Re: d'Espagnat wins Templeton Award

On 19/03/2009, at 7:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


But who can say that creativity cannot be taught when no institution  
sets out to do so? Who even understands what creativity actually is? A  
few do, but only a few listen. They tend not to be academics and  
because of this, academics dislike them and their work. It is true,  
they tend not to rely on other people's work and so don't go around  
quoting the right authors or reverencing the right superluminaries of  
the past. Why I like Wolfram's approach; they revisualise the entire  
game. They don't go about inventing theories and setting out to argue/
defend them or prove themselves right and everybody else wrong. They  
don't get their thrills like that. They set out to design and  
construct. They question and challenge everything, they stare at the  
mid-section of a pencil and wonder whether its design might be  
improved. That is natural creativity - when properly encouraged and  
taught. Who you gonna call? A guy with a theory or a guy with the  
right tool in his hand for the job? Creativity can be taught using  
tools designed for the optimal use of our kind of active self-
organising information system. The basis of creativity and the mind  
was understood by 1969 by Edward de Bono. He modelled the mind as an  
active self-organising information system. I mean - we are not  
computationalists on this list for nothing, I take it! The particular  
memory-surface that is the entity we usually call the 'mind' has been  
shown to be a pattern-generating and a pattern-reading-using entity.  
Because of this, the crucial factor is the _sequence_ of the arrival  
of all information, as it always is in linear systems requiring  
continuity. Time makes it that things settle into defined patterns  
sooner or later. This process lays down the assymetrical founding  
patterns we recall (patterns of recognition). These, amazingly, grow.  
They never shrink.

It amazes that you think the human mind is "too creative" by nature.  
The reverse is surely the truth. The human mind has evolved over time  
to be as uncreative as possible. "Better Be Safe then Sorry" is a very  
strong algorithm in our atavistic unconscious. Or else, the Church -  
with its maidservant: Education - throttled it out of civilisation  
when it was seen that the church's teachings might be under attack  
because people were starting to know how to think creatively about  
information, facts and evidence and started to restructure things...

Left to themselves, patterns tend to grow by continuity. This means  
that established patterns do not change but only get added to.  
Equilibrium sets in; gravity does the work. With mind as with matter.  
"If it ain't broke, why fix it?" sets in. Things start to rot as we  
poo in our petrie dish. In order to restructure a pattern so as to put  
the contained information together in a new and better way requires  
some act of discontinuity. That's what creativity does in a self-
organising information system like the human mind. It provides a  
necessary sideways step across (laterally) the oh-so-well-established  
memory patterns to reveal the hidden sidetrack leading straight to  
your goal (at a 5th of the original cost, and with a whole bunch of  
other stuff nobody could have imagined. It's the "dare to imagine and  
go out to do it" part of the mind.) Veeeeeeery underdeveloped.

Because information creates assymetrical patterns of memory in the  
mind, there remains the eternal possibility that we missed something  
important at the time the tramtracks of our memory were laid down  
because of incomplete perception. There may be any number of good  
reasons why our perception is always incomplete in any given  
situation, one of them being, you guessed it: Goedel's Incompleteness  
theorem. This means we may be missing vital systems information that  
would give us more confidence in our data about the world if only we  
might creatively _bet_ on the right horse for once?

There arises the mathematical necessity in an information system like  
this to use _discontinuity_ at some point to stop things settling into  
local pockets of equilibrium. Creativity is too often associated with  
'genius' and as such only happens in fits and starts - like when the  
next genius bothers to get born and do chose geniale...a better way to  
characterise creativity is via humour, the laugh at the punchline or  
some other moment when the previously hidden information sidetrack is  
revealed. If you can put across a good joke, chances are you are a  
creative. Everybody understands (or should understand) humour as the  
natural snap-reflex of the mind when we snap out of one pattern and  
achieve another ON THE SAME DATA. This is why there is not even one  
blessed laugh in religious doctrine. Religious thinking (what we may  
have to stoop momentarily to call "Theology" with a capital T) has  
gone nowhere in over 18 centuries. The church has nurtured ONLY  
critical thinking in civilisation, Bruno! Nobody can convince me that  
creativity has thrived under the influence of the Church. Creativity  
was thrown out of science and religion and philosophy and tolerated  
only in the arts, that's what happened. And the artists were made to  
live in garretts and sing for their supper!!


Creativity has been the victim of repression in western thinking since  
Socrates, who, along with Plato and Aristotle are the sods responsible  
for giving us the our critical-thinking-dominated and design-energy-
deficient thinking system. OK - so get the bloody Athenian Academy  
doors yanked open and let's get this thing sorted out by golly! You  
have great reverence for Greek thinking, Bruno - I just want to slap  
them all around the gills for their lack of design, their lack of  
creative, generative thinking energy. It's all argument bloody  
argument. I am right sir and you are wrong sir! The truth lies with  
me! No sir it is you who are wrong sir! You are without merit! So what  
have these two guys created while yelling at each other? Where's a  
good tradie when you need one? They've all turned into bloody lawyers!

There is a good argument that goes if you never try to teach  
creativity you will never know whether it is possible. The answer is  
it is possible and formal techniques are available. Training in  
thinking skills - including Lateral Thinking (=structured creativity)  
have never been more urgently needed in humanity's increasingly urgent  
struggle against indomitable forces like the weather and the economy.




>
>
> About academies, I agree with many things you say, but I do think  
> also, that they are the worst, except for all the others. Expertise  
> are needed, and interdisciplinarity will develop through  
> interdisciplines, which will constitute new disciplines. It is the  
> opening of the mind to new disciplines which is lacking.



Like the teaching of Thinking Skills in schools, an  
interdisciplinarian terrain.




> Old academies can be rotten, that is true. But then we need new  
> academies, or we need to reopen the very old one, the one by Plato.



But for goodness sake leave the Gang of Three (Soc, Plat, Arist) dead  
and buried willya!!?? We don't need Plato the GUY to have Platonia now  
do we? He was a fascist and a slave-owner. Socrates just wanted  
everyone to agree with him. Bullshit he was showing people how to  
uncover the 'truth'. He was a SOPHIST. He was exercising the sacred  
art of seduction on his audience. He was selling - which is what  
'sophistry' is. He sold them only the front left wheel of the car.  
Socrates did NOT sell the whole car! He sold critical thinking skills  
only. He OVERSOLD his buyers on critical thinking. NEVER trust a Greek  
bearing gifts!!!!!

We were left with a thinking system devoid of creative, generative,  
provocative design energy. The church REDISCOVERED all of this  
wonderful fascist stuff at the time of the Renaissance when the first  
schools were established in Europe and used critical thinking as a  
tool to repress creative thinkers = heretics (those possessed of the  
magical ability to put given data together in new ways to give a new  
view). They and the Evil Education Empire have been pushing  
argumentative/adversarial/I win-you lose, lawyer-style thinking as the  
basis of all thinking ever since. No wonder we pang for a Michelangelo  
or an Einstein to lift us out of it. But this laziness of waiting for  
Darwinian Evolution to solve our deepest problems is unfortunately  
lacking in design, crfeativity and imagination once again...




> And learn to come back to seriousness in fundamental human or person  
> matter (very hard task).
>
> The layman is still in advance here, in a sense. The "everything"  
> quest, will leads also to experts. Experts are not bad, only bad  
> experts are bad, especially the one who talk negatively about a  
> field they does not really know.


Yes, I exaggerated my take on experts on purpose. But who has not  
encountered a closed mind today or yesterday? Everybody goes to  
school. Remember, it is the sequence of the arrival of the data that  
forms the patterns that determines how the future unfolds.

Two restaurants A and B open up, side by side. Both offer reasonably  
equivalent services. The problem is how to get some momentum  
happening. Nobody, it seems, will be attracted to eat at an empty  
restaurant. So one of the restaurants cracks and does something  
creative (which might also include the possibility of their not doing  
anything) and somehow gets one person to sit and eat in the  
restaurant. A second customer, faced with the choice of an empty  
restaurant or a restaurant with one customer then experiences the  
"Better Be Safe Than Sorry" atavistic-memory instruction kick in and  
goes into that restaurant. Then a third arrives, and a fourth etc.

The outcome is that you have one restaurant that is a booming success  
and one next door that is a complete failure and all this without any  
data. This is what I mean by saying the patterns of recognition are  
assymetrical; they travel always to continuity without some mechanism  
for interrupting them (the 'mathematical necessity' for lateral  
thinking.)





>
>
> A good expert is someone who can remain silent when he does not  
> know. I agree with many of your points and tones. I just point on  
> points which, perhaps by reading to quickly, gave me the feeling  
> that you could criticize the wrong cible.


OK, I judge academics as much by their prejudices as by their beliefs.  
The belief that creativity cannot be taught is based on a prejudice  
against ever being seen as 'wrong' in some sense. No academic ever  
seems to understand that sometimes you have to be 'wrong' under the  
conditions of the present reality to provoke a change following which  
the action taken will be seen to be very much the 'right' thing to  
have done. Only you could not see this before. Occasionally, in order  
to continue travelling North, you might have to turn South. It will no  
doubt appear logical to you after you have experienced it, but was  
highly illogical before. In other words, at certain moments (moments  
of stagnation or local equilibrium) it becomes logical - even  
desirable - to be 'illogical' or wrong. A provocative statement or  
action will doubtless make better sense AFTER the sought-after change  
has occurred.

There can therefore be a class of statement for which NO reason exists  
before the statement is made. It's value will, by hindsight, be seen  
to lie in its leading toward a restructuring of the existing  
information so that patterns invisible before are now visible to the  
mind. This is what Socrates and his mates were definitely NOT selling  
that fine, hot day in Athens.

Kim







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