Creativity in Science and Engineering

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Creativity in Science and Engineering

Copyright 1998 by Ronald B. Standler

Table of Contents

IntroductionDefinitionspersonality traits associated with creativityhow creativity occurs solitary activitymanagement of creativityissues in education of creative studentsindustrial management of research

interesting books on creativity Sternberg's theory of creativity

1. Introduction

My interest in studying creativity was inspired by the frustrations that I felt as a student,then as a professor. I wanted to know how I could encourage creativity in myself, mystudents, and my colleagues.

Politicians, industrial managers, academic administrators, and other leaders often say thatinnovation is critical to the future of civilization, our country, their company, etc. But in

practice, these same people often act as if innovation is an evil that must be suppressed,or at least tightly controlled.

The purposes of this essay are to (1) quickly examine some of the personality traits thatare associated with unusual creativity and innovation and (2) to criticize management andeducational techniques that penalize or discourage creativity. The way to increase the

productivity of creative people is simple: give them resources (time, equipment, money)and stand out of their way!

2. Definitions

First, consider a definition of creativity . A creative person does things that have never been done before. Particularly important instances of creativity include discoveries of new knowledge in science and medicine, invention of new technology, composing

beautiful music, or analyzing a situation (e.g., in law, philosophy, or history) in a newway.

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It is important to distinguish among three different characteristics: intelligence, creativity,and academic degrees. Intelligence is the ability to learn and the ability to think.Creativity was defined in the previous paragraph, as the ability to produce new things or new knowledge. Academic degrees are what one gets after one has sat through years of

classes, passed the examinations, and completed all of the other requirements (e.g., senior thesis, doctoral dissertation, etc.). In comparing and contrasting these three traits, I notethat:

1. Most people who create significant things are intelligent.

2. There are many people with an earned doctoral degree who do not have a singlecreative idea in their head. They are intelligent and highly skilled problem solvers,

but someone else must formulate the problem for them (e.g., give them anequation to solve). Thus intelligence and academic degrees are not evidence of creativity.

3. Students who are both intelligent and highly creative often make mediocre gradesin school.

Genius is a vague term: sometimes it indicates a person with an unusually high score onan IQ test, other times it indicates an extraordinarily creative person (e.g., Mozart or Einstein). I don't like the word genius , not only because of this vagueness, but also

because it often has the connotation in colloquial American language of indicating afreak, weird, or abnormal person. I am interested in understanding and encouragingcreativity, not pasting pejorative labels on creative people. Further, someone who is not agenius can still make a valuable contribution to progress.

theory of creativity

Readers who have not previously considered the psychology of creativity might first wishto read my summary of Sternberg's theory of creativity at the end of this document. Inshort, the ability to be creative is the amalgamation of several different kinds of intelligence and personality traits. Creativity is an amazingly complex subject.

There are many books about the psychology of creativity in artists, but relatively littleabout creativity in scientists and engineers. However, there are (1) a number of

biographies of scientists, which give some light on creativity in scientists, and (2) some books on creativity in mathematicians.

The following are my own conclusions and comments about creativity, based on:

• my observations of colleagues and students, some of whom were highly creative, but others were not creative, and asking myself why the differences in creativeoutput,

• my personal experiences,





• my reading biographies of scientists, mathematicians, and composers of music,and

• my reading psychology books on creativity.

It is obvious that before one can do creative science and engineering, one must have some

technical knowledge of facts, laws, and methods (e.g., study of physics, chemistry,calculus, differential equations, statistics, computer programming, etc.). If one compareshighly creative scientists and engineers with their plodding, ordinary colleagues, onefinds essentially the same kinds of intelligence and knowledge in both groups. Therefore,I conclude that it must be the personality traits that distinguish creative from noncreative

people.

3. personality traitsassociated with creativity

A. diligence

Many people who are famous for their creative output are highly diligent, often borderingon the obsessive. It is common to see creative professors working 60 to 80 hours/week for the sheer joy of the effort. Creative people have an inner need to express their creativity. They can not keep their new idea inside their head forever, the idea needs to be

born. In fact, many creative people would be creative, even if they were not paid for their effort or output, a situation that has lead society and managers to a frankly shamefulexploitation of many of the greatest innovators in the history of mankind.

Not all creative people work long hours. I get the impression that mathematicians andtheoretical physicists are often exhausted after 20 to 40 hours/week of intense thought.

In discussing the amount of time a creative person spends on work, it is important toreward productivity, not number of hours worked. Many times, a creative person willwork a few hours and encounter an obstacle. Continuing to stare at the work is unlikely to

produce a breakthrough. Experience shows that novel insights often come at unexpectedtimes (e.g., while doing some mundane task, such as walking or in the shower).

In industry, it is common to see creative engineers working in their spare time, or working during evenings and weekends, on their "secret" project. If they asked their

manager for authorization, the manager would likely say " No! ", so the creative peoplekeep their project secret until it is completed or it becomes clear that their concept willnot work.

Nights, weekends, and holidays are good times to accomplish creative work, becausethere are fewer interruptions (e.g., from telephone calls, unexpected visitors) to break one's concentration.



I can not emphasize too strongly that a diagnostic sign of a creative person is that he/shefinds their own work to do, rather than sit idly until someone else gives them anassignment. Creative people need to express themselves through creative projects.However, one should distinguish between a workaholic who puts in 80 hours/week doingroutine work and a creative person who works long hours doing new things, often things

that no one else thought could be accomplished.

Many people with unusually great creativity are ambitious, concerned with their reputation, and apparently need to prove themselves worthy. I suspect that thesecharacteristics formed the motivation for their diligence, which is necessary for success.Their need to prove themselves worthy may come from experiences early in life in whichother children, other students, etc. ridiculed or taunted them.

Reading biographies of famous scientists and inventors shows that many of these menhad an intense focus on their work. One could describe this intensity with pejorativeterms: obsession, monomania, idée fixe . Or one could recognize that the intense

concentration was necessary to take them beyond the reach of ordinary men.

B. stubborn

In trying to do innovative work, I have often noticed the following problems ( in additionto my ignorance and mistakes!):

1. My colleagues tell me it is "impossible", "you are crazy to try this", "it will never work", "it has been tried before", etc. Of course, when I accomplish my goal, theyforget their earlier prediction.

2. There is nearly always inadequate funding and inadequate laboratory resources,which makes the experiment take longer than it would with appropriateequipment.

3. There is always inadequate time, because the project is in addition to one's regular activities (e.g., sponsored research, teaching, earning money, family and personallife)

Being creative is extraordinarily difficult work that is essential to progress! And societyseems to delight in making it more difficult by denying resources to creative people whoneed them. The way to succeed in spite of these artificially created burdens is to havesome combination of the following character traits:

• persistent• tenacious• uncompromising• stubborn• arrogant



Most people would characterize these traits as negative or undesirable qualities, yet I believe they are essential to innovation.

By arrogant, I mean trusting one's own judgment and ignoring other people's adverseopinion (e.g., "you're crazy to try that", etc.). It is ok to be arrogant in selecting projects

and goals for one's self and allocating one's personal time.

C. gender

It is well known that, as a general rule, men are more aggressive than women, owing totestosterone. For example, nearly all violent criminals are male. It may be thattestosterone gives men an advantage over women in persisting, despite thedisappointments and frustrations that are inherent in research. ( Having said something thatmight be provocative, please do not misunderstand me! I believe in equal opportunity and removinggender barriers in life, including professions. I simply observe that there are differences in genders beyondsexual anatomy. For these reasons, providing equality of opportunity does not assure equal outcomes. )

The subject of gender differences is complex. For example, one can observe that anappreciable fraction of undergraduate students majoring in biology or chemistry arewomen, while only a few percent of undergraduate students majoring in mathematics or

physics are women. When I have discussed the issue with women, they have often toldme that guidance counselors in high school and college told them that "women are notable to do physics or mathematics", advice that is surely not correct. Surprisingly, womenseem to accept such bad advice in a passive way. In contrast, telling a man that he is notable to do something often serves as a challenge to prove the advisor wrong. This trait of

perversity in men could be valuable in persisting in the face of inevitable disappointmentsand frustrations in creative work.

I am intrigued by the observation that women are much more common in the police andmilitary, occupations that involve violence and physical courage (i.e., traditional maleattributes), than in physics or mathematics, which are safe, clean, indoor occupations.Similarly, many attorneys who successfully litigate cases are female, more proof thatwomen can succeed in a profession that requires aggression and stamina. So I am baffled

by the absence of women from science and mathematics, particularly when one considersthe success of women in police, military, and litigation.

I have the impression, from my experience teaching electrical engineering for ten years,that women tend to approach problems in a formal mathematical way. This earns themgood grades in school on textbook exercises, but is not necessarily the best way toapproach practical problems. Many of my male colleagues are intuitive whenapproaching problems, the mathematical analysis comes later as one works out thedetails. My guess is that men develop this intuition by building things during childhoodand tinkering with automobiles and computers during adolescence. In contrast,conventional culture denies these experiences to women, by insisting that girls play withdolls, sew, cook, etc.

In the USA, there is a toy called an "Erector Set" that consists of a collection of metal



Returning to the discussion of eccentric traits in creative scientists, a larger percentage of scientists were either atheists or agnostics, compared to the general population. I suspectthat these men simply applied the same objective standards of science to religion, andrefused to believe dogma on faith alone. Further, a person who accepts dogma has thesecurity of knowing that millions of other people believe the same dogma, which is

something that gives comfort and assurance to many people. In contrast to the majority of the population, creative scientists are often skeptics, for whom belief is always tentativeand subject to continuing inquiry and testing. Note that I did not say that religious beliefsare incompatible with being a good scientist. I only note that religious beliefs are lesscommon among scientists than in many other groups of people.

D.3. monotonous routine life

Highly creative men often had a monotonous diet or wore the same kind of clothes everyday. I suspect that these men saw routine details of life, such as eating and clothing, asunimportant and not worthy of thought. It may be that these men were unconsciously

rebelling against conventional values and concerns that impeded them in their creative pursuits. In some extreme cases, creative men lived in cluttered, messy environments, because they did not take the time to clean house.

D.4. bipolar disorder

There seems to be a higher incidence of bipolar disorder (i.e., manic-depressive disease)in highly creative people than in the entire population. This disorder causes neither creativity nor intelligence, but it seems to enhance creativity, perhaps by removinginhibitions and barriers to radical or complex thoughts.

D.5. enjoy their work

Another reason that creative people are sometimes seen as eccentric is that creative people genuinely enjoy their work, instead of working only because they need an income.But creative people should enjoy their work, because it is significant and original.

E. conclusion

On reflection, one would expect innovative people to be unusual, even eccentric, whenviewed by normal society. If innovative people were ordinary, they would work likeordinary people and achieve little of historical significance, because they are only

executing routine assignments. Creative intellectuals are normal when compared to the population in which they belong.

Conventional people often put pejorative labels on creative people, to characterize their nonconventional (hence, different) personality traits. In addition to the "eccentric" label,which was discussed above, there are labels like "geek" and "nerd". Ordinary peopleoften apply pejorative labels to intellectuals, who often do creative research, for example:"pointy headed intellectuals who can't park their bicycles straight" or "eggheads". Such



pejorative labels may serve to identify individuals with unusually high intelligence or unusually great creativity, in effect making them an anomalous person, so that ordinary

people have an excuse for not being able to compete with these anomalies. Further, thisuse of pejorative labels is a marginalization of creative people, by alleging that creative

people are either defective or have a personality disorder.

One of the principal ways to be creative is to look for alternative ways to view a phenomena or for alternative ways to ask a question. Conventional society heaps pejorative terms on creative people (e.g., obsessive, monomania, stubborn,uncompromising, eccentric). It would be better to see the behavior that is identified bythese pejorative labels in a positive light: these characteristics are common amongcreative people, and may be essential to creative success.

During the 1980's, Senator Proxmire in the USA held regular press conferences andidentified a specific scientific research project as an example of government waste (i.e.,his "Golden Fleece" award). Of course, the senator, the journalists, and most of the

people reading the journalist's report would be unable to understand and fairly evaluatean esoteric research project. The Senator simply denigrated scientific research as a way of boosting his own public esteem. A rational society should encourage creativity, notdenigrate it with pejorative labels, because creativity is valuable to society.

4. how creativity occurs

Conception of a new idea often occurs in an intuitive flash of insight, in which the moreor less complete idea is revealed. Equations and logical analysis come later. Someonewho is reading scholarly publications in a library sees the final result in a format that isquite different from its initial conception. The fact that the public presentation is differentfrom the way the idea initially occurred can lead to misunderstandings about how scienceis actually accomplished.

One of the principal ways to be creative is to look for alternative ways to view a phenomena or for alternative ways to ask a question. It is easy to ask questions that aretrivial to solve. It is easy to ask questions that require extraordinary effort (e.g., 50 man-years of effort and millions of dollars in expenses) to solve. It is surprisingly difficult tofind questions that lie in between these two extremes, and also have a result that is worthknowing.

One often-cited example of creativity is George de Mestral's observation of howcockleburs attach to clothing, which led him to invent the hook-and-loop fastener knownas Velcro®. He transformed a common nuisance to a useful product. When one looks

backward in time to analyze how a creative act was made, one often finds that creatorsmade a novel interpretation of a well-known fact or occurrence. Often the interpretationconverted a disadvantage into an advantage.

Another commonly cited example of creativity is Art Fry's development of Post-It®



removable notes at 3M Corporation in 1974. Dr. Spencer Silver, another 3M scientist,had developed a polymer adhesive that formed microscopic spheres instead of a uniformcoating, and thus was a poor adhesive that took year s to set. Fry wanted a better

bookmark for his church hymnal, so he used Silver's adhesive. The conventional wisdomis that every adhesive must be strong. By ignoring the conventional wisdom, Fry

developed a highly successful office product. However, not only did he need to developthe idea, but he also had to sell the idea to his management and marketing departments,which were resistant to his new idea. A creative manager, if there be such a person,would have redefined the problem to find a use for a weak adhesive, but the conventionalwisdom that all adhesives must be strong is apparently overpowering. There is a secondexception to the "all adhesives must be strong" rule: thread locking compounds that

prevent machine screws and bolts from loosening during vibration must be weak enoughto allow removal of the screw or bolt during repair.

Prof. David Swenson has posted a web page with a rich collection of examples of innovation.

creativity is solitary work

Creativity is essentially a solitary enterprise. Most landmark discoveries in science andall major musical compositions are the work of one person.

New ideas are often tentative, half-baked, and difficult to communicate in a persuasiveway. On the receiving side, most scientists and engineers generally react to someoneelse's new idea by discouraging it: "It won't work.", "It's a waste of your time.", etc.Colleagues tend to reject unorthodox views, at least until those views are convincingly

presented, in a complete form. But such a completed form occurs at the end of a research

project, not at the beginning or middle. So, as a defensive measure, it is best to keep newideas to one's self, until one reaches an unresolvable problem that requires someone else'sassistance.

Further, creative work is inherently personal. Involvement of other people diverts thecreator's unique vision of the final product and how to create it. When multiple people areinvolved, there are inevitably compromises and the final product is mostly a consensusview. As an aside, French law recognizes that the creator of a work expresses his/her

personality in the work, so – while the creator may sell the copyright or object – thecreator always retains the "droit moral" in his/her work. See my separate essay at my

professional web site on moral rights of authors , which are not recognized in law in the

USA.

Still further, the personality trait of stubborn and uncompromising makes it difficult for many creative people to work in groups, where compromises are routine practice.

There are certainly large projects that require too many man-hours and too many differenttechnical skills for one person to do all the work. Examples of such projects are particleaccelerators used by nuclear physicists, optical and radio telescopes, design of aircraft,

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etc. However, in practice, these large projects are broken down into many small tasks,with a few people (perhaps only one person) having the responsibility for each task. If multiple people work together on one task, or different people supervise and approve thework on one task, the approach will tend away from innovation and tend toward aconsensus view that uses proven ideas. While this approach may increase reliability, it

also thwarts creativity.

Sometimes a scientist working on a problem is frustrated and discusses the problem witha colleague, who suggests a way of solving the difficulty. In this way, the final work may

be published as a multiple-author paper, but each part of the solution was theresponsibility of one person. The colleague may contribute a mathematical or experimental technique, or knowledge of some fact, that was not known to the firstscientist.

Another way to get multiple-author papers on innovative topics is for a professor to havemore good ideas than the professor can personally develop. So the professor gives good

idea(s) to a graduate student, and the student does the work to develop the idea into a publishable paper. It is traditional for both the student's and professor's name to appear onthe final paper: the student did nearly all of the work, the professor contributed the initialidea, equipment and resources, and helped the student with difficulties along the way.This process is more than merely preparing the student's doctoral dissertation: it isteaching in a Master-Apprentice style. Besides benefits to the student, it also increasesthe productivity of the professor and, by increasing the professor's reputation, makes iteasier for the professor to obtain future financial support. Carried to an extreme, the

professor will become a manager who writes proposals for financial support, generatesnew ideas, and allocates resources, but is no longer personally involved in scientificresearch. In the long-run, removing the professor from personal involvement in doingexperimental or theoretical work could decrease the rate at which the professor generatessignificant new ideas, and make the professor less familiar with techniques for solving

problems.

5. management of creativity

In a later section of this essay, I discuss management of creative employees. Here I wantto make a critical point: one of the worst things a manager can do to creative employeesis have the employees adhere to a rigid schedule of delivery dates for assignments.

Naturally, the manager will, in addition to the rigid schedule, insist that all of the

employee's time be spent on projects that the manager has approved. Such a rigid policyof assignments and schedules kills creativity.

History teaches that many important discoveries were made accidentally. If thediscoverer had some "spare time", he could investigate this unexpected curiosity. But if the discoverer was working diligently on a tight schedule, then there was no time tofollow this detail that was not essential to the completion of the assigned project, and thediscovery was forgotten.



People who are highly organized express their love of schedules with various clichés,such as:

"If you do not know where you are going, you will not know when you arrive."or

"If you do not know where you are going, you will be lost when you get there."There is much truth in these clichés. Little good can come from truly aimless work. My point is that when something unexpected and interesting happens, there should be sometime available to explore this serendipity. People who are intelligent and creative, andwho are familiar with the subject matter, generally have good intuition for when someunexpected occurrence is worth exploring further. Making them ask for permission onlyslows the discovery process, it does not produce better results. If the unexpected result is,with hindsight, seen to be a mistake, at least it was an interesting mistake from which onelearned something.

There is another cliché that is popular amongst some scientists who I have known:

"If I knew what I was doing, it would not be research."For the kind of research that involves discovery of facts that were previously unknown,this cliché is correct: the results are unpredictable and many of the methods will fail,

before there is any success. The kind of research done by physicists and chemists inuniversities often falls in this category. For lack of a better name, this is conventionallycalled "pure research".

However, there is another kind of research – called applied research – in which the goalmight be (1) to design a new product to meet certain specifications or (2) evaluate a

product, perhaps a drug, for safety and efficacy. Applied research can be managedsuccessfully. The scientists and engineers who work in applied research definitely knowwhat they are doing and they frequently almost meet their deadlines. < grin > I discussapplied research more in the section on industrial management, later in this essay. The

point to be made here is that scientists and engineers who are doing applied research alsocan have unexpected results, in addition to simply doing their assignment. If they havesome spare time, the unexpected results can be investigated and might become moresignificant than the original assignment. Commonly there is no time and the unexpectedresults are forgotten.

I have come to believe that it is not rational to attempt to manage pure scientific research.True research involves a quest for the unknown that is inherently un predictable. Even the

people doing the research, who are experts in their field, have difficulty predicting theapplications and consequences of their discoveries. If the experts can not see theconsequences, there is no reasonable hope that a manager without technical expertise cansee the consequences. Some "insignificant" projects might become significant many yearsafter they are published, when someone else recognizes a use for the result of the oldwork. The most famous example of this was Einstein's use of non-Euclidian geometry inhis gravitational theory – before Einstein, non-Euclidian geometry had been puremathematics without any practical application.



Research is often highly personal. Researchers do not like to ask permission to exploreideas that may be tentative, intuitive, and difficult to communicate. Many good ideas

begin as a mistake or error, which produced an unexpected result, and few people like tomention their mistakes or errors to their supervisor!

Finally, I observe that pure research is inherently wasteful: one often spends money on projects that fails to give any really useful information. One must simply accept suchdross as part of the price of progress. If the results were predictable, then it wouldn't be

pure research. Diamond mines also produce lots of worthless rock, but are still profitableenterprises. When we look back on the history of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in theUSA, we remember the invention of the transistor, the invention of the laser, thediscovery of cosmic background noise remaining from the Big Bang, not to mention thedevelopment of a highly reliable telephone network. Who cares about the dross that was

produced in that Laboratory? Research should be supported because it is the engine thatfuels modern economies (by creating new products and new ways of working), as well asimproving the quality of life, and because men's spirits are lifted by discovery of

knowledge, just as putting a man on the moon made everyone in the USA proud.Many people whose familiarity with science comes from reading a book will wonder whyscientists do not go into a laboratory and emerge with an important results, such as a cure(or vaccine) for some dreadful disease. Progress in science is generally slow. Eachscientists makes small incremental steps of progress, building on the published results of others, as well as their own experience. Rarely – and only rarely – will a scientist have aninspired, novel thought that is truly revolutionary. These people often get a Nobel prizefor their achievement.

In looking at biographies of Nobel-prizewinners and other famous scientists, I see twoclasses of innovation:

1. competent scientists who were in the right place at the right time. Some of these people apparently do not make any other truly great achievement during theremainder of their career. Perhaps this kind of significant innovation is a randomevent.

2. true genius , who is able to repeatedly develop significant innovative ideas (e.g.Einstein)

It appears that very few scientists are blessed with one great moment, even fewer are blessed with several great moments. It is the same in music: some composers (J.S. Bach,F.J. Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert) wrote large quantities of outstandingmusic at a frantic pace, while other composers produced only a few outstandingcompositions during their lifetime. How can we, as professors, leaders, managers,encourage great discoveries to occur more frequently?

History shows us that many important discoveries are made by young scientists, duringtheir time in graduate school or in the few years after they receive their doctoral degree.The conventional interpretation is that the time between ages 20 and 30 years are the



"best" years of a scientist's life. The reason for this phenomena seems to be that youngscientist have learned the basic skills (e.g., calculus, differential equations, statistics,computer programming, scientific theories) but are inexperienced. In this way they arelike a child in a new environment: the child is naturally curious and almost everything isunfamiliar. But, unlike a child, a young scientist is articulate, knows how to observe and

record facts, and knows how to interpret the facts.

When someone has worked or lived in an environment for more than about ten years,they tend to be less observant and less curious, because they are familiar with theenvironment. With this interpretation, the solution to increasing creativity is clear:scientists should change fields approximately every ten years, so they continue to seek

big, new challenges, instead of becoming comfortable experts. I do not necessarily meanradical changes, such as from nuclear physics to collecting butterflies in a rain forest,although a nuclear physicist would bring a rich collection of new techniques totaxonomy. < grin > Linus Pauling is an outstanding example of a person who changedfields and was productive in each field where he worked. Of course, changing fields

periodically will stop the production of wise, old men who have 40 years of experience ina field. Exactly! Many of these "wise" old men know that something can not be done,whereas an inexperienced person simply does it and is rewarded. Many of these "wise"old men know that something is not worth doing, whereas a less experienced person putsfacts together in a new way and makes an important discovery. I am not against thewisdom that comes with experience, but I would prefer to see experience in manydifferent areas instead of 40 years of experience in one narrow area. There is also avaluable cross-fertilization between areas: techniques that are well-known in one fieldcan enrich another field.

We can also encourage creativity by changing the way that schools are operated, which Idiscuss in the next session of this essay. If schools produce more creative people, our government must give financial support for creative activities, not just scientific research,

but composition of music, and other forms of creativity.

6. issues in educationof creative students

My observation is that many instructors, from elementary school through undergraduatecollege courses, have a standard, orthodox, only "one right way" approach to the material.A student who does it differently from the instructor is labeled "wrong". I believe thatsuch an approach is often the result of the limited intellectual ability of the instructor,who only knows one reliable technique.

Conventional instructors ask students to recite on an examination information fromlectures or the textbook. This is a difficult task for creative students, because creative

people naturally add something new to what ordinary people consider a straightforward problem.



As a simple example of rigidity, when I was a pupil in elementary school, the textbook and instructor taught that the definition of a noun was "the name of a person, place, or thing." But I had read my mother's old college grammar book, which said that a noun was"the name of anything". I liked the latter definition better, because it was logically

simpler: any name is a noun. But I was marked wrong for not using the official definition,although the definition I gave on the examination was equivalent.

A more serious example of rigidity in education was given in a letter to the New EnglandJournal of Medicine. The author had attended medical school in the late 1800's, when

patients with bacterial infections often died. During bacteriology class, he had carelesslyallowed his culture dish to become contaminated with mold, which killed the bacteria.His professor berated him for his sloppiness in allowing the contamination. Looking

backwards from the antibiotic era, this example of education seems stubbornly rigid.Because of the focus was on obtaining the "correct" result, neither the professor nor thestudent asked the proper question, namely "Can the property of molds to kill bacteria in

vitro be used to cure bacterial infections in vivo?" In 1928, Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin, the first of the antibiotics, from the common mold Penicillium , an achievementfor which he received the Nobel prize in medicine in 1945. Fleming's discovery of

penicillin came from asking the proper question, which instructors of bacteriology inmedical school could have (but did not ) asked fifty years earlier.

I remember a test question from my wife's medical journal in the early 1980s, along thefollowing lines. You are a physician in an emergency room. Joan, who is known to youas a diabetic who uses insulin, arrives by ambulance and is comatose. Her husband saysshe was vomiting earlier in the evening. What do you do immediately?

A. Administer glucose intravenously.B. Administer insulin intravenously.C. Draw blood and measure serum glucose level.D. Check airway, breathing, and heart rate.

The correct answer, according to the medical journal, is D, because the physician must always check airway, breathing, and circulation when initially examining a patient under emergency circumstances. When my wife gave me the question and I chose B, her comment was that I knew too much about biochemistry. Medicine, or at least medicaleducation, is about following rules, not about thinking. My reaction is that a paramedicwith no knowledge of physiology or endocrinology would do better than a scientist onthis examination. When I was a law student during 1995-98, I saw the same rule-following behavior that rewarded memorization and penalized creative thinking. In myview, law and medical schools should post yellow warning signs at every entrance,marked NO THINKING ZONE .

Students who are both intelligent and highly creative often make mediocre grades inschool, because these creative students see issues and ambiguity in examination problemsthat the instructor did not intend. Creative students "misread the question", according to



the view of the conventional instructor. This problem is particularly severe on multiplechoice examinations where a creative student can quickly find situations in which either all or none of the answers are correct, whereas a noncreative student who knows thematerial in a conventional way simply selects the best answer and gets marked correct.On an essay or problem-solving examination where the student is expected to explain the

student's answer, the student has an opportunity to show the instructor other ways tointerpret the problem. However, conventional instructors are often intolerant of suchcreative interpretations.

Moreover, many creative students are bored by pedestrian classes that are pitched at theintellectual level of the middle of the class (or, worse, pitched at a low level so thateveryone passes), so the creative students devote more of their time to their personalcreative projects and neglect their regular classes, which often leads to a grade average

between C and B. I am concerned that many intelligent and creative students may prematurely abandon their education, because of boredom with the curriculum andteaching methods.

Around 1960, it was the custom in the USA for elementary schools to spend the first half of each school year repeating material that had been taught during the previous year. Thisrepetition is not only a waste of time for pupils who learned it the first time, but those

pupils become bored with school.

Many graduate students with high grades (i.e., nearly all A grades) are unable to doresearch, in which their assigned problem had no known solution. I saw this phenomenonwhen I was in graduate school during the 1970's and many of my fellow students droppedout of school. I saw this phenomena again during the 1980's when I was supervisinggraduate students' research work. On the other hand, I could find students with B gradesin regular classes, and even C grades, who not only could do research work, but alsoseemed to enjoy the challenges of doing research work. Classes prepared students to takemore classes, not to do original thinking, a conclusion that shows that schools anduniversities are failing in their basic mission. I think the concept of grades is sound,

because grades provide a short-term motivation to study diligently. The real problem isnot grades, but curricula and examinations that are filled with arbitrary textbook

problems with little relevance to success in the actual practice of science or engineering,such as research or design of a new product.

In teaching electrical engineering to undergraduate students, it is conventional to givethem a circuit diagram with the values of all of the components (e.g., resistance,capacitance, inductance, independent voltage source, etc.) and ask the students tocalculate either the output voltage or the current in some branch of the circuit.Engineering textbooks are filled with such problems, but (1) the circuits are arbitrary andwithout practical utility and (2) learning how to solve such problems does not produce

better engineers. However, it is relatively easy to teach students to solve these problemsand it is easy for the instructor to grade their work, since there is only one correct answer.In contrast, I invented my own homework problems that asked a student to design acircuit having certain properties (e.g., input impedance, specified relationship between



input voltage and output voltage, etc.). To make the exercise more realistic, I penalizedthe students slightly for using more components than my design: this emphasized thatsimple designs were better. The amount of my grade penalty was proportional to the costof the extra component(s), but I would waive the penalty if the student's circuit had somefeature that was better than my straightforward solution. The reaction of the students to

these problems was interesting to me. Most of the students found my homework frustratingly difficult, because they had never done such problems before, although theyhad attended 12 years of education in public schools plus at least 2 years of college

before I taught them. Many of the students who had received A grades in most of their previous science, mathematics, and engineering classes were struggling hard to earn aC grade in my class. More surprisingly, some of the nominal C students were earning anA grade in my class, and they suddenly came alive for the first time in many years of school.

Among physics teachers, there is a famous story of a student who does not give theexpected answer to a straightforward examination question. If you have not already read

this story about determining the height of a building with a barometer , now you have theopportunity. < grin > Many physics professors see this story as illustrating adolescentrebellion or mere scholasticism. However, I am very sympathetic to the student's

boredom and defiance: physics is about more than pendula, balls rolling down inclined planes, and measurements of mass and distance. Physics is about understanding theuniverse – space, time, energy, symmetry – and discovering new knowledge. Learningto solve boring textbook problems is a poor preparation for a career in scientific research.

Students need to see more homework problems in school that require creative solutions:

•

Instead of asking for one solution, require the A students to give two differentmethods of solving one problem. Encourage students to find creative solutionsinstead of prosaic solutions.

• Give problems that are unreasonably difficult to answer correctly, and have thestudents find a rough approximation.

• Give students problems without adequate information; let them go to the libraryand find the information that they need.

• Give more problems that ask the student to design a circuit, interpret data, designa method of doing an experiment, ....

• Assign term papers that require reading from multiple sources, making a creativesynthesis of the information, and finding contradictions or inconsistencies inauthoritative, published works.

• Occasionally assign exercises that show an incorrect solution to a problem (e.g.,computer program that contains at least one bug, electronic circuit that will notfunction properly) and have the students find the defect and suggest a correction.

• Assign laboratory experiments that allow students freedom to choose technique(s)and topics.

• Arrange or compose music, not merely playing music.

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I have posted some comments on the value of attending a small liberal arts college for the bachelor's degree, then a large research-oriented university for a doctoral degree. Thatessay also has some comments on the value of colleges for women only.

Children seem to have an innate sense of curiosity, enthusiasm, and imagination. Matureadults generally lack these qualities. Where did these qualities get lost? I believe thatteachers and industrial managers beat these qualities out of people, in order to make themeasier to control and manage. In my experience, both as a student and professor,organized education – as a bureaucracy – actively discourages creativity. I believe thatcreativity can be taught and encouraged in a master-apprentice setting, such as a studentworking in a research laboratory. It is much more difficult to teach and encouragecreativity in a classroom with more than twenty students, but I believe it can be done in asmall way, if the instructor makes a great effort. Of course, there is no reward for theinstructor who makes that effort, and with the many other demands on the instructor'stime in American universities, it is unlikely that the instructor will make the effort.

A related problem is the intellectual egalitarianism in the USA: it is ok to select athleteswith unusual abilities and train them hard, but the same process with intellect is seen assnobbish. That is a recipe for disaster in an economy that depends on technologicalinnovation. And yet that is exactly the route taken by public elementary schools and highschools in the USA, as well as by most state colleges and universities in the USA.

television

Aside from the insidious effects of formal education on creativity, I am concerned withthe effect of television. When one reads a book, one forms a mental image of what is

happening. When one listens to the radio (e.g., a baseball game), one also forms a mentalimage of what is happening (i.e., remember the positions of the players and imagine howthey are moving). But television explicitly shows the correct image, so there is nothingleft to the imagination. I believe that reading books, and listening to the radio, stimulatethe imagination, which is a very valuable skill for creative people. The ubiquitousness of television after the mid-1950's may be depriving children, and adults too, of opportunitiesto expand their ability to imagine.

The insipid content of television programs in the USA is a separate problem that is notrelevant here.

7. industrial management of research

If an industrial manager finds out about an unauthorized project by a creative engineer,the engineer will generally be ordered not to do it. There are a variety of reasons for thisheavy-handed control of creative engineers by management. First, managers believe"good ideas" come from the top manager down to the workers, "good ideas" can not

possibly originate from mere workers. Second, "it's not in the budget." – it would be

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horrible if an industrial group did more than it was assigned and paid to do! Third, peoplein positions of power and authority see creative people who are enthusiastic about their new ideas as loose cannons, who are dangerous and need to be controlled. Creative

people often have their own vision of the future, which disagrees with the manager'sdirection. Managers want everything under control and on schedule, creative people are

generally disorganized and unpredictable. One can neither schedule nor predict a brilliantidea.

My cynicism in the previous paragraph is based on my personal experience working in amajor American corporation (Xerox), augmented by tales from many of my associateswho continue to work in industry, despite their frustrations. The popularity of the Dilbertcomic strip is testimony to how common nonsensical management is in the USA.

The fundamental organization of a business day into work from 8 AM to 5 PM, Mondaythrough Friday, disrupts the way many creative people work. For example, when I

program computers, I tend to work continuously for about 14 hours, then collapse in bed

and sleep for 8 hours, then go back to work on my program. I repeat this cycle until the program is finished, even if it means working on Saturday and Sunday. If I were to break up my work into shorter blocks of time, I would be much less productive, because Iwould need to spend more time picking up the thread of my previous thoughts. When Italk to other programmers among university faculty, I find that my binge behavior istypical. Similarly, some composers retreated from society and worked continuously untiltheir musical composition was completed.

As effort becomes more routine, it also become less creative. For example, a bank manager would not want a creative bank teller, instead, a manager would want to treattellers as generic, interchangeable commodities, who do their work in the same way.Indeed, "creative bank teller" or "creative accountant" sounds like a euphemism for fraud! < grin >

Creativity is essentially a solitary enterprise. Most landmark discoveries in science andall major musical compositions are the work of one person. However, teamwork, notindividualism, is the standard pattern in industry. There is a funny experiment of minethat you can reproduce. Engage a businessman or industrial manager in a discussionabout creativity. Then ask:

"Would Beethoven have been more productive if he had been working in a team?"The question is absolutely ludicrous to anyone who understands either the art of musicalcomposition or Beethoven's personality. I have difficulty asking this question withoutgiggling, because it is such an outrageous suggestion! But, astoundingly, industrialmanagers tend to say:

"Yes, I would have put Beethoven in a team and increased his productivity."My conclusion is that such industrial managers do not understand the first thing abouteither creativity or development of art. I see close parallels in composing music andmaking scientific discoveries, and the personality of Beethoven is close to the personalityof many creative professors of science, despite the differences in subject matter andmethods. Aside from issues of management of creative people, I think attempting to



increase Beethoven's productivity by putting him in a team is akin to killing the Goosethat laid the golden egg. Beethoven was incredibly productive without any managementor teamwork: during 33 years of work, he composed more than 50 major works that

bridged the Classical and Romantic periods, and introduced numerous innovations. Allthis without a consistent patron or employer, and with deafness during the last years of

his life, particularly when he composed the Ninth Symphony.

8. bibliography

books

• Teresa M. Amabile, Creativity in Context, Westview Press, 1996.This book is an update of her classic work, The Social Psychology of Creativitythat was published in 1983.

• Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Addison Wesley, 1975. Brookswas the manager for the development of the IBM System 360, the operatingsystem for the most common mainframe computers in the USA during the 1970's.

• Jacques Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field,Princeton University Press, 1945. Reprinted by Dover Press. Hadamard was a

professor of mathematics.

• G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1940.The classic book on what it means to do pure mathematical research. The editions

in 1967 and thereafter have an interesting forward by C.P. Snow.• Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius, Plenum, 1998. The book is not a

technical work for professionals, but was written for a popular audience. In places, it barely rises above an exhibition of freaks and eccentric behaviors. Nonetheless, there are some interesting insights in this book.

• George Polya, How to Solve It, Princeton University Press, 1946. A professor of mathematics gives some hints about the creative process. This book is written atthe popular level.

• Robert J. Sternberg and Todd I. Lubart, Defying the Crowd: CultivatingCreativity in a Culture of Conformity, The Free Press, 1995.This book was written by two psychologists and is intended for an audience of laymen, but does have some references to technical literature. The authors believethat everyone has some creativity, but that society and managers discouragecreativity. The authors consistently use financial analogies in their book:"buy low, sell high" is particularly prevalent. Many of the examples are takenfrom observations of pupils or students in schools, not from professional scientists



or engineers. The book contains some errors in science and technology, none of which detract from the underlying message.

• Gerald M. Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming. The author is a professor of computer science who advocates "ego-less" programming.

journal articles

Kenneth R. Hardy, "Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars," Science,Vol. 185, pp. 497-506, 9 Aug 1974.

Reports that membership in Unitarian church, Society of Friends (Quaker), or secularized Jewish religions were highly overrepresented among scholars whencompared to the entire U.S. population.

Sternberg's Theory of Creativity

In my reading of psychological literature, there are numerous hypotheses and theories of creativity that conflict with what I have observed in creative colleagues and what I haveread in biographies of creative scientists and composers of music. However, thefollowing theory of creativity, put forth by Prof. Sternberg at Yale University, makessense to me. Sternberg says that all of the following are essential: a lack of any one itemin the list precludes creativity. I think he is correct, except for the last item: it is not necessary to have a favorable environment, although such an environment certainlymakes life easier for creative people.

1. Intelligence A. synthetic intelligence. The ability to combine existing information in a

new way.

B. analytic intelligence. The ability to distinguish between new ideas thathave potential, and new ideas that are not worth further work. This abilityis essential to an effective allocation of resources, by evaluating thequality of new ideas.

C. practical intelligence. The ability to sell one's ideas to funding agencies,managers, editors, reviewers, etc. Without "practical intelligence" thecreative person will not be allocated resources to develop their ideas, andthe creative person may achieve recognition only posthumously.



2. Knowledge gives the ability to recognize what is genuinely new. The history of science shows that many good ideas are discovered independently by more thanone person. Scientists and engineers must be familiar with the technical literature,in order to avoid "reinventing the wheel". On the other hand, too much knowledgemight block creativity, by immediately providing reasons why a new idea is not

worth pursuing and by encouraging a person to be rigid in their thinking.

Knowledge is also important to provide skills necessary to design experiments, todesign new products, to analyze the results of experiments, do computations, etc.

3. Thinking Styles. Creative people question conventional wisdom, instead of passively accepting that wisdom. Creative people question common assumptionsand rules, instead of mindlessly follow them. This style brings creative peopleinto conflict with society around them, so it is also essential to have a personalitythat tolerates this conflict, as explained in the next item in this list.

4. Personality. Creative people take the risk to defy conventional wisdom and to bea nonconformist. Creative people have the courage to persist, even when the

people around them provide objections, criticism, ridicule, and other obstacles.Most people are too timid to be really creative.

5. Motivation A. intrinsic or personal. Creative people genuinely enjoy their work and set

their own goals.

B. extrinsic. There are a number of extrinsic motivators: money, promotions, prizes, praise, fame, etc. Extrinsic motivators mostly focus on an endresult, not the process of discovery or creativity. In highly creative people,

extrinsic motivators appear to be less important than intrinsic motivators.

6. Environmental Context. Many environments (particularly managers and bureaucracy) discourage creativity. A creative individual who could flourish inone environment can become a routine, ordinary worker in another environment.The optimum environment for creative people is where they can be paid to dotheir creative work, so creativity is a full-time job, not a spare-time hobby.

Permit me to explain my disagreement with Prof. Sternberg on the last item: a favorable

environment. Many types of creative work (e.g., research in theoretical physics, writing books, composing music, etc.) require minimal physical resources, so such creativeactivities can be accomplished in one's personal time at nights, weekends, and holidays. If one is employed in an environment that discourages creativity, one can still be creativeon one's personal time. In this sense, a favorable environment is not necessary for creativity.

On the other hand, other types of creative work (e.g., experiments in physics, chemistry,



engineering, etc.) can require expensive laboratory apparatus. A scientist without accessto such laboratory facilities is prohibited from doing creative work in experimentalscience. So, in this sense, I agree with Prof. Sternberg that a favorable environment can

be necessary for creative work

Creativity in Science and Engineering

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