Creative process. Creativity concept

CREATIVE PROCESS

(English) creative process). Many brilliant people have reported that their discoveries are the result of the fact that a solution “somehow” appears in their minds and that all they have to do is write down what they “heard” or “saw.” Similar circumstances accompanied, for example, the birth of D. I. Mendeleev’s idea Periodic table elements and him. chemist A. Kekule cyclic formula of the benzene ring. The mystery of the act of “illumination” has long been associated with the presence of an external, sometimes divine source of creativity. inspiration.

Using Data introspection famous scientists (for example, G. Helmholtz and A. Poincaré), Amer. psychologist Graham Wallace (1926) developed a scheme of 4 stages of T.P. According to this scheme, in the course of solving complex problems, people first go through 1st stage long and labor-intensive 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. At this time it develops 2nd etc. - maturation ( incubation). It is characterized by a lack of visible progress in solving the problem. Then follows 3rd- insight ( ), which is followed by 4th stage- checking the correctness of the solution. see also(Thinking productively).

stages At the maturation stage, it appears to be important active work 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 spontaneously emerges in the mind, and it often turns out that if not the solution, then at least the understanding of the problem has been advanced. Thus, one gets the impression of unconsciously occurring decision processes. However an important prerequisite

Analysis of introspection shows that the process of “insight” is often not a one-time flash, but is distributed over time. Through a persistent, conscious decision process, elements of understanding and progress in the right direction emerge. Thus, the condition of the so-called “Epiphany” usually comes from hard work. Conscious efforts seem to activate and “spin” the powerful, but rather inertial machine of the unconscious creativity. The same facts that sometimes the solution arises during periods of rest, idleness, in the morning after sleep or during breakfast, they say, perhaps, only that these periods usually take a lot of time for a person.

In research interhemispheric organization of mental processes It has been suggested that the frontal lobes of the right and left hemispheres make different contributions to the implementation of individual phases of creativity. 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 examination of creative products - with work frontal lobe of the left (dominant) hemisphere.

Ability to be creative ( ) is not strongly correlated with intellectual abilities, although outstanding creative individuals undoubtedly have very high IQ. From view theories semantic networks, the fundamental difference between intellectual and creative activity, apparently, lies in the focus on solving different types tasks: understanding meaning and generating new meaning. The correlation between these types of activities is obvious, although there are examples of their independent existence. Creativity often manifests itself 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” could be associated with the next reasoning. The term “understand” implies the ability to track the progress of other people’s reasoning, i.e. a person’s ability to form new connections between acquaintances during learning concepts and new concepts themselves. The word "form" in this context used in the sense of "form according to instructions." A “person who understands” must constantly follow the external bearer of these connections and concepts, for example. following the teacher, book, etc. He must also have exact recipes for your step-by-step mental actions.

“A creative person,” on the contrary, has the ability to generate concepts that are not externally determined 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 region knowledge usually represented by a semantic network whose nodes are not located close to each other; rather, they create fanciful ones from the viewpoint. topologies and fundamentally non-compact structures. Dr. In other words, we can assume that if some established system of facts and theoretical positions eventually takes on the form of a compact section of the network, then after After performing a certain creative act, some unexpected, strange and, therefore, remote (in the original space) nodes of knowledge are included in this network. In terms of understanding the mechanisms of technological communication, an 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 emerges. Feature“a person who understands” consists in the ability to assimilate a certain system of knowledge, i.e. to form in oneself copy connections between concepts, created earlier by a “creative person”. this work copying a section of a 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 - this is, at best, the difference between the original and the copy! In fact, this is the difference between the act of creating an original, which for an external observer appears like a miracle, and the act of conscientious, labor-intensive, but devoid of any secret copying.

The effectiveness of technology in terms of semantic network mechanisms may be associated with a combination of several factors (abilities).

1. The ability to quickly and, most importantly, constantly search through many options for connections between already existing concepts(network nodes). It should be taken into account that in this model, each network node is a set or list of attributes that describe a given concept, and the implementation of a complete search requires, generally speaking, a catastrophically growing amount of time and memory. In this regard, the way out of the enumeration problem is associated with the presence of abilities that determine the possibility of forming “truncated”, incomplete, and selective enumeration procedures. Important In this regard, there are several types of traces. abilities.

2. The ability to form an open, in the sense of a constantly generated (supplemented and changeable), list of attributes of a property. phenomena or concepts. Obviously, the lists of attributes and their priorities should vary depending on the task and domain. This ability is important due to the fact that the characteristics of the phenomena being studied are sets of initial parameters used to enumerate combinations.

3. The ability to form a successful system of priorities among the connection options being prepared for enumeration. The mechanism of this process, in particular, may be is 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. The 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., relying on previously formed sections of the network and connections between them.

Within the framework of such a model, both individual differences in creativity and differences in creative success from the same people in different subject areas. Indeed, suppose that on the k.-l. At the stage of reasoning, a certain person has developed a “successful” system of priorities for options for enumerating features (or other elements of reasoning). As a result, this person in this situation will manifest himself as a creative person. However, in the case of reasoning in another subject area, the same subject will use another, differently organized knowledge base, which has developed, for example, as a result of a less successful learning process (bad teacher, unsuccessful textbook) or as a result of lack of interest in this area knowledge. As a result, he will not prove himself as a creative person. (V. M. Krol.)

Large psychological dictionary. - M.: Prime-EVROZNAK. Ed. B.G. Meshcheryakova, acad. V.P. Zinchenko. 2003 .

Creation- process human activity, creating qualitatively new material and spiritual values or the result of creating a subjectively new one. The main criterion that distinguishes creativity from manufacturing (production) is the uniqueness of its result. The result of creativity cannot be directly derived from the initial conditions. No one, except perhaps the author, can obtain exactly the same result if the same initial situation is created for him. Thus, in the process of creativity, the author puts into the material certain possibilities that are not reducible to labor operations or logical conclusion, and expresses in the final result some aspects of his personality. It is this fact that gives creative products additional value in comparison with manufactured products.

Creativity is an activity that generates something qualitatively new, something that has never existed before. Creativity is the creation of something new, valuable not only for this person, but also for others.

Types and functions of creativity

Researcher creative factor person and the phenomenon of the intelligentsia Vitaly Tepikin identifies artistic, scientific, technical, sports-tactical, as well as military-tactical creativity as independent types.S. L. Rubinstein was the first to correctly point out the characteristic features of inventive creativity: “The specificity of an invention, which distinguishes it from other forms of creative intellectual activity, is that it must create a thing, a real object, a mechanism or a technique that solves a certain problem. This determines the originality creative work inventor: the inventor must introduce something new into the context of reality, into the actual course of some activity. This is something essentially different from allowing theoretical problem, in which it is necessary to take into account a limited number of abstractly selected conditions. At the same time, reality is historically mediated by human activity, technology: it embodies historical development scientific thought. Therefore, in the process of invention, one must proceed from the context of reality into which something new is to be introduced, and take into account the corresponding context. This determines the general direction and specific nature of the various links in the process of invention.”

Creativity as an ability

Creativity(from English create- create, English creative- constructive, creative) - Creative skills an individual, characterized by a readiness to create fundamentally new ideas that deviate from traditional or accepted patterns and are included in the structure of giftedness as an independent factor, as well as the ability to solve problems that arise within static systems. According to the authoritative American psychologist Abraham Maslow, this is a creative orientation that is innately characteristic of everyone, but is lost by the majority under the influence of the environment.

At the everyday level, creativity manifests itself as ingenuity - the ability to achieve a goal, find a way out of a seemingly hopeless situation using the environment, objects and circumstances in an unusual way. Wider is a non-trivial and ingenious solution to the problem. Moreover, as a rule, with scarce and unspecialized tools or resources, if material. And a bold, non-standard, what is called a non-cliched approach to solving a problem or satisfying a need located on an intangible plane.

Creativity criteria

Creativity criteria:

fluency - the number of ideas arising per unit of time;
originality - the ability to produce unusual ideas that differ from the generally accepted ones;
flexibility. As Ranko notes, the importance of this parameter is determined by two circumstances: firstly, this parameter allows us to distinguish individuals who show flexibility in the process of solving a problem from those who show rigidity in solving them, and secondly, it allows us to distinguish individuals who are original solve problems from those who demonstrate false originality.
susceptibility - sensitivity to unusual details, contradictions and uncertainty, willingness to quickly switch from one idea to another;
metaphoricality - readiness to work in a completely unusual context, a penchant for symbolic, associative thinking, the ability to see the complex in the simple, and the simple in the complex.
Satisfaction is the result of creativity. If the result is negative, the meaning is lost and further development feelings.

According to Torrance

Fluency is the ability to produce a large number of ideas;
Flexibility - the ability to use a variety of strategies when solving problems;
Originality - the ability to produce unusual, non-standard ideas;
Elaboration is the ability to develop emerging ideas in detail.
Resistance to closure is the ability not to follow stereotypes and to “stay open” for a long time to a variety of incoming information when solving problems.
The abstractness of the name is an understanding of the essence of the problem of what is truly essential. The naming process reflects the ability to transform figurative information into verbal form.

Creativity as a process (creative thinking)

Stages of Creative Thinking

G. Wallace

The most famous description today of the sequence of stages (stages) was given by the Englishman Graham Wallace in 1926. He identified four stages of creative thinking:

Preparation- formulation of the problem; attempts to solve it.
Incubation- temporary distraction from the task.
- emergence of an intuitive solution.
Examination- testing and/or implementation of the solution.

However, this description is not original and goes back to the classic report of A. Poincaré in 1908.

A. Poincare

Henri Poincaré in his report in Psychological Society in Paris (in 1908) described the process of making several mathematical discoveries and identified the stages of this creative process, which were subsequently identified by many psychologists.

Stages

1. At the beginning, a problem is set and attempts are made to solve it for some time.

“For two weeks I tried to prove that there could not exist any function similar to the one that I later called automorphic. I was, however, completely wrong; every day I sat down at my desk and spent an hour or two at it, researching big number combinations, and did not come to any result.”

2. This is followed by a more or less long period during which the person does not think about the still unsolved problem and is distracted from it. At this time, Poincaré believes, unconscious work on the task occurs.

3. And finally there comes a moment when suddenly, without immediately preceding thoughts about the problem, in a random situation that has nothing to do with the problem, the key to the solution arises in the mind.

In contrast to usual reports of this kind, Poincaré describes here not only the moment the decision appeared in consciousness, but also the work of the unconscious that immediately preceded it, as if miraculously becoming visible; Jacques Hadamard, drawing on this description, points out its complete exclusivity: “I have never experienced this wonderful feeling and I have never heard anyone except him [Poincaré] experience it.”

4. After this, when the key idea for the solution is already known, the solution is completed, tested, and developed.

“By morning I had established the existence of one class of these functions, which corresponds to the hypergeometric series; All I had to do was write down the results, which only took a few hours. I wanted to represent these functions as a ratio of two series, and this idea was completely conscious and deliberate; I was guided by the analogy with elliptic functions. I asked myself what properties these series should have if they exist, and I easily managed to construct these series, which I called theta-automorphic.”

Theory

Theorizing, Poincaré depicts the creative process (using the example of mathematical creativity) as a sequence of two stages: 1) combining particles - elements of knowledge and 2) subsequent selection of useful combinations.

Initial conscious work on a task actualizes and “sets in motion” those elements of future combinations that are relevant to the problem being solved. Then, if, of course, the problem is not solved immediately, a period of unconscious work on the problem begins. While the consciousness is occupied with completely different things, in the subconscious the particles that have received a push continue their dance, colliding and forming various combinations. Which of these combinations come into consciousness? These are the combinations “the most beautiful, that is, those which most affect that special sense of mathematical beauty, known to all mathematicians and inaccessible to the profane to such an extent that they are often inclined to laugh at it.” So, the most “mathematically beautiful” combinations are selected and penetrated into consciousness. But what are the characteristics of these beautiful mathematical combinations? “These are those whose elements are harmoniously arranged in such a way that the mind can, without effort, embrace them entirely, guessing the details. This harmony serves both to satisfy our aesthetic feelings and to help the mind, it supports it and it is guided by it. This harmony gives us the opportunity to anticipate a mathematical law.” “Thus this special aesthetic sense plays the role of a sieve, and this explains why anyone who is deprived of it will never become a real inventor.”

From the history of the issue

Back in the 19th century, Hermann Helmholtz described the process of committing “from the inside” in a similar way, although in less detail. scientific discoveries. In these introspections of his, the stages of preparation, incubation and insight are already outlined. Helmholtz wrote about how scientific ideas were born in him:

These happy inspirations often invade the head so quietly that you do not immediately notice their meaning, sometimes it will only indicate later when and under what circumstances they came: a thought appears in the head, but you don’t know where it comes from.

But in other cases, a thought strikes us suddenly, without effort, like inspiration.

As far as I can judge from personal experience, she is never born tired and never at a desk. Each time, I first had to turn my problem around in every possible way, so that all its twists and tangles would lie firmly in my head and could be learned again by heart, without the help of writing.

It is usually impossible to get to this point without continuous work. Then, when the onset of fatigue passed, an hour of complete bodily freshness and a feeling of calm well-being was required - and only then did they come good ideas. Often... they appeared in the morning, upon awakening, as Gauss also noticed.

They came especially willingly... during the hours of a leisurely climb through the wooded mountains, on a sunny day. The slightest amount of alcohol seemed to scare them away.

It is interesting to note that stages similar to those described by Poincare were identified in the process artistic creativity B. A. Lezin at the beginning of the 20th century.

Work fills the sphere of consciousness with content, which will then be processed by the unconscious sphere.
Unconscious work represents a selection of the typical; “But how that work is done, of course, cannot be judged, it is a mystery, one of the seven world mysteries.”
Inspiration there is a “transfer” of a ready-made conclusion from the unconscious sphere into consciousness.

Stages of the inventive process

P. K. Engelmeyer (1910) believed that the work of an inventor consists of three acts: desire, knowledge, skill.

Desire and the origin of the idea. This stage begins with an intuitive glimpse of an idea and ends with its understanding by the inventor. A probable principle of the invention emerges. In scientific creativity this stage corresponds to a hypothesis, in artistic creativity it corresponds to a plan.
Knowledge and reasoning, scheme or plan. Developing a complete, detailed idea of the invention. Production of experiments - mental and actual.
Skill, constructive execution of the invention. Assembly of the invention. Doesn't require creativity.

“As long as there is only an idea from the invention (Act I), there is no invention yet: together with the scheme (Act II), the invention is given as a representation, and Act III gives it real existence. In the first act the invention is assumed, in the second it is proven, in the third it is carried out. At the end of the first act there is a hypothesis, at the end of the second there is a performance; at the end of the third - a phenomenon. The first act defines it teleologically, the second - logically, the third - factually. The first act gives the idea, the second the plan, the third the action.”

P. M. Yakobson (1934) identified the following stages:

The period of intellectual readiness.
Discretion of the problem.
The origin of an idea is the formulation of a problem.
Finding a solution.
Obtaining the principle of the invention.
Transforming a principle into a scheme.
Technical design and deployment of the invention.

Factors that interfere with creative thinking

uncritical acceptance of someone else's opinion (conformism, agreement)
external and internal censorship
rigidity (including the transfer of patterns, algorithms in solving problems)
desire to find an answer immediately

Creativity and personality

Creativity can be considered not only as a process of creating something new, but also as a process that occurs during the interaction of an individual (or inner world person) and reality. At the same time, changes occur not only in reality, but also in personality.

The nature of the connection between creativity and personality

“Personality is characterized by activity, the desire of the subject to expand the scope of his activities, to act beyond the boundaries of the requirements of the situation and role prescriptions; orientation - a stable dominant system of motives - interests, beliefs, etc...." Actions that go beyond the requirements of the situation are creative actions.

In accordance with the principles described by S. L. Rubinstein, by making changes in the world around him, a person changes himself. Thus, a person changes himself by carrying out creative activity.

B. G. Ananyev believes that creativity is a process of objectification of a person’s inner world. Creative expression is an expression of the integral work of all forms of human life, a manifestation of his individuality.

In the most acute form, the connection between the personal and the creative is revealed by N. A. Berdyaev. He's writing:

Personality is not a substance, but a creative act.

Creativity motivation

V. N. Druzhinin writes:

The basis of creativity is the global irrational alienation of man from the world; it is directed by a tendency to overcome, functions according to the type of “positive feedback"; a creative product only spurs the process, turning it into a pursuit of the horizon.

Thus, through creativity, a person’s connection with the world is realized. Creativity stimulates itself.

Mental health, freedom and creativity

The representative of the psychoanalytic school, D. W. Winnicott, puts forward the following assumption:

In play, and perhaps only in play, a child or adult has freedom of creativity.

Creativity is about play. Play is a mechanism that allows a person to be creative. Through creative activity, a person strives to find his self (himself, the core of personality, the deepest essence). According to D. W. Winnicott, creative activity is what ensures a healthy state of a person. Confirmation of the connection between play and creativity can also be found in C. G. Jung. He's writing:

The creation of something new is not a matter of activity, but of the desire to play, acting out of internal compulsion. The creative spirit plays with the objects it loves.

R. May (a representative of the existential-humanistic movement) emphasizes that in the process of creativity a person meets the world. He's writing:

...What manifests itself as creativity is always a process... in which the relationship between the individual and the world takes place...

N. A. Berdyaev adheres to the following point:

The creative act is always liberation and overcoming. There is an experience of power in it.

Thus, creativity is something in which a person can exercise his freedom, connection with the world, connection with his deepest essence.

CREATIVE PROCESS(English) creativeprocess). Many brilliant people have reported that their discoveries are the result of the fact that a solution “somehow” appears in their minds and that all they have to do is write down what they “heard” or “saw.” Similar circumstances accompanied, for example, the birth of the idea of the Periodic Table of Elements by D.I. Mendeleev and by him. chemist A. Kekule cyclic formula of the benzene ring. The mystery of the act of “illumination” has long been associated with the presence of an external, sometimes divine source of creativity. inspiration.

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

stage- insight ( insight), which he follows
4th stage- checking the correctness of the solution. see also see also(Thinking productively).

During the maturation stage, active work seems to be important
active work.
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 spontaneously emerges in the mind, and it often turns out that if not the solution, then at least the understanding of the problem has been advanced. Thus, one gets the impression of unconsciously occurring decision processes. However
. 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 spontaneously emerges in the mind, and it often turns out that if not the solution, then at least the understanding of the problem has been advanced. Thus, one gets the impression of unconsciously occurring decision processes. However an important prerequisite

Ability to be creative ( creativity) is not strongly correlated with intellectual abilities, although outstanding creative individuals undoubtedly have very high IQ. From view theories semantic networks, The fundamental difference between intellectual and creative activity, apparently, lies in the focus on solving different types of problems: understanding meaning and generating new meaning. The correlation between these types of activities is obvious, although there are examples of their independent existence. Creativity often manifests itself 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” could be associated with the next reasoning. The term “understand” implies the ability to track the progress of other people’s reasoning, i.e. a person’s ability to form new connections between acquaintances during learning concepts and new concepts themselves. The word "form" in this context used in the sense of "form according to instructions." A “person who understands” must constantly follow the external bearer of these holy
languages and concepts, e.g. following a teacher, a book, etc. He must also have precise recipes for his step-by-step mental actions.

“A creative person,” on the contrary, has the ability to generate concepts that are not externally determined 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 region knowledge usually represented by a semantic network whose nodes are not located close to each other; rather, they create fanciful ones from the viewpoint. topologies and fundamentally non-compact structures. Dr. In other words, we can assume that if some established system of facts and theoretical positions eventually takes on the form of a compact section of the network, then
after After performing a certain creative act, some unexpected, strange and, therefore, remote (in the original space) nodes of knowledge are included in this network. In terms of understanding the mechanisms of technological communication, an 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 emerges. A characteristic feature of a “person who understands” is the ability to assimilate a certain system of knowledge, that is, to form in oneself
copy connections between concepts, created earlier by a “creative person”. This work of 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 an original, which for an external observer appears like a miracle, and the act of conscientious, labor-intensive, but devoid of any secret copying.

The effectiveness of technology in terms of semantic network mechanisms may be associated with a combination of several factors (abilities).

1. The ability to quickly and, most importantly, constantly search through many options for connections between existing concepts (network nodes). It should be taken into account that in this model, each network node is a set or list of attributes that describe a given concept, and the implementation of a complete search requires, generally speaking, a catastrophically growing amount of time and memory. In this regard, the way out of the enumeration problem is associated with the presence of abilities that determine the possibility of forming “truncated”, incomplete, and selective enumeration procedures. Several types of traces are important in this regard. abilities.

4. The ability to form new concepts (nodes). This procedure can be considered as a cyclic (iterative) process of forming a method for constructing deductive and/or inductive reasoning based on existing facts and concepts, i.e., relying on previously formed sections of the network 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 the k.-l. At the stage of reasoning, a certain person has developed a “successful” system of priorities for options for enumerating features (or other elements of reasoning). As a result, this person in this situation will manifest himself as a creative person. However, in the case of

One man, a figure no less important than Plato, believed that the words of creative poets are the product of Divine inspiration; as he wrote in III, from Jonah:
“And therefore God takes away the minds of these people and uses them to serve him... so that we, who hear them, can know that it is not they who utter these words... but that it is the Lord himself who speaks... through them."

It may be reasonable to believe that everyone can create, but the degree of creativity varies within very wide limits. The work of people like Pablo Picasso, or Buckminster Fuller, or Wolfgang Mozart, or Thomas Jefferson is not only a manifestation of great talent; other than that, it is well known. There are, of course, other creative geniuses, but they remain unknown.
We will rely on the definition of creativity as a cognitive activity that leads to a new or unusual vision of a problem or situation. This definition does not limit creative processes to utilitarian actions, although as an example creative people They almost always cite the creators of some useful invention, manuscript, or theory.

CREATIVE PROCESS

Ironically—and a rebuke to modern cognitive science—no major theory has emerged in the last 20 years (like memory or perception) that can unify the scattered and sometimes conflicting studies of creativity. Absence general theory indicates both the difficulty of this topic and the lack of attention to it from the wider scientific community. Yet this topic is widely stated as an important part Everyday life and education.

Many years ago in the history of cognitive psychology, Wallace (1926) described four sequential stages of the creative process:

1. Preparation: Formulation of the problem and initial attempts to solve it.

2. Incubation: Distraction from a task and switching to another subject.

3. Enlightenment. Intuitive insight into the essence of the problem.

4. Validation: Testing and/or implementation of the solution.

Wallace's four stages have received little empirical support; however psychological literature replete with reports of introspection of people who gave rise to creative thought. The most famous of these explanations is due to 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 Coutances, we were boarding an omnibus to go somewhere else. And the moment I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without any apparent preparation of thought, that the transformations that I had used in the definition of 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-stage model of the creative process has provided us with a conceptual framework for analyzing creativity. Let's look briefly at each of the stages.

1. Preparation. 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 of course be wrong to assume that the preparatory period lasted two weeks. His entire professional life as a mathematician, and perhaps also a large part of his childhood, can be considered part of the preparatory period.

2. General theme in the 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 fate of a creative personality is often shaped. One of the many mysteries in this process is why other individuals in similar stimulating environments (and in many cases, deprivations) fail to gain recognition for their creative talent. Plato suggested that creativity could be the work of much more compelling forces than those of the environment. Maybe it would be worth paying attention to the genetic basis of creativity.

3. Incubation. Why is it that a creative breakthrough often follows a period during which the problem may remain fallow? Perhaps the most pragmatic explanation for this is that most of our lives are spent relaxing, watching TV, scuba diving, playing, traveling, or lying in the sun watching the clouds go by, rather than dwelling on 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.

4. 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 task. Taking a break from a difficult task also allows one to forget inappropriate approaches to a given task. As we have already seen, functional fixation can hinder the solution of a problem, and it is possible that during the incubation period people forget old and unsuccessful ways of solving it. Another hypothesis to explain how incubation can help the creative process suggests that during this period we actually continue to work on a task unconsciously. This idea is consistent with the famous statement of William James, “We learn to swim in winter and skate in summer.” Finally, during a break in the process of solving a problem, a reorganization of the material may occur.

3 Enlightenment Incubation does not always lead to enlightenment (we all know many people who have been incubated for most of their lives and have not yet achieved enlightenment). However, when this happens, it is impossible to mistake the sensations. Suddenly the lightbulb goes on. A creative person may feel a rush of excitement when all the bits and pieces of an idea suddenly fall into place. All relevant ideas are coordinated with each other, and unimportant 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 a symphony, the plot of a story - all these are examples of how at the moment of enlightenment a creative solution to an old annoying problem comes to the mind.

4 Check. Following the joyful excitement that sometimes accompanies an insightful discovery, it is time to check new idea. Verification is a kind of “washing” of a creative product where it is checked to see if it is legal. Often, after careful study, a solution that seemed like a creative discovery turns out to be intellectual “samovar gold.” This stage can be quite short, as in the case of rechecking calculations or trial running a new design; however, in some cases, verification of an idea may require whole life research, checks and re-checks.

Bibliography

Solso R.L. Creative process.