Part Two: The Sage
Chapter V: Moments of Truth
This chapter explains the creative process and how discoveries are made, what factors influence this process, and illustrates all of these with some examples.
The chapter starts with examples of discoveries made by chimpanzees. This is made to demonstrate that animals can also display originality and inventiveness.
“Thus at the very start of our inquiry we hit on a pattern – the discovery that a playful or l’art pour l’art technique provides an unexpected clue to problems in a quite different field – which is one of the leitmotifs in the history of science.” (page 103)
Discovery consists in seeing an analogy that nobody had seen before.
“The act of discovery has a disruptive and constructive aspect. It must disrupt rigid patterns of mental organization to achieve the new synthesis.” (p. 104)
When we are faced with a problem, we might get into a blocked situation. This means that our thinking goes in circles, without being able to bisociate and thus find an answer. This creative stress also allows us to have that Eureka moment, when finally we are able to change the matrix of our thinking.
“Discovery often means simply the uncovering of something which has always been there but was hidden from the eye by the blinkers of habit.” (page 108)
Chance and Ripeness
Ripeness refers to the propensity to make and exploit a new discovery. We can distinguish between biological and cultural ripeness.
Chance is the apparent unintended consequence that leads to a discovery. Of course, chance is not that significant to attribute a discovery since the discoverer must be ripe to discover something. This also implies that the discoverer has knowledge and dominates the two skills or matrices being bisociated.
We can also see the phenomenon of multiple discoveries and some even say that this is the dominant pattern in discoveries. This takes away some of the merit of ripeness by saying that discoveries are not in the air waiting to be discovered.
Logic and Intuition
In this section, Köestler explains some examples on the relationship between logic and intuition. The discoveries are from Louis Pasteur (vaccination) and from Henri Poincaré (Fuchsian functions).
“Fortune favours the prepared mind.”
- Louis Pasteur
In the summary, Köestler explains why it’s important to have a flexible mind and the difference between being in a rigid environment versus a learning and flexible one. He says that in a good learning one is able to solve problems in unconventional ways, allowing us to be more creative and innovative.
“When life presents us with a problem it will be attacked in accordance with the code of rules which enable us to deal with similar problems in the past. These rules of the game range from manipulating stick to operating with ideas, verbal concepts, visual forms, mathematical entities. When the same task is encountered under relatively unchanging conditions in a monotonous environment, the responses will become stereotyped, flexible skills will degenerate into rigid patterns, and the person will more and more resemble an automaton, governed by fixed habits, whose actions and ideas move in narrow grooves. He may be compared to an engine-driver who must drive his train along fixed rails according to a fixed timetable.
Vice versa, a changing, variable environment will tend to create flexible behaviour-patterns with a high degree of adaptability to circumstances – the driver of a motor-car has more degrees of freedom than the engine-driver.” (page 118-119)
When you are in auto-pilot, you’re not learning.
“Ninety per cent perspiration, ten per cent inspiration.”
- Bernard Shaw
“I don’t seek, I find.”
- Pablo Picasso
The chapter starts with examples of discoveries made by chimpanzees. This is made to demonstrate that animals can also display originality and inventiveness.
“Thus at the very start of our inquiry we hit on a pattern – the discovery that a playful or l’art pour l’art technique provides an unexpected clue to problems in a quite different field – which is one of the leitmotifs in the history of science.” (page 103)
Discovery consists in seeing an analogy that nobody had seen before.
“The act of discovery has a disruptive and constructive aspect. It must disrupt rigid patterns of mental organization to achieve the new synthesis.” (p. 104)
When we are faced with a problem, we might get into a blocked situation. This means that our thinking goes in circles, without being able to bisociate and thus find an answer. This creative stress also allows us to have that Eureka moment, when finally we are able to change the matrix of our thinking.
“Discovery often means simply the uncovering of something which has always been there but was hidden from the eye by the blinkers of habit.” (page 108)
Chance and Ripeness
Ripeness refers to the propensity to make and exploit a new discovery. We can distinguish between biological and cultural ripeness.
Chance is the apparent unintended consequence that leads to a discovery. Of course, chance is not that significant to attribute a discovery since the discoverer must be ripe to discover something. This also implies that the discoverer has knowledge and dominates the two skills or matrices being bisociated.
We can also see the phenomenon of multiple discoveries and some even say that this is the dominant pattern in discoveries. This takes away some of the merit of ripeness by saying that discoveries are not in the air waiting to be discovered.
Logic and Intuition
In this section, Köestler explains some examples on the relationship between logic and intuition. The discoveries are from Louis Pasteur (vaccination) and from Henri Poincaré (Fuchsian functions).
“Fortune favours the prepared mind.”
- Louis Pasteur
In the summary, Köestler explains why it’s important to have a flexible mind and the difference between being in a rigid environment versus a learning and flexible one. He says that in a good learning one is able to solve problems in unconventional ways, allowing us to be more creative and innovative.
“When life presents us with a problem it will be attacked in accordance with the code of rules which enable us to deal with similar problems in the past. These rules of the game range from manipulating stick to operating with ideas, verbal concepts, visual forms, mathematical entities. When the same task is encountered under relatively unchanging conditions in a monotonous environment, the responses will become stereotyped, flexible skills will degenerate into rigid patterns, and the person will more and more resemble an automaton, governed by fixed habits, whose actions and ideas move in narrow grooves. He may be compared to an engine-driver who must drive his train along fixed rails according to a fixed timetable.
Vice versa, a changing, variable environment will tend to create flexible behaviour-patterns with a high degree of adaptability to circumstances – the driver of a motor-car has more degrees of freedom than the engine-driver.” (page 118-119)
When you are in auto-pilot, you’re not learning.
“Ninety per cent perspiration, ten per cent inspiration.”
- Bernard Shaw
“I don’t seek, I find.”
- Pablo Picasso
Chapter VI: Three Illustrations
In this chapter, Köestler illustrates the process of the sudden interlocking of two previously unrelated skills, or matrices of thought.
The three illustrations he gives are:
1. Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable types.
2. Kepler’s synthesis of astronomy and physics.
3. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
The Printing Press
Gutenberg was able to interlock the matrices of wine-press (he saw the flowing of wine in a wine harvest) and seal (the process of wine-press can be applied to seal or coin), thus creating the letter-press.
“To solve it, an entirely different kind of skill must be brought in. He tries this and that; he thinks of everything under the sun: it is the period of incubation. When the favourable opportunity at last offers itself he is ready for it.” (page 123)
“…A simple substitution which is a ray of light...To work then! God has revealed to me the secret that I demanded of Him…” (quoting Gutenberg on page 123)
Gravity and the Holy Ghost
“If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
- Isaac Newton
In this example, we can see how Kepler was able to create a link (the determination of the orbit of Mars) that would unify physics and astronomy. His two matrices where the study of the motion of the planets and his devotion to religion and the Holy Ghost (which was the religious idea of what we now call gravity).
Darwin and Natural Selection
“Creative originality does not mean creating or originating a system of ideas out of nothing but rather out of the combination of well-established patterns of thought – by a process of cross-fertilization.” (page 131)
Darwin’s idea of evolution was not new to him, although he may have thought that it were, but it was his creative genius to unity natural selection and the struggle for existence that made his theory of evolution the winning one.
“Once one embraces an idea and lives with it day and night, one can no longer bear the thought that she, the idea, has formerly belonged to someone else; to possess her completely and be possessed by her, one must extinguish her past.” (page 134)
“No one could be a good observer unless he was an active theorizer.”
- Charles Darwin
Darwin’s merit is in creating the link between evolution, natural selection, and the struggle for survival (survival of the fittest). Also, besides this great insight, most of the merit was in formulating the theory and backing up with evidence, which required many years of development and dedication.
“Ernest Jones remarked in an essay about Freud that creative genius seems to be a mixture of skepticism and naïveté: skepticism regarding the dogmas implied in traditional modes of thought, combined with the willingness of a wide-open mind to consider far-fetched theories.” (page 139)
“Darwin was able to give ultimate answers because he asked ultimate questions.”
- One of Darwin’s biographers
The three illustrations he gives are:
1. Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable types.
2. Kepler’s synthesis of astronomy and physics.
3. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
The Printing Press
Gutenberg was able to interlock the matrices of wine-press (he saw the flowing of wine in a wine harvest) and seal (the process of wine-press can be applied to seal or coin), thus creating the letter-press.
“To solve it, an entirely different kind of skill must be brought in. He tries this and that; he thinks of everything under the sun: it is the period of incubation. When the favourable opportunity at last offers itself he is ready for it.” (page 123)
“…A simple substitution which is a ray of light...To work then! God has revealed to me the secret that I demanded of Him…” (quoting Gutenberg on page 123)
Gravity and the Holy Ghost
“If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
- Isaac Newton
In this example, we can see how Kepler was able to create a link (the determination of the orbit of Mars) that would unify physics and astronomy. His two matrices where the study of the motion of the planets and his devotion to religion and the Holy Ghost (which was the religious idea of what we now call gravity).
Darwin and Natural Selection
“Creative originality does not mean creating or originating a system of ideas out of nothing but rather out of the combination of well-established patterns of thought – by a process of cross-fertilization.” (page 131)
Darwin’s idea of evolution was not new to him, although he may have thought that it were, but it was his creative genius to unity natural selection and the struggle for existence that made his theory of evolution the winning one.
“Once one embraces an idea and lives with it day and night, one can no longer bear the thought that she, the idea, has formerly belonged to someone else; to possess her completely and be possessed by her, one must extinguish her past.” (page 134)
“No one could be a good observer unless he was an active theorizer.”
- Charles Darwin
Darwin’s merit is in creating the link between evolution, natural selection, and the struggle for survival (survival of the fittest). Also, besides this great insight, most of the merit was in formulating the theory and backing up with evidence, which required many years of development and dedication.
“Ernest Jones remarked in an essay about Freud that creative genius seems to be a mixture of skepticism and naïveté: skepticism regarding the dogmas implied in traditional modes of thought, combined with the willingness of a wide-open mind to consider far-fetched theories.” (page 139)
“Darwin was able to give ultimate answers because he asked ultimate questions.”
- One of Darwin’s biographers