I have been reading Sue North’s PhD
thesis titled
Relations of Power and Competing Knowledges Within
the Academy: Creative Writing as Research (University of
Canberra, 2004). In the conclusion of Chapter 2,
The Conflict of
the Faculties, she says:
The
doxa of creative work and the doxa of research arise from
different
epistemological underpinnings – creativity from the
unexplainable force of the imagination, and research from the logical
force of understanding. [my links]
In simple terms, she said that it is
common knowledge that creativity is a manifestation of imagination,
while research is a process based on studying, understanding, and
logical thinking. By using the word doxa, she tells us that
these beliefs are so widely accepted that they don’t even need to
be expressed. In other words, everybody considers them to be true.
I agree with her: most people think
that way. But I believe that they do so because they don’t have a
clear understanding of how people tap their creativity and what it
means to do research.
The concepts that artists pull their
creations out of thin air and that researchers only exercise logic
are both wrong.
Let’s look at artists first. They
couldn’t create anything without studying the world around them,
the work of other artists, and the tools they need to do their work.
Ideas don’t just spring out of the mind of an artist fully clothed
and armed, like Athena out of Jupiter’s head.
As an example, consider what writing a
novel involves.
The author needs to invent characters
and design a plot for them, so that they can interact with each
other. Some authors start with a plot and others starts with the
characters, but, in either case, they must ensure that those two
elements are consistent, credible (and interesting). This can only
come after years of observing how people interact and trying to
understand what motivates them.
And then, authors cannot write their
novels with any hope of success unless they know their craft:
structure, voice, pace, dialogue, to name some aspects of it. This
means that they need to learn techniques, read a lot, and write a
lot.
Creative writing is the Cinderella of
Academia. This status of affairs reflects the almost universal
opinion that, because everybody can write, studying creative writing
is a trivial activity pursued by people who want to have it easy at
the University.
It is only when people actually try to
write something worth reading that they realise how little they know
and how much they need to work in order to get any recognition.
Furthermore, to write a novel an author
needs logic, discipline, and rigour, otherwise his/her four hundred
pages will be full of inconsistencies, loose threads, and untruths.
In order to create realistic characters
placed in a realistic environment and doing realistic actions, an
author needs to do a lot of research. Most (I would say all, but I
don’t want to be so absolute) authors define their characters and
their plots to a level of detail that remains below the surface of
the finished product. What ends up into the novel is only the tip of
the iceberg.
Authors also perform another activity
typical of research: experimentation. This can be in the content,
the dialogue, or the form. For example, Peter Carey, in his
historical novel True History of the Kelly Gang, doesn’t use
a single comma, while Alessandro Baricco, in his short novel Silk,
uses line breaks to control the pace and convey meaning. And if this
seems too literary and abstract, how much research do you
think Frank Herbert had to do in order to create the universe in
which his Dune stories take place?
I’m talking about creative writing
because I had a couple of non-fiction books and a couple of Science
Fiction stories published. Therefore, I can talk about it with some
credibility. But I’m sure that equivalent concepts apply to other
creative activities.
I hope I have convinced you that
creative work couldn’t exist without logical thinking, knowledge,
and research. If not, think again.
Now, let’s look at research. I shall
go out on a limb here and say that without imagination any type of
research would be impossible.
It is standard practice in academic
papers to present the results of research in a logical fashion: you
write about existing results, identify a gap, and explain how your
results close it. There is more to it but, in essence, research
papers are logical to the core. This is especially true in Physics,
the prototypical scientific discipline.
But this is not how research actually
works. Most neatly presented conclusions are in reality the result
of hunches, leaps, backtracking, crises, and serendipitous events
(i.e., strokes of luck). Research works somewhat like solving a
jigsaw puzzle: you start from the edges and the pieces you can easily
recognise. Then, you fill the gaps to complete the picture.
Sometimes, you feel that a piece might be right in a certain
spot and place it there, hoping to have it confirmed later. But both
academic papers for the scientific community and magazine articles
for the rest of us present the research process as if the researchers
had started the puzzle from the top-left corner and systematically
worked their way to the bottom-right piece.
The key point I’m trying to express
is that logic cannot add knowledge. It can be used to extract
information that for any reason is still hidden in the data and,
sometimes, this leads to surprising and useful results, which in turn
can trigger new avenues of research. But, ultimately, truly new
discoveries occur when a researcher follows a hunch and jumps over a
gap in the logic. This what Edward De Bono calls Lateral
Thinking. And what about the creativity that any experimental
researcher needs in order to overcome the many technical (e
non-technical) problems s/he encounters daily?
In other words, imagination plays an
essential role in the progress of Science and Technology. The
logical chain of thought is often reconstructed after the
discovery has been made or a working solution found. When a
scientist gets enamoured with an idea and invents an experiment to
verify it, s/he will not necessarily tell you.
Think to Einstein and his special
theory of relativity. He postulated the constancy of the speed of
light. He certainly didn’t deduce it logically.
To conclude, successful creative
endeavours require study, understanding, and logic, while research
produces its best results thanks to insights, imagination, and
dedication.
So, please, let’s stop perpetuating
these stereotypes of wild artists and white-coated scientists!
