world, reflecting the phenomena of reality through the prism of his interests, needs, tastes, ideals.
• 5. Communicative activity involving direct or indirect communication between the artist and the recipient of his work.

With subject-object relations, a person, on the one hand, can cognize an object (in this case, his cognitive activity is carried out), and on the other hand, he can reflect the object in his mind, evaluating or transforming it in various images. On the basis of these types of subject-object relations, the main types of human activity arise: cognitive, transformative, evaluative.

Analysis of research works in the field of creative psychology allows us to highlight the following significant areas:

• 1. Mechanisms of the creative process
• 2. Creativity or creativity
• 3. Techniques, methods and means that promote the activation of thinking and solving creative problems.

The social essence of creativity is labor aimed at creating a substantially new product that meets the material or spiritual needs of people. In a developed society, creativity, like any work, is institutionalized and takes on a specialized character. A person has many needs. Society, as an organism that unites people, has even more of these needs. To obtain certain objects for their satisfaction, the corresponding areas of creativity are needed. They arise, taking shape in certain social institutions.

You cannot learn creativity, but you can learn a professional way of this or that creative activity. In modern society, all areas of creativity know two forms of organization: amateur and professional creativity. Any creativity is born as an amateur - this is the first phase of its development: outside the framework job responsibilities, special training and strict responsibility for the result; spontaneously, depending on the inclinations of the personality. Professional creativity is formed on the basis of an amateur in the course of the process of division of labor: it becomes the main occupation for a person, proceeds within the framework of cooperation with a certain professional community, is associated with the performance of duties and responsibility for quality; there is a need for special training.

That is, the difference between amateur and professional creativity is that the amateur arises spontaneously, and the professional is based on the conscious study of patterns and the desire to follow them.

The types of creativity correspond to the types of practical and spiritual activities: inventive, scientific, legal, political, social, organizational, entrepreneurial, philosophical, cultural, pedagogical, artistic, mythological, religious, musical, everyday, sports, game [wiki].

Creativity concept

CHAPTER 2. METHODS FOR SOLVING CREATIVE PROBLEMS

Do you agree with the statement that "the most valuable for society is the free time of the individual"?

The phenomenon of creativity is inherent in humans and is very important both for an individual and for society as a whole. Society develops thanks to new ideas that carry scientific discoveries, technical inventions, philosophical worldview concepts, etc. It has long been noticed that new ideas rarely appear as a result of gradual changes, more often it is an explosion, a leap, a sharp rise to a qualitatively new level. How is this creative "explosion" realized? Is it possible to trace the mechanism of creativity and try to model it? - This is what will be discussed in this chapter.

There are many different definitions of creativity. For example, according to the American scientist P. Hill, creativity is “a successful flight of thought beyond the known. It complements knowledge, contributing to the creation of things that were not previously known. " The Polish researcher Matejko believes that the essence of the creative process lies in the reorganization of existing experience and the formation of new combinations on its basis.

The Big Encyclopedic Dictionary gives the following generalizing definition of creativity: “Creativity is an activity that generates something qualitatively new and distinguished by uniqueness, originality and socio-historical uniqueness. Creativity is specific to a person, since it always presupposes a creator - a subject (producer, carrier) of creative activity. "

The creative process is a very complex phenomenon, extremely difficult to describe, since "the inner essence of the phenomenon is inaccessible to direct research." Nevertheless, this one of the most important and interesting areas of human activity has long attracted the attention of scientists. Thus, an attempt to outline the main stages of the creative process was undertaken in 1926 by the American psychologist G. Wallace.

G. Wallace identified several successive stages that are typical for the creative process:

1. Formulation of the problem, precise definition of the goal, collection of information on the problem and initial attempts to solve it.

2. Incubation (ripening) is a distraction from the task after unsuccessful attempts to solve it; at the same time, the problem remains in the subconscious, while a person can do other things.

3. Illumination is the emergence of an idea of \u200b\u200ba solution, often preceded by a random push event.

4. Verification of the correctness of the decision: testing and / or implementation

There are different types of creativity: artistic, scientific, technical. Let's consider some procedures of technical creativity, in which, due to its specificity, they can be traced more clearly (with some you are already familiar from the lessons of technology).

Technical creativity is obtaining new results in the field of technology in the form of technical ideas, drawings, drawings, embodied in real technical objects. Technical creativity includes design and construction procedures.

Design - development and justification of the project of any object, abstracted from the material form. Design precedes design and is the search for scientifically sound, technically feasible and economically viable engineering solutions. The result of the design is a project of the developed object, initially presented in the form of texts, graphs, sketches, calculations, models, etc.

Design - the development of a detailed scheme for the implementation of a conceived object (system) and working drawings of all its parts and individual parts of the machine.

First, a prototype is made according to preliminary drawings and calculations. Further, all calculations are specified, working drawings and technical documentation are drawn up for their application in production. The result of design is a specific product design.

Invention is a separate phenomenon within the framework of technical creativity.

Invention in the modern sense of the word is a creative activity, as a result of which something is created on the basis of scientific knowledge, technical achievements and the solution of inventive problems fundamentally new.

In a sense, the entire history of the development of human civilization can be viewed as the history of invention. Relying on the hints of nature, people invented and began to improve the tools of labor, learned how to sew clothes, make household items, etc.

If the newly created design is an invention, that is, a new engineering solution that did not exist before, then its innovative nature must be documented, and the discovery must be patented. Each inventor, so as not to "discover America", must be an erudite specialist who has a good idea of \u200b\u200bwhat is being done in the field of applying his intellectual efforts. And besides, he must know the laws that protect intellectual property.