12 - Creative Genius, Knowledge, and Reason: The Lives and Works of Eminent Creators

Summary

Many creative geniuses attain reputations of almost mythical proportions. Apparently gifted with a special insight or intuitive power, creative ideas are supposed to pop into their heads in flashes of inspiration. In earlier times, this almost mystical process would be attributed to divine intervention, as is evident in the Greek doctrine of the Muses. Even during the Renaissance the greatest artist of the period would be called the “divine Michelangelo,” an artistic genius who, according to his biographer Vasari, was sent to earth by God to bless the world with his talent. Centuries later, when such religious attributions were no longer fashionable, creative genius would become linked with madness. This linkage became especially prominent during the Romantic Era of nineteenth-century Europe. A well-known illustration is to be found in the Preface to “Kubla Khan” in which the poet Coleridge claimed to have conceived his poem in an opium-induced stupor. Eventually psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and even psychologists were joining the chorus, associating creative genius with insanity and even criminality. The consensus seemed to be that creative geniuses were not like normal human beings. They had thought processes and personalities that set them apart from other members of the species.

Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century a shift was taking place. Creative genius was not so special after all. This change first was apparent in attitudes toward scientific creativity. According to the emerging discipline known as the philosophy of science, scientific discovery was the product of the scientific method, a system of thinking identified with hypothetico-deductive reasoning or some other analytical technique. All scientists who acquire this approach can engage in scientific creativity, regardless of their personal qualities or gifts. For instance, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset (1932/1957) maintained that “it is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success” (pp. 110–111).

This statement implies that creative genius has become largely irrelevant in modern science. This seemingly extreme claim has received endorsement in a whole school of research devoted to the psychology of science (Simonton, 2003a).