Creative Imagery

Discoveries and inventions in Visualization

Ronald A. Finke

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317783312
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Experimental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Bringing together the results of experiments on discovery and invention in visualization conducted by the author over a three year period, this book reports new findings on the generation of creative inventions and concepts using mental imagery, and proposes a reconceptualization of the creative process.

Creative Imagery introduces the concept of "preinventive forms" and describes an approach to creative invention differing from those typically used in problem-solving studies. There are two unique features of this book. First, it combines the experimental methods of cognitive science with the opportunity to explore and discover creative inventions in imagination. Second, it provides readers with numerous opportunities to use the creative imagery techniques to develop their own inventions and conceptual discoveries.

This text is of particular interest to scientists working in the fields of experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, and cognitive science. The techniques for generating creative inventions will also be of interest to people working in engineering, architectural design, and the visual arts.

   Chapter   

1

Introduction

Every person has the potential to make creative discoveries in their imagery. Moreover, it is possible to demonstrate this experimentally for many types of creative discoveries. The experiments I report will show, in fact, that certain techniques are remarkably effective in stimulating the discovery of unexpected patterns, new inventions, and creative concepts—all within imagination. And these are techniques that anyone can learn to use.

A unique feature of this book is that it combines the experimental method and creative exploration. Most experimental studies on imagination constrain how the images are to be formed (e.g., Finke, 1989; Kosslyn, 1980; Shepard & Cooper, 1982). In contrast, previous books on how to engage in creative visualization have not been extensively based on experimental techniques (e.g., Adams, 1974; Arnheim, 1969; Edwards, 1986; McKim, 1980). This book attempts to do both.

I begin by considering examples of famous anecdotes in which mental images evidently led to creative insights and discoveries.

ANECDOTES OF CREATIVE DISCOVERIES IN IMAGERY

Roger Shepard (1978, 1988) has compiled a remarkable collection of anecdotes, mostly from eminent scientists and mathematicians, regarding the use of mental imagery in scientific and conceptual discovery. The interesting feature of these accounts is how the insights often arose spontaneously, as one considered the implications of the visualized forms and structures. These insights were typically surprising, in much the same way that a person might be surprised upon finding the missing clue to a mystery. In these cases of image discovery, however, the “clues” were evidently generated from within the human mind itself.

Perhaps the most famous anecdote concerning the use of imagery in scientific discovery is that of Kekulé, who discovered the molecular structure of benzene. In his own account, Kekulé described having dreamed of a snake coiled in a circle, biting its own tail. Kekulé had been considering the problem of the underlying structure of organic molecules. He then suddenly realized that the snake’s position in his image represented the key molecular structure he had been searching for.

Similarly, Einstein reported having been led to many of his fundamental insights by doing thought experiments in imagination. For example, by visualizing how the world would look if one were to travel beside a beam of light, he was led to the concept of special relativity. His accounts of having engaged in “combinational play” in imagery, as the preferred method for thinking about problems, again suggests that imagery can provide an internal medium for invention and discovery.

Shepard considered reports of many other examples among famous scientists of the use of visualization in moments of creative insight, notably those of James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Sir Francis Galton, James Watt, Nicola Tesla, and, among recent physicists, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Mitchell Feigenbaum. There have also been accounts of the use of creative visualization in various technological advances. For instance, Ferguson (1977) brought together numerous examples of mechanical inventions that were inspired by creative mental imagery. It seems, in fact, as if most of the important insights in the physical and applied sciences have come from visual images of some kind.

In a recent critique, Weisberg (1986) questioned whether accounts such as those of Kekulé actually occurred in the way they were reported. For example, there are indications that Kekule’s insight did not actually occur in a nocturnal dream, but rather, in a daydream. Weisberg also questioned the purported “leaps of insight” in many of these accounts. For purposes of the present investigations, such considerations are largely irrelevant. The key focus here is on the conditions that give rise to creative insights in imagery, and not the particular kind of imagery that is used, or exactly how the insights occur.

A NEW APPROACH TO CREATIVE INSIGHT AND INVENTION

The central idea I shall develop in this book is that creative discoveries and inventions might best be achieved by taking what most people would regard as a very indirect approach. Instead of starting out by thinking of what kinds of inventions are needed, or what new ideas are feasible, one conceives of a general object or shape that is intuitively interesting or appealing, and then considers its possible uses, as the situation demands. This is in the spirit of general recommendations for nondirective thinking that have been made by previous writers on creativity and problem solving (e.g., de Bono, 1967; Hayes, 1981; Levine, 1987).

The realization of a new idea or invention is thus largely unanticipated; it follows from the structure of the imagined form. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow from any particular form, in that many other creative interpretations might have been possible, given other problems and considerations that might have been present at the time. In other words, there are many possible discoveries that the same imagined form can inspire, depending on what is desired or required. This will become clearer once the experiments on creative invention are presented. For the moment, an analogy might help.

Imagine a person stranded on a deserted island, who, out of boredom, considers interesting combinations of the small number of raw materials that he or she finds—and then realizes that some of these fanciful constructions have unexpected, practical applications. The person didn’t begin by trying to assemble the raw materials to make something that had a specific function or purpose; rather, the inventive insights followed the person’s “combinational play.”

The basic notion here is that real creativity comes from using the things we create, not creating the things we use. The idea is similar to that found in modern “free writing” approaches to composition, where one starts out by generating many sentences and possible ideas, and then selects the ones that begin to make sense, and which then lead to new insights and understandings (e.g., Elbow, 1981).

I propose that one should consider turning the inventive process “inward,” generating and exploring mental images that I call “preinventive forms.” These forms are the products of the combinational play of visualization; they need not be structured according to a particular problem or task. In fact, it’s better not to try to do so. Creative insights follow naturally as one explores possible interpretations of the preinventive forms. Typically, one ends up inventing things that one never previously considered, or discovering solutions to problems that one was not trying to solve. On the contrary, it is more likely to be a coincidence when a preinventive form leads you to discover something specific that you were trying to discover.

As I will argue later on, I don’t believe that these instances of “image discoveries” are the products of unconscious processes or the like (e.g., Erdelyi, 1974; Marcel, 1983). Rather, I believe they are mostly accidental discoveries, in that the same imagined form could be interpreted as many different kinds of inventions or concepts—depending on what the person happened to be thinking about. Indeed, many of the inventions I will describe give one the impression that they could not have been conceived of as anything else, yet this is an illusion. Great insight may simply be the result of interpreting visualized structures that are inherently meaningful only in a very general sense.

COMPONENTS OF CREATIVITY

Throughout this book, “creative” discoveries are defined according to two separate dimensions—one being the practicality of an invention (or the sensibility of a concept), and the other its originality. Admittedly, there are other dimensions of creativity that one might consider (e.g., see Sternberg, 1988); moreover, there is a sense in which something can be regarded as “creative” without being practical. Nevertheless, the definition will prove useful in evaluating the quality of inventions and concepts that the present methods inspire.

SCOPE OF THIS BOOK

The various findings reported here are based on a total of 18 experiments, 9 of which were devoted specifically to discovering creative inventions in imagery. These studies, which were conducted over the past 3 years, involved more than 800 subjects participating in over 5,000 experimental trials. Hundreds of creative inventions resulted, and many of these are described in the text. In addition, the chapters present these findings in their actual chronological order, so that readers can consider how the ideas and experimental methods evolved across the individual studies.

There are certain aspects of creativity that are not considered in this book. First, I do not discuss the very large literature on problem solving, although I do consider the implications of the present findings for general strategies for how to go about solving problems. For reviews of the problem solving literature, the reader is referred to the following sources: Hayes (1981), Levine (1987), Newell and Simon (1972), Polya (1957), and Wickelgren (1974).

Also, individual differences are not considered to any great extent. There is already an enormous literature on individual differences in creativity and visual cognition that the reader may wish to consult (e.g., Cooper, 1976b; Cooper & Regan, 1982; Davidson, 1986; Kosslyn, Brunn, Cave, & Wallach, 1984; Marks, 1973; Slee, 1980; Sternberg, 1977, 1988; Torrance, 1974). This is not because I am uninterested in individual differences; rather, my primary concern has been to develop techniques for creative invention that virtually anyone can learn to use.

READER PARTICIPATION

Readers will be able to use the various methods I describe for making their own creative discoveries. In each of the following chapters, I have created opportunities to participate in the actual experimental tasks. If they are like many of the subjects in these experiments—who were undergraduate students without any prior training—readers should be able to use these techniques to considerable success. In fact, in the most successful of these experiments, almost two-thirds of the subjects were able to generate at least one creative invention in six attempts, under extremely limited time constraints! These are, I believe, learnable skills that one can apply across many conceptual domains.

Not only are the techniques described here useful in coming up with new inventions for practical devices, they are also useful in coming up with new conceptual ideas or principles, as I will describe near the end of the book. Readers will be given an opportunity to extend the techniques in this way as well.

Subjects in these experiments not only claimed to be excited about their discoveries, they also reported that they intended to develop their ideas further. Some have even asked me whether they might be able to patent their ideas! I cannot promise that all of the inventions and concepts that these methods will inspire are going to be truly novel, having never been thought of by anyone else before. This, however, is a secondary issue. The crucial thing is whether the methods enable people to make discoveries that they might not have made otherwise, and which lead them to new realizations and insights. Ultimately, I will leave it to readers to judge this for themselves.

The next two chapters report the findings of background research and describe the various kinds of control procedures that were included to rule out alternative explanations. These chapters will be of particular interest to readers who might be concerned about methodological issues in imagery experiments. Although all readers may find it interesting to try out examples of these earlier tasks, those who are interested primarily in learning to use the creative invention techniques may wish to begin with Chapter 4.

Chapter

2

Visual Discoveries in Imagery

Before one can make creative discoveries in imagery, it must be possible to recognize meaningful shapes or patterns that “emerge” when images are formed. These emergent shapes and patterns, moreover, should not be so obvious that one could easily anticipate them. They should, instead, lead to genuine visual discoveries, often to the surprise of the person forming the image. For this reason, this chapter emphasizes control procedures that have been included in imagery studies of this type.

THE NEED FOR EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

The reason it is necessary to demonstrate that images can have emergent properties is that people often find it difficult to detect “hidden” patterns in their images. As one example, Reed (1974) reported an experiment showing that, when asked to form mental images of patterns made up of line drawings of simple forms and geometric shapes, people often fail to recognize nonobvious parts of the patterns. Consider, for example, the pattern shown in Fig. 2.1, consisting of a juxtaposed pair of “Roman numeral 10” symbols. Subjects in the experiment were allowed to inspect the pattern briefly before it was removed. They were then shown drawings of possible parts of the pattern and were asked whether the parts had been contained in the original pattern, much like the way a “hidden” figure can appear in a drawing. Reed found that the subjects could rarely detect those parts that would not have been obvious initially when the original patterns had been inspected.

For example, cover the pattern in Fig. 2.1 and try visualizing it. Does the pattern contain a triangle? A diamond? What about a parallelogram? Most people find it easy to detect the four triangles and the diamond in their image, but difficult to detect the parallelogram. However, by removing the cover and inspecting the pattern, it is now relatively easy to find a parallelogram—in fact, there are two of them. Reed concluded, therefore, that people may not be able to detect parts of patterns in images that would have gone unnoticed at the time the images were formed. Because these “hidden” parts would not have been included in a normal description of the pattern, they would not have been represented in the image, and hence, would not have been detected.

FIG. 2.1. Example of patterns used to explore people’s ability to detect “hidden” forms in mental images. (From Reed, 1974, from Memory & Cognition, Vol. 2, pp. 329–336, reprinted by permission of Psy-chonomic Society, Inc.)

In the same spirit, Chambers and Reisberg (1985) reported that people find it difficult to experience spontaneous “reversals” of perceptually ambiguous figures in imagery. For instance, consider the famous “Necker cube,” shown in Fig. 2.2. As you continue to observe this figure, it appears to reverse in depth—first one face of the cube appears closer, then the other. Chambers and Reisberg reported that people do not experience reversals of the Necker cube in imagery, nor do they experience perceptual reversals of other similar kinds of ambiguous figures. They conc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Visual Discoveries in Imagery
• Chapter 3 Creative Mental Synthesis
• Chapter 4 Creative Inventions in Imagery
• Chapter 5 Restricted Imagery Inventions
• Chapter 6 Preinventive Object Forms
• Chapter 7 Personal Inventions
• Chapter 8 Creative Concepts
• Chapter 9 Creative Implications
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index