My today's topic for discussing GRE essay is Creativity, an important area tested on GRE issues are "Practicality and utility versus creativity and personal enrichment" and this is also partly linked to another topic "Conformity and tradition versus individuality and innovation".
For example some of the sample topics related to this discussion is as below.
1. "Only by being forced to defend an idea against the doubts and contrasting views of others does one really discover the value of that idea."
2. "Truly profound thinkers and highly creative artists are always out of step with their time and their society."
3. "When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers."
4. "Artists should pay little attention to their critics.* Criticism tends to undermine and constrain the artist's creativity."
5. "It is dangerous to trust only intelligence."
6. "Practicality is now our great idol, which all powers and talents must serve. Anything that is not obviously practical has little value in today's world."
7. "Truly innovative ideas do not arise from groups of people, but from individuals. When groups try to be creative, the members force each other to compromise and, as a result, creative ideas tend to be weakened and made more conventional. Most original ideas arise from individuals working alone."
8. "We learn through direct experience; to accept a theory without experiencing it is to learn nothing at all."
9. "Most people choose a career on the basis of such pragmatic considerations as the needs of the economy, the relative ease of finding a job, and the salary they can expect to make. Hardly anyone is free to choose a career based on his or her natural talents or interest in a particular kind of work."
10. "Most important discoveries or creations are accidental: it is usually while seeking the answer to one question that we come across the answer to another."
11. "Conformity almost always leads to a deadening of individual creativity and energy."
12. "In order to produce successful original work, scholars and scientists must first study the successful work of others to learn what contributions remain to be made."
These are just some of the sample topics which seem to be directly or partly related to the term creativity. Let's analyze them very briefly and see how can we enhance our co-relation to these assertions and try to build on it with examples. We will also approach later a sample of 2-3 topics and write a full time essay. These topics broadly focus on answering following questions
1. Defining what is creativity?
2. Is creativity really being out of time, or rejecting criticism or being in an unpractical world?
3. After defining creativity is it worth sacrificing other skills or aspects just to hone the creativity skills?
4. What is the impact of creativity on an individual or a society, how far can we go to achieve it?
Based on this analysis I have picked up a book On Creativity by Davis Bohm and I will try to find answers to some of the questions raised on creativity.
On Creativity – an attempt to define it
We experience that scientists, artists and musical composers all feel a fundamental need to discover or create something new that is whole and total and harmonious and beautiful even though their contribution is minuscule. Often people who are creativity fail to leave a mark because their ideas are not original though creative. One prerequisite to originality is clearly that a person shall not be inclined to impose his preconceptions on the fact as he sees it. Rather, he must be able to learn something new, even if this means that the ideas and notions that are comfortable or dear to him must be overturned.
Creativity is difficult term to define and we will rather try to define it in terms of order and cohesion between them. Consider for an example a geometrical curve, is evidently an ordered set of points. The curve is approximately a set of lines of equal length. The lines are thus similar but generally different in their orientation. But the existence of any regular curve depends on similarity of the differences. These are of course immediately notable to eyes but we fail to comprehend it in a language. The simples curve is a straight line, here successive segments differ in positions and are similar in directions. However, a circle's successive segments differ in direction too. However, the similarities defining a circle are different from those defining a straight line. The next curve is a spiral; this is obtained when successive pairs of segments differ in that they define different planes, so the similarities of these differences lead to a regular spiral.
We can see that the creative process is one in which not merely new structures but also new orders of structures are always emerging. For example Einstein basic's step was to perceive a set of essential differences, from which there arose a new relationship of similarity thus a new order of space and time. For in creation one perceives a new fundamental set of similar difference that constitutes a genuinely new order.
So what then is the creative state of mind, always open to learning what is new, to perceive new differences and new similarities, leading to new orders and structures, rather than always tending to impose familiar orders and structures in the field of what is seen and being mechanical. So if one is serious about being original and creative, it is necessary for him first to be original and creative about reactions that are making him mediocre and mechanical.
On the relationships of Science and Arts
In process...
For example some of the sample topics related to this discussion is as below.
1. "Only by being forced to defend an idea against the doubts and contrasting views of others does one really discover the value of that idea."
2. "Truly profound thinkers and highly creative artists are always out of step with their time and their society."
3. "When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers."
4. "Artists should pay little attention to their critics.* Criticism tends to undermine and constrain the artist's creativity."
5. "It is dangerous to trust only intelligence."
6. "Practicality is now our great idol, which all powers and talents must serve. Anything that is not obviously practical has little value in today's world."
7. "Truly innovative ideas do not arise from groups of people, but from individuals. When groups try to be creative, the members force each other to compromise and, as a result, creative ideas tend to be weakened and made more conventional. Most original ideas arise from individuals working alone."
8. "We learn through direct experience; to accept a theory without experiencing it is to learn nothing at all."
9. "Most people choose a career on the basis of such pragmatic considerations as the needs of the economy, the relative ease of finding a job, and the salary they can expect to make. Hardly anyone is free to choose a career based on his or her natural talents or interest in a particular kind of work."
10. "Most important discoveries or creations are accidental: it is usually while seeking the answer to one question that we come across the answer to another."
11. "Conformity almost always leads to a deadening of individual creativity and energy."
12. "In order to produce successful original work, scholars and scientists must first study the successful work of others to learn what contributions remain to be made."
These are just some of the sample topics which seem to be directly or partly related to the term creativity. Let's analyze them very briefly and see how can we enhance our co-relation to these assertions and try to build on it with examples. We will also approach later a sample of 2-3 topics and write a full time essay. These topics broadly focus on answering following questions
1. Defining what is creativity?
2. Is creativity really being out of time, or rejecting criticism or being in an unpractical world?
3. After defining creativity is it worth sacrificing other skills or aspects just to hone the creativity skills?
4. What is the impact of creativity on an individual or a society, how far can we go to achieve it?
Based on this analysis I have picked up a book On Creativity by Davis Bohm and I will try to find answers to some of the questions raised on creativity.
On Creativity – an attempt to define it
We experience that scientists, artists and musical composers all feel a fundamental need to discover or create something new that is whole and total and harmonious and beautiful even though their contribution is minuscule. Often people who are creativity fail to leave a mark because their ideas are not original though creative. One prerequisite to originality is clearly that a person shall not be inclined to impose his preconceptions on the fact as he sees it. Rather, he must be able to learn something new, even if this means that the ideas and notions that are comfortable or dear to him must be overturned.
Creativity is difficult term to define and we will rather try to define it in terms of order and cohesion between them. Consider for an example a geometrical curve, is evidently an ordered set of points. The curve is approximately a set of lines of equal length. The lines are thus similar but generally different in their orientation. But the existence of any regular curve depends on similarity of the differences. These are of course immediately notable to eyes but we fail to comprehend it in a language. The simples curve is a straight line, here successive segments differ in positions and are similar in directions. However, a circle's successive segments differ in direction too. However, the similarities defining a circle are different from those defining a straight line. The next curve is a spiral; this is obtained when successive pairs of segments differ in that they define different planes, so the similarities of these differences lead to a regular spiral.
We can see that the creative process is one in which not merely new structures but also new orders of structures are always emerging. For example Einstein basic's step was to perceive a set of essential differences, from which there arose a new relationship of similarity thus a new order of space and time. For in creation one perceives a new fundamental set of similar difference that constitutes a genuinely new order.
So what then is the creative state of mind, always open to learning what is new, to perceive new differences and new similarities, leading to new orders and structures, rather than always tending to impose familiar orders and structures in the field of what is seen and being mechanical. So if one is serious about being original and creative, it is necessary for him first to be original and creative about reactions that are making him mediocre and mechanical.
On the relationships of Science and Arts
In process...
