Science vs Creativity

The Need For The Ability of Generating Brilliant Ideas

In 1795, the poet, painter and print-maker William Blake created a print called “Newton” that showed Newton sitting naked and crouched on a rocky surface covered with algae, at the bottom of the sea. He is seen drawing with a compass upon a scroll and is completely absorbed in the process.

This print was an expression of William Blake’s belief – “Art is the Tree of Life, Science is the Tree of Death”. William Blake found Newton’s theories, especially the theories of optics as very offensive, because it represented the vision of the “vegetative eye” as opposed to divine vision. He claimed to himself have a “four-fold vision” as opposed to the “single vision” of Newton.

In a YouTube video posted by World Science Festival that features a panel discussion on “What is Genius?”, one of the panelists recounts that traditionally, the word “Genius” was used only for artists and musicians, and never for scientists, because “scientists had their scientific method” and didn't need any genius of inspiration.

While artists have traditionally looked down upon scientists as being linear, analytical thinkers, which they classify as a lower order thinking, scientists and techies too are to be blamed for bringing it upon themselves by claiming that they do not need creative or insightful thinking.

Do scientists and techies need creative flashes of insight ?

It depends.

It may not require much creativity to study your high school Physics text and solve the simple problems one is required to do as part of the regular curriculum.

However, that's not all what science is all about.

Different aspects of doing "Science"

There are various aspects of practicing Science and Technology ;

(1)   Creating new Science.

(2)   Understanding Science.

(3) Applying Science.

(4) Enhancing and building upon the existing theories of Science

The last three steps are purely analytical and a complete application of the Scientific Method, as long as they stay within limits of sufficient complexity.

Creation of a new scientific paradigm, however, often involves a brilliant flash of insight and a genius spark. The Scientific Method plays an important role in creating new paradigms through the experimentation results, data and various analysis, but it almost always requires a creative spark from a genius mind to connect these dots and discover or invent something new.

Scientists and Technologists may not need creativity in the same sense that artists and musicians do. They function within parameters and objectives, and cannot take wild, purposeless leaps. However, they do need the ability to connect the dots with a creative insight.

No disruptive scientific idea emerged out of pure linear, analytical thinking.

The Einstein Factor

In his book, “The Einstein Factor”, Win Wenger takes a deep peek into the thoughts and the thinking process of Einstein. He recounts Einstein’s journey with the development of the Theory of Relativity.

Einstein’s tryst with Relativity started as a 16-year old teenager, not as a serious scientific pursuit, but a fantasy of a teenager who wanted to explore how would the world look while travelling at a speed of light. In the initial days, it was all about imagination. Einstein would picture himself seated on the front of a beam of light, and visualized what the world would look to him from such a perspective.

Some differences were very obvious. When travelling at the head of the light-beam, if he looked himself into a mirror, he would see his face in it, because he, the mirror and the light emanating from his face would all be at relative rest.

Einstein didn’t like a spooky world in which one would look into a mirror and couldn’t see his face. So this world had to have some different properties than the normal speeds. What were those properties ? This was the curiosity and intrigue that kept him motivated and inspired.

For the first few years, these imaginations and visualization formed substantial basis of Einstein’s exploration. A decade long pursuit culminated in the publication of his landmark paper in 1905.

Einstein’s theory wasn’t an outcome solely of the Scientific Method and analytical skills. Much data and observations were in place by then as a result of a number of experiments that had been carried out in related areas, and it required a mind of Einstein to create an interpretation and explanation that tied all of these together.

Every scientist who created a new scientific paradigm did so through a brilliant flash of insight. The Scientific Method, the experiments, the analysis provided the right kind of data sets, created the “dots” that some creative giant had to connect in order to manifest the scientific discovery.

Michael Faraday is known to receive the “lines of force” as a visual imagery. He would see visuals of the lines of force as an inspired thought, and he would draw the lines of force as he saw them. At a later point of time, he could interpret and connect them with his analytical ideas.

Charles Darwin is known to have said on multiple occasions, that he remembered the exact spot where he received his insight about the Theory of Evolution, while travelling on his carriage van.

The stories of Kekule’s serpent and Elias Howe’s savages are well too famous to further detail them here.

To top it all – all these geniuses were completely open and transparent about the fact that their brilliant ideas were all inspired flashes of insight.

While Einstein’s scientific career began with his fantasies and visualizations, his appetite for disruptive, non-linear ideas reached a saturation point when he completely dismissed the probabilistic ideas of the Quantum Mechanics as well as the spooky ideas of “instantaneous action at a distance”.

It is an incomprehensible paradox that while Einstein symbolized breaking out of "common sense rationality", his rational and analytical mind forced him to become a bottleneck in the development of a branch of study that he himself discovered.

Historically, becoming limited by one's linear thinking and common sense has rendered many scientists incapable of breaking out of their glass ceilings and creating breakthroughs that they were very near to.

Not every brilliant idea can be inferred from what a person already knows. Analysis and Logic can only give you a transformed version of what you already know.

"Insightful Thinking" in the world of Technology

What is true of scientists and mathematicians is true of techies as well. Techies credit their analytical, logical and reasoning skills entirely for all their success. These left-brained skills are valuable in understanding and direct application of technical ideas. However, sole reliance on analysis and logic greatly limits the ability of the techies to handle complexity. Complex situation may often require an original idea or a complex application of the concepts.

It is not uncommon to come across programmers who understand the concepts of Programming Languages and Programming Paradigms very well. They can not only explain the concepts with great articulation, but can provide very crisp, illustrative examples of the concepts. However a large majority of programmers fail to apply these ideas in original situations.

The statistics of how many features of various programming languages and programming paradigms go unused is mind-boggling. This avoidance of the intricate features and concepts results in extremely inelegant designs and un-scalable systems that start crumbling down as it encounters challenges of the complex kind.

What the vast majority of techies deliver is something that just about barely works. This is primarily because of the lack of original, insightful thinking.

They may be able to get things working through their analytical thinking and hard work - but their lack of "insightful thinking" is something that is extremely disappointing and frustrating. Unless handled on top priority, this would show its would show its domino effect in the various technology sectors in disastrous ways.

Scientists and Techies who lack "insightful thinking" can only work on problems with well-defined boundaries. Whenever they encounter any open-ended situation or face a need for original thinking, they get overwhelmed and falter.

The "More of the Same" trap

This has been an important reason grossly limiting what the Indian IT industry can create or offer to the world. In general, while we might be great in executing regular projects, we fail badly when it comes to handling complex systems.

What is all the more alarming is the approach the organizations take to combat this limitation. Most organizations - the leadership as well as the technology teams - fail to see the lack of essential "insightful thinking" as a necessary skill to have, and they try to compensate for the missing skills by bringing in more of what exists and completely ignoring what is missing. The organizations work at getting their professionals to develop analytical and critical thinking, and ensure that they have sound technical knowledge.

However, in order to be able to handle complexity, techies need to learn the art of generating creative flashes of insight. Without this skill, they cannot deconstruct complex tasks, cannot develop elegant solutions, and cannot perceive the higher perspectives of what they do.

Linear, analytical thinking can handle complexity to a very limited degree.

You can't handle Complexity without Creative Insights

Analytical and Logical thinking are linear steps. They function in the domain of familiarity. Analytical and Logical thinking begins with a known idea, and we apply various logical transformations to the idea or a group of ideas, leading to new ideas. One step leads to another. However, these ideas all lie in the zone of familiarity.

On its own, linear Analytical and Logical thinking cannot lead us from problem to a Solution end-to-end unless we are dealing with fairly straightforward problems.

Linear thinking can work on small fragments of a complex problem, but not on the complete problem in entirety.

It needs leaps of creative insights to fill those disconnected gaps. Insightful thinking helps us leap over the chasms and complete our journey from the Problem to the Solution.

It is impossible to conceive that any decently complex problem could get away without requiring interventions of flashes of insight.

When complex problems are handled solely with linear, analytical thinking, it results in solutions that lack finesse and elegance, and would be prone to unproductivity, stress, and sub-optimal performances.

Lack of creative insights is an important reason causing burn-out and below-par performance among technology professionals.

When the tasks are extremely complex and the deadlines extremely tight, that's when you need "insightful thinking" all the most.

A creative insight is worth hundreds of hours of linear thinking.

Insightful Thinking helps in attaining individual and team's peak performance through flashes of insight.

It was the power-nap technique which generated countless insights that made Edison so productive. His constant insights kept his juices flowing, always giving him something very exciting to look forward to. This is what kept inspiring him to perspire relentlessly, because he could trust and believe in his own ability to get the next idea when the current one didn't work out.

How much would Edison have accomplished if he relied completely on his Analytical and Logical Reasoning skills ?

Scientific Method is an important tool to prepare the grounds of a scientific discovery, and to validate the authenticity of the discovery. To say that anybody following the Scientific Method could have discovered Gravity or Relativity or Quantum Physics is to grossly belittle what it took to discover these concepts. It is one thing to understand a scientific discovery, and a totally different ball-game to make those discoveries in the first place.

The Scientific Method can help design the experimental setup, create the experimental results, and gather experimental data, but it takes a genius to connect those dots and create a hypothesis out of it.

The same is true of Technology too.

The most optimal use of Analytical Thinking is to use it to create the right context for triggering creative thinking.

This can be once again illustrated as the difference between carrying a luggage by lifting it and carrying a luggage by using wheels and trolleys.

We need to direct our strength in pushing the wheels and trolleys rather than in lifting the luggage.

The right way to use Analytical Thinking is to create dots in a way that triggers our minds to connect those dots with a creative insight.

The need for creative flashes of insight in Science and Technology is best summarized by the man who has epitomized and symbolized scientific genius for a century now.

“Imagination is more important than Knowledge” – Albert Einstein

There is no compensating for the need of the ability of getting "brilliant ideas".

This article is an additional footnote to the article You, The Edison, and has been written based on various feedback received on that article.

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