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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION IN ARTISTIC CREATIVITY

presented by

MARK DAVID GARBERICH

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

Ph.D degree in Music Education

 

 

CM KW '

[Major Professor’s Signature
/ 2 ~ 7 ~ 0%

Date

MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

 

 

 

THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION IN ARTISTIC CREATIVITY
By

Mark David Garberich

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Music Education

2008

ABSTRACT
THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION IN ARTISTIC CREATIVITY
By

Mark David Garberich

Inspiration is a recurrent theme in artistic creativity throughout history and
across creative domains, but has declined dramatically in use among researchers and
psychologists since the late 19th century. However, it continues to remain in common use
among professionals in the creative arts. This paper examines the dichotomy between
intellectual inquiry and personal accounts of the creative experience within the artistic
professions, and develops a philosophical argument for reconsideration of the definition
and use of the term. Part of the argument rests on the claim of uniqueness of the creative
experience in the arts in the areas of the creative personality, creative environment,
creative process and creative product. Upon the basis of observable characteristics of
inspiration as an experience, the author offers a broadened definition of inspiration and
makes specific and practical recommendations for music education. instruction in the

area of creativity and music composition.

Copyright by
MARK DAVID GARBERICH
2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank John Kratus for his help as advisor for this work. Even
more, I appreciate the stimulus that his classes provided and the opportunities they
afforded to enter the philosophy of music education dialogue. I was blessed to have an
outstanding dissertation committee, and would like to thank Cindy Taggart for her
exhaustive attention to grammar and writing style, Sandra Snow for her common sense
and help in understanding what I had written from a reader’s perspective, and Mark

Sullivan for his expertise and for the challenges he presented as a composer-philosopher.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ iv
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1
EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN CREATIVITY .................................................................................... 2
PROCEDURE ............................................................................................................................ 9
PURPOSE ................................................................................................................................ 1 l
PERSPECTIVE ........................................................................................................................ 12
CHAPTER 2
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF INSPIRATION, AND
THE REJECTION OF THIS VIEW IN CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT ..................... 14
CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES OF OTHER CREATIVE ARTISTS ................................... 20
DISPUTES OVER VERACITY ................................................................................................ 22
VALIDATION, PERSONAL AGGRANDIZEMENT, AND WORK ETHIC ............................. 23
AN INSCRUTABLE PROCESS ............................................................................................... 26
WORLDVIEW ......................................................................................................................... 27
MINIMIZATION OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS ................................................................... 30
SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................. 32
CHAPTER 3
A LOOK A UNIQUE QUALITIES OF ARTISTIC CREATIVITY ............................... 34
SIMILARITIES IN ARTISTIC AND SCIENTIFIC/MATHEMATICAL CREATIVITY ........... 34
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARTISTIC AND
SCIENTIFIC/MATHEMATICAL CREATIVITY ..................................................................... 37
THE CREATIVE PERSON ......................................................................................... 37
THE CREATIVE PRODUCT ...................................................................................... 41
THE CREATIVE PROCESS ....................................................................................... 42
NOVELTY, DISCOVERY AND EX NIHILO CREATIVITY ........................ 44
DECISION-MAKING AND THE CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT ................. 53
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN ARTISTIC CREATIVITY .............................. 59
CHAPTER 4
DEVELOPING A PROFILE OF THE INSPIRATION EXPERIENCE ......................... 63
THE PERVASIVE AND PERSISTENT NATURE OF INSPIRATION IN THE ARTS ............. 63
TREATMENT OF PERSONAL ACCOUNTS .......................................................................... 65
CHARACTERISTICS COWON TO THE INSPIRATION EXPERIENCE ............................. 70
SUDDEN AND TRANSIENT ..................................................................................... 70
CREATIVE RUSH ...................................................................................................... 74
MYSTERY ................................................................................................................. 75
TREES AND SEEDS .................................................................................................. 77
TIME AND PLACE .................................................................................................... 80

FOMENTING THE INSPIRATION ENVIRONMENT ............................................... 83

WAITING FOR INSPIRATION .................................................................................. 85

DEFINING INSPIRATION ...................................................................................................... 86

SUMMARY AND APPLICATION TO MUSIC EDUCATION ................................................. 88
CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS AND INSTRUCTIONAL APPLICATION ........................................ 90

THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF INSPIRATION ....................................................................... 90

ARTISTIC CREATIVITY AS A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE ....................................................... 93

INSPIRATION RENEWED ...................................................................................................... 93

APPLICATION TO INSTRUCTION ........................................................................................ 94

MENTORS BY PROXY ............................................................................................. 95

INSPIRATION ............................................................................................................ 97

A VARIETY OF APPROACHES ................................................................................ 97

SELECTIVITY ........................................................................................................... 98

WORK ETHIC ............................................................................................................ 99

REGULATING THE CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT .................................................. 99

CHALLENGES OF THE CREATIVE ARTS ENVIRONMENT .............................. 100

CREATIVE BLOCKS .............................................................................................. 100

MOTIVATION ........................................................................................................ I 01

PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ................................................................. 1 01

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION ........................................................... 102

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 1 05

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 ......................................................................................................................... 88

vii

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

A discussion of underlying processes does not exist in a vacuum;
after all, one needs an observable guide to the unobservable. With
creativity, unfortunately, even those guides are problematic, leaving

questions about adequate anchor variables unresolved.1

While there has been significant thought and research on many areas of creativity,
little thought and research has been dedicated to the central question of the source of
ideas in creativity. This area has received less attention because of the difficulty of
obtaining any kind of objective data. Current research based on CT/MRI scanning
procedures can help trace the physiological path of thought processes in different parts of
the brain 20012, but it seems unlikely that these soon will explain the specific
germination of ideas. Many of the basic questions about thought and life are
philosophical questions that are difficult or impossible to pierce with objective tools, and
the question of the origin of ideas may be one of them. However, there is information in
the extant written accounts of, and interviews with, creative persons of broadly
recognized ability — professionals in the field of creativity, that could illuminate this part

of the creative process.

 

1 RT. Brown, “Creativity: What Are We to Measure, “ in Handbook of Creativity, ed. J.A. Glover, R. R.
Ronning, & C. R. Reynolds (New York: Plenum Press, 1989), 3.

2 J.M. Chein & J.A. Feitz, “Dissociating Verbal Working Memory System Components Using a Delayed
Serial Recall Task,” Cerebral Cortex, 11 (2001): 1003-1014. C. J. Limb & A. R Braun, “Neural
Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An F MRI Study of Jazz Improvisation”, PLoS ONE. Feb
27;3(2) (2008):e1679.

The way that we obtain ideas is at the core of the creative process, and this
is sufficient to justify investigation. Creativity in the arts is a garden for the development
of new ideas, and understanding how ideas originate is pertinent to the way we educate
students in the creative arts. While much of what we have learned about educating
students in creativity has been based upon empirical research, there may be much we can
still learn from the processes of professional artistic creators. It makes sense that music
educators should seek to bring the efforts of creative arts students closer to the actual
processes utilized by professionals, even if those processes are not completely understood
from empirical study. Commonly mentioned in the artists’ accounts of the creative
process is inspiration, which appears both throughout history and among all segments of

the arts.

Efforts to Explain Creativity

There is often only a single explanation for those things we understand,
while there are often many explanations for those we do not. The study of creativity is an
example of the latter. In attempting to decode the creative process, writers and
researchers have examined creativity from varying perspectives.

Regarding components of the creative process, Rothenberg and Hausman
described agent, process, and product as the essential components of creativity in the
introduction the their book, The Creativity Question3 . Brown4 (1989) identified at least

four factors of creativity including (1) the creative process, (2) the creative product, (3)

 

3 A. Rothenberg & C.R Hausman, eds., The Creativity Question (Durham, NorthCarolina: Duke
University Press, 1976), 6.

4 . .
Brown, “CreatIVIty: What Are We to Measure, “ 3.

the creative person and (4) the creative situation. Andrews5 agrees with three of these,
but replaced the creative situation with pre—requisite training for the Genesis Project,
which investigated how composers compose. Guilford elaborates further by describing
divergent thinking as a part of creative thinking “. . .involving fluency, flexibility and
elaboration abilities.” 6

Regarding characteristics of the creative person, Simonton observes that, “there is
no record of anyone attaining distinction as a creator without a markedly above-average
intellectual capacity.”7 Barron8 and Gerardg, writing at a chronological distance of over
200 years, both concluded that there is a relationship between chaos in creativity in the
creative person.

On the features of the creative product, Rothenberg and l-Iausman explain that
“the products of creativity have traditionally been identified as those which have the

”10

critical attributes of (1) newness and (2) value. Kant proposed, in his 1790 Critique of

Judgment:

(I) that genius: a talent for procuring that for which no definite
rule can be given: it is not a mere aptitude for what can be learnt

by a rule. Hence originality must be its first property. (2) But since

 

5 B.W. Andrews, “How Composers Compose: In Search of the Questions,” Research and Issues in Music
Education, 2, no. 1 (September, 2004),
http:/‘t'wunvstth omas.edu/rimeonlinefvoth'andrews.htm (accessed 25 May 2005), par. 31.

6 JP. Guilford, “Factor Analysis, Intellect, and Creativity, “ in The_Creativity Question, ed. A.
Rothenberg & C. R Hausman (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976), 202.

D. K. Simonton, “Creativity in Psychology,” in Creativity Across Domains: Faces of the Muse, ed. J .C.
Kaufman & J. Baer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2005), 141.

8 F. Barron, No Rootless Flower: An Ecology of Creativity (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995), 63.
9 A. Gerard, An Essay on Genius (London: Printed for W. Strahan, T. Canell and W. Cresch, 1774), 65.
10 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 6-7.

it also can produce original nonsense, its products must be models,

. I l
I. e. exemplary;

In other words, while artistic creativity exists in a place where empirical judgment is
impossible, proof of real creativity lies in its characteristics, which include originality and
outstanding quality. Considering these characteristics, Averill determines that, “. . .a third
needs to be added: authenticity. I examine this criterion in some detail, both because it is
important in its own right and because it illustrates some conditions (e. g., the necessity of
external standards) that also apply to the criteria of novelty and effectiveness.” 12
The process of creativity was first categorized in Wallas’ seminal work on
creativity, within the book, The Art of Thought. Wallas derived the first three of his four
stages of creativity fiom an 1891 banquet speech by Hermann von Helmholtz. Helmholtz
provided three stages in the formation of a new thought, including preparation (“during
which the problem was investigated”), incubation (during which “he was not consciously
thinking about the problem”), and illumination (consisting of the appearance of the
‘happy idea’ together with the psychological events which immediately preceded and
accompanied that appearance”). To these, Wallas added verification, “in which both the

validity of the idea was tested, and the idea itself was reduced to exact form.”13

 

H l. Kant, The Critique of Judgment, trans. J.C. Meredith, J.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952),
189.

12 J. R Averill, (2005). “Emotions as Mediators and as Products of Creative Ability,” in Creativity Across
Domains: Faces of the Muse, ed. J.C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Publishers, 2005), 231.

13 G. Wallas, The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1926; reissued, London:
Jonathan Cape, 1931), 79-81.

Csikszentmihalyi revised Wallas’ original concept to preparation, incubation,
insight, evaluation, and elaboration. ‘4 Csikszentmihalyi’s explanation of the first four
stages aligns exactly with that of Wallas. The elaboration stage he describes as the hard
work that “Edison was referring to when he said that creativity consists of 1 percent
inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”15

Forms of creativity have been differentiated along various lines. Prinz and
Barsalou describe two types of creative acts, exceptionally creative, and mundanely
creative, which are divided according to the degree to which the act requires “cognitive
abilities that transcend ordinary thinking,” 16 They consider artist, poets, inventors and
scientists to be associated with exceptionally creative, and refer to the mundanely
creative pursuits as those which are “neither ground-breaking, influential, nor

”'7 Arts education in creativity ruminates over this division when considering

surprising.
whether to concentrate on instruction in creativity for all students, or for particularly
gified students. McDonough, in Emergence and Creativity: Five Degrees of Freedom,
discusses emergent creativity, in which the result is something ‘genuinely novel’ which is
greater than the sum of that which formed it, '8 which seems related to the idea of

original creation out of nothing (ex nihilo). Partridge and Rowe distinguish between

input creativity, which is derived from perception and problem solving, and output

 

14 M. Csikszenmihalyi, Creativity: F low and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. (Reed Business
Information, Inc., 1996), 79.

15 Ibid., 30.

16 J. J. Prinz & L.W. Barsalou, “Acquisition and Productivity in Perceptual Symbol Systems: An Account
of Mundane Creativity,” in Creativity, Cognition and Knowledge: An Interaction, ed. T. Dartnall
(Westport, CN: Praeger, 2002), 107.

‘7 Ibid., 107.

18
R McDonough, R, “Emergence and Creativity: Five Degrees of Freedom,” in Creativity. Cognition

and Knowledge: An Interaction, ed. T. Dartnall (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2002), 283-284.

creativity, which derived from the “production of something new, that originates fiom

within the creator.” ‘9

All human creativity seems to include emphases on both problem
solving activities that are closely related to a structure of previous knowledge and
procedure, and original thought that is further removed from previous knowledge and
procedure.

This chapter is not intended to be a comprehensive review of thought and study
on the subject of creativity, but it does provide an indication of the kinds of thought and
study that have been applied to creativity. Noticeably absent from contemporary
discussion of the creative process is the term, inspiration. Its absence is notable because
it reflects a relatively recent and abrupt change in perspective on the nature of creativity,
and especially the creative moment. Inspiration has accompanied creativity from early
times. Plato provides the example of Tynnichus, the Chalcidian, who, according to Plato,
“wrote nothing that any one would care to remember, but the famous paean which is in
every one’s mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the
Muses, as he himself says”. Considering the situation, Plato proceeds to draw the

following conclusion:

For in this way God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to
doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but
divine and the work of God;, and that the poets are only the interpreters of
the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson
which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets

he sang the best of songs? 20

 

19 D. Partridge and J. Rowe, “Creativity: A Computational Modeling Approach,’ in Creativity, Cognition
and Knowledge: An Interaction, ed. T. Dartnall (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2002), 216.

Plato, “Ion,” in The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett (London: Oxford University Press,
1892), 285-286.

St. Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380), speaking of miraculous inspiration from
God, wrote that, “In a wondrous way, He set it for me in my mind, even as the master
does to the child when he gives him the copy.” 2' Tchaikovsky (1804-1893) said of the
power of inspiration, that if it

...lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The string
would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments. It is already a
great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without

any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable
22

force we call inspiration.

The discrepancy between contemporary descriptions of the creative process and
the historical concept of inspiration is unequivocal. Yet, these accounts are only
representative of many more accounts throughout the history of creativity, all of which
bear similar characteristics. Unfortunately, inspiration, like many other elements of
creativity, is not an easily observable phenomenon, and this has been perceived by
writers, psychologists and creative people. Rothenberg and Hausman (1976) and others
have identified problems in investigating the actual source of creative ideas in people. In
Stravinsky’s words, “. . . it is impossible to observe the inner workings of this process
fi'om the outside. . .It is likewise difficult to observe in one’s self.”23

A review of literature on creativity yields a broad range of writings on general
processes of creativity and a substantial number of research efforts in limited streams of

inquiry. On the other hand, there is little writing or research directed specifically to the

 

21 R E. M. Harding, An Anatomy of Inspiration, (Cambridge: W. Herrer & Sons Ltd., 1948), 15.
22 Ibid 284

23 I. Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, trans. A. Knodel & I. Dahl (1942; London: Oxford University Press,
1947), 49-50.

question of the single creative idea—the Spark that satisfies the efforts of creative persons
and sends them forward to expand upon the original thought or to develop new ideas that
are children of the original idea. Yet the essence of creativity lies in the actual birth of a

new idea.

Procedure

Trying to observe an actual moment of emergent creativity is like trying to predict
the location and moment of the next lightning strike in a thunderstorm through the naked
eye alone, and quantification, or even cursory observation, of the event as it occurs seems
practically impossible. Attempts by creative people to document their own processes are
fraught with problems. Rothenberg and Hausman observe that, “. . .human beings are
seldom so carefully introspective or insightfiIl about their own psychological processes to
warrant taking any testimony about the processes at face value”.24 Even if creators could
develop insights into their own creative processes, the very process of self-awareness and
observation would probably destroy any magical moment of creative insight. But
another possibility lies in the re-examination and consideration of creators’ accounts of
the creative experience.

There have been many accounts of creative experience, of which there are at least
two types. The first are those written in retrospect about individual creative experiences.
These can be suspect because of human inclinations to magnify the experience for
personal glorification, or because of the inaccuracies inherent in remembering a process
that took place somewhat unconsciously. When reviewed as a group, however, there may
be patterns of experience in these accounts that shed light on the perceptions of creative
persons, if not upon the actual process. When the specific information is extracted and
combined with accounts of the experiences of other creative people, patterns may be
discernible. Perceptions can sometimes point toward some kinds of realities, just as
guesses about natural phenomena can guide scientific inquiry. Police artists, for

example, often produce a reasonable facsimile of a crime suspect fi'om the combined

 

2" Rothenberg & Housman, The Creativity Question, 23.

perceptions of a number of witnesses, though no individual witness may have had a
completely accurate or fill] perception of the criminal’s appearance.

Another type of account is of a more general nature, as creative persons explain
the broader perceptions of their overall creative processes and experiences. Though the
intent of these accounts may have been general, they sometimes include incidental
descriptions of how specific moments of illumination seemed to have occurred. These
are important because they were not the primary object of discussion and are less likely
to have been offered with any intention for personal aggrandizement. The sources of
these disclosures are primarily collections of interviews on the creative process, rather
than specific moments of inspiration. Particularly helpful have been McCutchan’s The
Muse That Sings (1999), Perkins’ The Mind ’s Best Work (1981), Harding’s An Anatomy
of Inspiration (1948), and Maria Shrady’s Moments of Insight: The Emergence of Great
Ideas in the Lives of Great Men (1972). Of a more specific nature is Nielsen and
Hartmann’s Inspired: How creative people think, work and find inspiration (2005).
Other accounts of these types occur in articles and in individual interviews.

To examine the subject of inspiration is to consider the accounts of creative
persons, in which inspiration is a common theme. Chapter 2 will examine the history and
of the concept of inspiration, including its gradual decline, as well possible causes for the
changing perception of inspiration. Chapter 3 will consider creativity in the arts in
comparison and contrast to creativity in other domains and attempt to demonstrate that
artistic creativity is truly unique in many respects. Chapter 4 will develop a profile of
inspiration from diverse accounts, and will attempt to categorize the kinds of accounts of

creative artists. Chapter 5 will present conclusions about the disappearance of inspiration

10

from the creativity discourse and about the uniqueness of the creative experience in the
arts, call for a new consideration of inspiration, and suggest instructional applications of
these conclusions. In all of this, there will be attempt to bring together logical arguments
on the nature of the creative process in the arts, reasoned perspectives of psychologists
and philosophers, and understandings derived from examination of the accounts of
recognized artistic creators, in an attempt to present a clearer and more comprehensive

understanding of the phenomenon of inspiration.

Purpose

There is a great satisfaction in attempting to resolve issues of philosophy and
perception apart from any other interest. It is my desire in this work to join many others
who have contributed to the understanding of the creative process. This work is also
propelled by an interest in demonstrating the importance of establishing philosophical
principles that guide and serve as protective boundaries for research. Of primary interest,
however, is the desire to apply findings in this study to creative arts education.

Content standard number 4, of the National Standards for Music Education25 calls
for students to compose and arrange music within specified guidelines. The latent
concern for the inclusion of creative elements in elementary and secondary music
education calls for greater attention to the understanding of the creative process and of
education of students in creative arts. This includes both direct instruction of elementary
and secondary students and also the preparation of students in higher education who will
be teaching elementary and secondary students. What experts in the creative arts have to

say about the way they ‘get’ ideas is pertinent to the education of young creators, and will

 

25 National standards for arts education (Reston, Virginia: MENC, I994).

11

be equally important in the preparation of the teachers who will guide these students.
Furthermore, any system of education in the creative arts constructed without
consideration for the experience and perspective of true creative artists must certainly be
deficient.

The newness of the creative component in music education has caught the
educational establishment somewhat by surprise. While university curricula have always
offered course work and career pathways in composition and arranging, there has been
little coursework provided to prepare elementary and secondary teacher to guide students
in creative efforts. Schools who desire to meet state and national standards are faced with
the situation in which experienced teachers lack the background to lead students in
creative efforts. At the same time, many colleges and universities are still struggling to
meet requirements to prepare teachers to teach creative arts, especially in music. I
believe there are several potential beneficial applications of this study to education in
creative arts, both to direct instruction in schools and to the preparation of teachers, and

hope this will be evident in the conclusion of this study.

Perspective

This project will take the perspective that all accounts of creative experience will
be taken at face value. Although some accounts may seem exaggerated, or even
fictionally constructed, the purpose of the study is not to evaluate the veracity of the
accounts, but to glean insight from the perspectives of creative artists. In addition, no a
priori philosophical perspectives, such as materialist or religious worldviews, will be

applied to interpretation of the accounts. The quantity and content of the opinions and

12

accounts included are for the purposes of providing the reader with sufficient information
to understand categorization and interpretation of the results, and of prevention of
distortion of the intentions of the sources in their statements.

Inspiration was once considered the source of all great creative work. The next
chapter begins this analysis by examining the disintegration of the concept of inspiration

that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.

13

Chapter Two

THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF INSPIRATION, AND

THE REJECTION OF THIS VIEW IN CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT

Inspiration was once a way of explaining the gap between artistic works of high
quality and lesser quality, even within a works of a single creator. A work bearing the
claim of inspiration also enhanced the reputation of the artist, whether that was the
intention or not. The meaning of inspiration, and its acceptance, both among creative
artists and others, has changed over time, but the word, particularly as an expression of
supernatural influence, is no longer a part of most contemporary discussions of the
creative process. A brief examination of the historical background and some of the
factors affecting changes in meaning and acceptance of the concept will provide a context
for the discussion that follows in subsequent chapters.

The German word for inspiration, Einfall, has a broader context as of something
falling into the mind from outside”. Merriam-Webster defines inspiration as either (1) a
divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to received and
communicate sacred revelation or (2) the act of drawing in.27 Throughout most of
history, accounts of inspiration attributed inspiration solely to supernatural sources,
whether the muses, the gods or God, but its meaning gradually expanded to represent a
relationship between a supernatural source (giver) and the artist (recipient). The claim of
inspiration was, at times, a required stamp of certification that a work did not simply

come from the mind of the artist alone. This reflected a parallel relationship between

 

26 M. Camer, “Pfitzner v. Berg, or Inspiration v. Analysis,” The Musical Times 18, no. 1611 (1977), 379.
27 Merriam- Webster ’s Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2000, Software Version
2.5.).

14

truth and inspiration within an artistic context and truth and inspiration in a religious
context that is aptly explained by Harvey, who says, “Most poets have drawn upon this
religious definition of inspiration in an attempt to explain their conviction that their own
work contains a kernel of truth that comes from beyond themselves.”28 While Harvey’s
point of view assumes that claims to supernatural inspiration were manufactured, the
relationship is still meaningful.

The assertion of supernatural inspiration on artistic works often became a
mandate for validity. The concept of supernatural inspiration, by definition, relegated
purely human efforts to a lesser place. Clark, chronicling the gradual evolution in the
concept of inspiration, writes that “Renaissance writers of diverse sects often showed
great anxiety to reconcile claims to poetic inspiration with the demands of their Christian
faith”29. The inspirational relationship between the source and recipient naturally
suggests that a supernatural source would discriminate in choosing an appropriate vessel,
and so inspiration became linked with genius. German philosopher Schelling (1775-

1854) referred to this uniqueness in the creative recipient, when explaining that,

...the artist, however deliberate he may be seems nonetheless to be
governed, in regard to what is truly objective in his creation, by a power
which separates him from all other men, and compels him to say or depict
things which he does not fully understand himself. . .. 30

Many creative artists expressed their belief that the inspiration they received

produced artistic products that exceeded their own native capacities, and that the

 

28 J. Harvey, Music and Inspiration (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), xiii.

29 T. Clark, The Theory of Inspiration (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 62.

3° F. W. Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, trans. K. R Peterson. (1799; repr.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 223.

15

inspiration was binding. American author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-
1862) extolled the superior quality of inspired work in verse:

Whate'er we leave to God, God does,

And blesses us;

The work we choose should be our own,
God leaves alone.

If with light head erect I sing,

Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,

The verse is weak and shallow as its source.

But if with bended neck I grope

Listening behind me for my wit,

With faith superior to hope,

More anxious to keep back than forward it;
Making my soul accomplice there

Unto the flame my heart hath lit,

Then will the verse forever wear--
Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ..31

Thoreau thus invoked supernatural inspiration as a mandate for validity on his own work,
freely admitting the shortcomings of his human efforts alone.
English poet DH. Lawrence (1885-1930), also made a clear distinction between

the work of his own mind and work received through inspiration:

A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand over the demon’s
mouth sometimes and speaks for him And the things the young man says
are very rarely poetry. So I have tied to let the demon say his say, and to
remove the passages where the young man intruded.32

These quotes are particularly of interest in that they echo, from a first person
perspective, the same idea that Plato expressed when considering inconsistent quality in

the work of Tynnichus the Chalcidian (as described in chapter one), and helps us

 

3‘ E. C. Stedman, ed., An American Anthology (New York: Houghton Mifl‘lin Company, 1900), 182.
32 H. Sword, Engendering Inspiration: Visionary Strategies in Rilke, Lawrence, and HD. (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1995), 80.

16

understand why inspiration has been not only a description of the source of creativity, but
also an attribute of the creative product. Thus, we refer to one creative product, and not
another, as inspired, even when both works might be by the same artist.

The feeling that a creative work reflects the presence or absence of inspiration has
driven composers to seek inspiration. Composer Franz Joseph Haydn demonstrated his
reliance on inspiration and the inspirational relationship by saying that, “If a piece does
not make progress, I try to find out if I have erred in some way or other, thereby
forfeiting grace; and I pray for mercy until I feel that I am forgiven.”33 Shelley (1792-
1822) explains that inspiration, ascribed here to an unspecified supernatural influence, is

a prerequisite to the creative act:

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted as the determination of
the will. A man cannot say, ‘I will compose poetry.’ The greatest poet
even cannot say it: for the mind in creation is as a fading coal which some
invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory
brightness: this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which
fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our
natures are unprophetic of either its approach or its departure.34

Even Nietzsche (1844-1900), who challenged contemporary notions of God and morality,

suggests the assistance of a source outside in writing Also Sprach Zarathustra”,

Provided one has the slightest remnant of superstition left, one can hardly
reject completely the idea that one is the mere incarnation, or mouthpiece,
or medium of some almighty power. The notion of revelation describes
the condition quite simply; by which I mean that something profoundly
convulsive and disturbing suddenly becomes visible and audible with

 

33 C. Colson, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, 111: Tyndale House, 1999), 442.

34 P. Shelley, “Defense of Poetry,” in In Loci Critici: Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice
from Aristotle Downwards, ed. G. Saintsbury (1821; New York: Ginn & Company (1903), 404.

35 F .W. Nietzche, Ecce Homo (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1908).

17

indescribable definiteness and exactness. One hears—one does not seek;
one takes — one does not ask who gives: a though flashes out like
lightning, inevitably without hesitation — I have never had any choice
about it.36

The question of whether creative artists really did receive inspiration from a
supernatural source, or whether they simply ascribed their work to supernatural sources is
a question that this work will not attempt to answer. To accept the former, without
question, would be na'l‘ve. To lean substantially upon the latter would require the
projection of motivations upon the artists that cannot, in terms of generality, be fairly
supported. To eliminate the possibility that supernatural influence could actually take
place extends beyond the realm of scientific proof or disproof, and also beyond the scope
of this investigation. At the same time, some accounts of inspiration experiences must
certainly stretch credulity, even for those who fiIlly accept the concept of supernatural
influence. Henry Trefli'y Dunn (183 8- l 899), painting assistant and secretary to artist
Dante Gabriel Rosetti, provides a lucid example in his account of the poet A. C.

Swinburne (1837-1909), experiencing an inspirational trance:

It had been a very sultry day, and with the advancing twilight heavy
thunder-clouds were rolling up. The door opened and Swinburne entered.
He appeared in an abstracted state, and for a few moments sat silent.
Soon, something I had said anent his last poem set his thoughts loose.
Like the storm that had just broken, so he began in low tones to utter lines
of poetry. As the storm increased, he got more and more excited and
carried away by the impulse of his thoughts, bursting into a torrent of
Splendid verse that seemed like some grand air with the distant peals of
thunder as an intermittent accompaniment. And still the storm waxed
more violent, and the vivid flashes of lightning became more frequent.

 

36 B. Ghiselin, The Creative Process: Reflections on Invention in the Arts and Sciences (Los An geles:
University of California Press, 1952, repr. paperback edition, 1985), 209-210.

18

But Swinburne seemed unconscious of it all, and whilst he paced up and
down the room, pouring out bursts of passionate declamation, faint electric
sparks played round the wavy masses of his luxuriant hair. I lay on the
sofa in a corner of the studio and listened in wonder and with a curious
awe, for it appeared to me as though the very figures that were on the
easels standing about the room were conscious of and sympathized with
the poet and his outpourings37

Dunne’s florid account provides an archetypical example of the genius in
communication with a supernatural source. The account raises many questions. What
was the source of inspiration in the account? Was Swinburne really in a trance, or was be
acting? Did the quality of the poetic utterances give evidence of any kind of inspiration?
Was the account true, or was it made up by Dunne? If it was made-up, then why? This
account is by no means a singular one. Blake, on the writing of his poem on Milton, said
that he had “written this poem fi'om immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or

thirty lines at a time without premeditation, and even against my will.”38 Coleridge

prefaced Kubla Khan with these words:

The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of
the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence,
that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred
lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose
up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent
expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.39

 

37 HT. Dunne, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and His Circle, ed. G. Patrick (London: Elkin
Mathews, 1904), 64.

38 Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880, William Blake to
Mr. Butts, 25 April 1803), 185.

39 S. T. Coleridge, Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep, (London: W. Bulrner and Co.,
1816), 52.

19

4o
” was reduced to

Unfortunately, what Taylor describes as “two to three hundred lines
fewer than a dozen after he was interrupted with business affairs.
Inspiration, as a supernatural source of creativity revealed in the artistic creator,
gradually lost its luster, at least among psychologists and others who study intellectual
processes, though many contemporary artists still attribute their inspiration to
supernatural influence. Inspiration has been variously replaced by terms like
illumination“, intuition”, breakthrough“, and ‘aha’. This change seems to have begun
toward the end of the nineteenth century and, not coincidentally, at the same time as the
inception and growth of Darwinism. However, the reasons for dismissal of the

supernatural concept of inspiration are much more complex, and the rationale, varying for

each individual, is probably a composite of some of the following various ingredients.

Contrasting Perspectives of Other Artistic Creators

To suggest that the notion of supernatural inspiration, or inspiration of any kind,
was ever universally accepted would be inaccurate. Some artists have probably always
seen the creative process as a natural process, unaffected by supernatural intervention, but
expressions of such sentiment seem more prevalent from the mid-nineteenth century.

Edgar Allan Poe paints a distinctly candid picture of literary composition as craft:

Most writers -- poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they
compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition - and would
positively Shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the
elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at the true purposes seized
only at the last moment — at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived

 

4° Ibid, 52-53.

4' H. Poincare and B. Russel, Science and Method, trans. Francis Maitland (1914; Reprint, New York:
Courier Dover Publications, 2003), 55.

42 G. Wallas, The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1926; reissued, London:
Jonathan Cape, 1931), 80.

‘3 J. Clement, “Learning Via Model Construction and Criticism,” in Handbook ofCreativity, ed. J. A.
Glover, R R Ronning, & C. R Reynolds (New York: Plenum Press, 1989), 379.

20

not at the maturity of full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in
despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — at the
painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions —
the tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders and demon-traps — the
cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which , in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio?4

Poe is not only confessing, for all writers, that writers pursue their craft through careless
lunges and blunders, but suggests what many fear—that artists have an interest in
promulgating the inaccurate notion that they are simply and supematurally inspired.

Playwright Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), considered creativity to be an exercise
in intentional design and problem solving:

To deny that artistic creation involves problems and purposes would be to
admit that an artist creates without premeditation, without design, under a
spell. Therefore, if an artist boasted to me of having written a story
without a previously settled design, but by inspiration, I should call him a
lunatic.45

Chekhov’s words bring the potential divisiveness of the issue of inspiration into detail
and at the same time, his words, if taken literally, would commit a large portion of the
world’s greatest creative artists to the asylum.

Faulkner (1897-1962) likewise created without experiencing inspiration,
remarking that, “I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what
inspiration is; I’ve heard about it, but I never saw it?“ German physicist Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) believed that the source of inspiration, though

unidentifiable, came from within: “There is something in our minds like sunshine and the

 

4" E. A. Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition,” in The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. (London: George Bell
& Sons, 1900), 212.
‘5 C. o. Madigan, & A. Elwood, Brainstorms and Thunderbolts (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 285.
46 .
Ibld., 287.

21

weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I

4
know not where.” 7

These views exclude inspiration from the creative process, or at least deny
supematural interference. It may be that the philosophical climate of the late nineteenth
century made it more acceptable to express views without criticism that had been
previously been held in private. Because these ideas were the expressions of highly
respected professional artists, it is likely that others were influenced by them, and that

similar ideas were held by many others in the same fields of creative work.

Disputes over veracity

There are challenges to the veracity of some accounts of supernatural inspiration.
Coleridge’s account of the inspiration for Kubla Khan is challenged by Lowes, among
others, who claimed that, rather than receiving the lines of poetry out of the blue,
Coleridge drew upon several sources previously read by him. Perkins summarizes that,
“It was not that Coleridge deliberately crafted the verses. Rather, his mind was so
enriched by his readings as to be ready for this spontaneous rush of invention”48 Lowes,

himself, explained that,

Whatever the initial impulse which sets the shuttles of association weaving
in a dream -- be it a page of Purchas, or interrupted circulation, or a
sudden sound -- 'The imagination . . . the true inward creatrix, instantly out
of the chaos of elements or shattered fiagments of memory, puts together

some form to fit it.49

 

47 .
Ibld, 281.
‘8 J. L. Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A stuay in the Ways ofthe Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1927), 403.
49 D. N. Perkins, The Mind’s Best Work, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), l l.

22

In another case, a famous letter, attributed to Mozart“), in which he expresses that
ideas come without bidding or personal involvement, is Similarly discredited by
Weisberg, who claims that the letter containing the quote is a) in a dialect he did not
speak, and that it b) refers to his sister by a nickname that he and his family did not use.51

These examples point out difficulties arising from questions of reliability of
accounts or historical accuracy, but if the challengers are correct, it is possible that
Coleridge’s account was intended to secure support for his work on the basis of its
inspiration, and that Mozart’s account represents cases in which a third party has
attempted to magnify Mozart or his work. The criticism of creative accounts on the
basis of inaccuracy has been a common theme in the criticism of inspiration, but this is
no different from challenges to historicity of documents and accounts in other areas of

study.

Validation, personal aggrandizement, and work ethic

Inspiration has been accompanied by the suspicion that it was used by artistic
creators as a shortcut to success. Artists could, and likely did to some extent, make
claims of supernatural inspiration in their work in order to bypass ordinary channels of
criticism and to gain immediate acceptance of their work or enhance their reputations.
Rothenberg and Hausman express a general criticism of first person accounts of the

creative experience by artistic creators, suggesting that,

There is, in fact, some reason to believe that creators’ reports are

unreliable accounts of actual experience since the public utterances

 

5° Allgemeine Musickalische Zeitung. Siebzehnten Jahrgang vom 4. Januar 1815, bus 27. December I815,
No. 34, Der 23sten August pp. 563-66.

5 I R W. Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the
Arts (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006), 75.

23

of creative artists about themselves are often intended by the artist

himself to enhance the corpus of his work or, at least, to be

consistent with his artistic or literary image.”52

This perspective led Rothenberg and Hausman, in the exploration of the creative process,

53

to discount creators’ accounts completely, unless subject to interpretation. Gilson

agrees, and cites the predicament of the researcher, attempting to integrate information
from creative accounts:

It is difficult for us, who are not sharing in their creative power, to
formulate inferences based upon what artist’s say. There would be no
excuse for taking such liberties if they themselves were not so often found
struggling for words in an effort to go beyond the limits of their own

personal experience and to reach conclusions valid for all men.54

While they may or may not have been a source of new creative material,
attributions of creative work to supernatural inspiration simultaneously elevated the
stature of the artists and validated their work. Agha, former art director-in-chief for

Conde Nast magazine, observed that:

This Inspiration apparently just handed the composer a sort of package
deal; because the romantic artist, as Doctor Taylor mentioned, gets his
goods delivered to him complete in a ‘blinding flash’ (of inspiration). He
doesn’t have particularly to plan, or to follow rules, or to work hard. The
inspiration does all the work and hands the proceeds to him, and all he has

to do is to get up in the middle of the night and put it down on paper.55

 

52 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 23.

53 Ibid., 23.

54 E. Gilson, “Creation—Artistic, Natural, and Divine,” in Creativity in the Arts, ed. V. Tomas (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 58.

55 M. F. Agha, “The Mechanics of Creativity,” in Creativity: An Eramination of the Creative Process, ed.
P. Smith, (New York: Art Directors Club, 1959), 85.

24

The suggestion that a creative artist might rely on inspiration as a replacement for
hard work was accompanied by the concern that it might have the same effect on the
work ethic of music composition students. A scathing anonymous letter to the editor of
The Musical Times in December of 1885, in response to an earlier article extolling
inspiration, responds that, “the propagation of such views is a direct encouragement to
idleness among students and should therefore be hindered as much as possible”, and
“That an educational journal should speak of a gifted composer as writing down his
music from the dictation of 3 ‘Presence’ is, as Mr. Corder rightly says, disheartening.”56 .
This point of view is finds resonance among those who consider creativity to be
something within the capability of everyone for, as Rothenberg and Hausman point out,
“Nowadays, however, it is rather popular among professional researchers as well as
nonprofessionals to insist that the potential for creativity exists in everyone.”57 The idea,
that inspiration is something that happens to a select few, can be seen as a dividing point
between craft and art, which is contrary to the idea that we all can create. Thus

inspiration, which is usually understood as extreme encouragement to create, becomes a

discouragement to those who would try.

Timothy Clark, professor in the English Studies Department of Durham
University (UK) and author of The Theory of Inspiration, points out two remarkable
paradoxes associated with the inspirational experiences, including a) the fact that the
“writer is often astonished by what he or she has written, yet the result is also seen as a

matter of personal credit”, and b) that “Romantic conceptions of inspiration often wrestle

 

56 “Inspiration v. Composition,” (London: The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 36, no. 634, Dec.
1, 1895), 937.
57 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 7.

25

with the most intractable feature of the archaic notion — that writers have most authority

when they least know what they are doing”. 58

Validation of work, personal aggrandizement, and creative work ethic, with
regard to inspiration, are all problems of human nature. Artists, and any others who
create or perform, have been known to take advantage of opportunities to exalt
themselves and their work, through the use of publicity, personal favor, patronage, and
shocking behavior or work. It should come as no surprise that some might distort
inspiration for gain, but that is not sufficient to make a judgment on all inspiration, any
more than it is sufficient to make judgments on all publicity or all patronage. Accounts
of inspiration experiences should be judged either on an individual basis, or without

judgment of veracity.

An inscrutable process
Some have maintained that artists’ accounts of their own creative
processes are unreliable, not on the question of veracity, but of perception. Igor

Stravinsky makes this point fi‘om the composers’ perspective,

The study of the creative process is an extremely delicate one. In
truth, it is impossible to observe the inner workings of this process
from the outside. It is futile to try and follow its successive phases

in someone else’s work. It is likewise difficult to observe in one’s
self.59

Ironically, this did not prevent Stravinsky from making his own

conclusions about the creative moment in composition [see Chapter Four]. In

 

5” Clark, The Theory of Inspiration, 2-3.
59 Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, 49.

26

their introduction to The Creativity Question, Rothenberg and Hausman elaborate

on the same point,

As a general rule, human beings are seldom so carefully
introspective or insightful about their own psychological processes
to warrant taking any testimony about these processes at face
value; there is no reason to believe that creators should be any
better in this respect than other people. An artist’s testimony about
his experiences and approaches must be interpreted or evaluated
rather than only taken literally in order to be used as evidence.60

There has been a corresponding theme on thought processes, adjusting the notion
of inscrutability to suggest that creative processes are inscrutable to creative persons, but
not to those scientists who study mental processes. The anonymous writer, earlier
mentioned in the Letter to the Musical Times of 1885, makes it clear that, “superficial
minds cannot see the essential difference between scientific and poetic description. It is
the poet's highest mission to describe impressions-it is the scientist's duty to explain their
causes.”61 This is echoed in Weisberg (2006), who maintains that “the cognitive
scientist, who is equipped with tools to analyze objective data, is the individual most
likely to make valid observations about the creative process.”62

Unlike some other inscrutable mental processes, such as the source of dreams, or
the retrieval and connecting of memories, creativity is primarily a conscious process.

Whatever first person information can be gathered about inspiration is crucial, along with

logical thought and controlled observation, to the understanding of the phenomenon.

Worldview

 

60 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 23.
6' The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, 837.

62 Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts,
78.

27

The holding and exercising of certain worldviews may have adversely affected
the perception of inspiration. For instance, those who hold a worldview that accepts
individual cases of supernatural inspiration, without question, have probably tended to
create an adverse reaction in others who believe that all things should first be fully tested.

A materialist/naturalist worldview does not, by definition, allow for inspiration in
the supernatural sense, because it limits all experience, including mental process to that
which falls within a materially definable universe. In the case of supernatural inspiration,
the materialist/naturalist worldview may have been the primary factor in the demise of
the concept of inspiration. Many changes in philosophy, science and social theory can be
traced to what Mayr calls the Darwinian Zeitgeist. Mayr, an evolutionary botanist who
has received the National Medal of Science, cites Darwin’s rejection of all supematural
phenomena, his refutation of typology and teleology, and his emphasis on the universal
randomness, as factors in his influence on modern thought.63 Though Darwin was a
biologist, his theories sent shock waves through religion, and even spawned the moral
and ethical consequences of Social Darwinism. James Cherry, an executive staff
member of the Institute for Humanist Studies, explains, in his course description for an
introductory course on humanism, that natural evolution “. . .galvanized the scientific
community and shook intellectual Christianity to its roots.”(’4

Psychology has been considerably influenced by Darwin, as well. James

Rowland Angell, who served, sequentially, as president of the University of Chicago and

Yale University during the early 19005, noted that Darwin’s contributions to psychology

 

63 E. Mayr, “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought? Botany Online, http://wwwbiologieuni-
hamburgdelb-online/e36 2/darwin influencehtm, (2002), par. 34.

64 M. Cherry, “Introduction to Humanism: A Primer on the History, Philosophy, and Goals of Humanism,”
http://humanisteducation.com/classhtml?module id=l &page=l , (2004).

28

included the areas of (1) his doctrine of the evolution of instinct and the part played by
intelligence in the process, (2) the evolution of mind from the lowest animal to the
highest man, and (3) the expressions of emotion, including evolution of consciousness.
Lest anyone suggest that these influences were solely Darwinian, however, Angel]
remarks that, “There had thus been rapidly growing during the preceding thirty years a
disposition to view mental life as intimately connected with physiological processes, as
capable of investigation along experimental and physiological lines, and finally as
susceptible of explanation in an evolutionary manner.”65
Darwinian influence on philosophy is surprising profound, given that the theory
of natural selection was originally a biological premise. A 1909 article by J. Mark
Baldwin, then professor of psychology and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University,
shows the understanding of Darwin’s influence upon philosophy that was already
apparent at the time. Regarding the supernatural, Baldwin said, “If there be no rule of
selection and survival save that of utility, and no source of the useful save the
overproduction of chance cases, where is the Guiding Hand ? Does not Natural Selection
dispense with a ruling Intelligence altogether?”, and, “A philosopher who knows his
calling to-day seeks to interpret natural law, not to discover violations of it.” 66 Baldwin

also spoke of confining investigation to what was empirically measureable, contending

that,

Psychology has always been the vestibule, as it were, to philosophy, and
advance in the latter never gets far beyond that of the former. So when

psychology adopted seriously a naturalistic and positivistic method—the
method, that is, of the positive sciences of nature — philosophy had also

 

65 J. R Angell, “The Influence of Darwin on Psychology,” Psychological Review 16, no. 3 (1909): 152.
66 J. M. Baldwin, “The Influence of Darwin on Theory of Knowledge and Philosophy,” Psychological
Review 16, no. 3 (1909): 208.

29

to recognize the generality of these points of View. Philosophical truth,
like all other truth, must be looked upon as truth about nature — the nature
of the world and the nature of man —— and its progress is secured through
reflection exercised under the control of the positive instruments and
methods employed in those subjects,

and that,

Scientific method, therefore, becomes, when the full implications of the
matter are thought out, the exhaustive epistemological method; that is, we
must hold that there is no method of reaching results to be called truths,
which is not found, when genetically considered, to go back to the
fundamental processes of experimentation.67

However, the assertion that all that exists is that which is empirically verifiable is
a self-violating tenet, for it is a tenet that cannot be proven through empirical proof. Thus
a materialist world view is a matter of faith. Rothenberg discusses the way that the
materialistic/naturalistic orientation affects the way we look at creativity, explaining that
those holding a naturalist worldview must interpret anything that cannot be understood
within the framework of the view as either a) “an illusion”, b) “an unintelligible, arbitrary
or recalcitrant deviation in the universe, not amenable to scientific knowledge”, or c)
“meaningless and not a topic for scientific theory”.68 Thus, the accounts of supernatural
inspiration are either discarded altogether, or re-interpreted in a way that fits the
perspective, eliminating any supernatural connections. Unfortunately, this had much
broader consequences. For, omission of some of the accounts marginalizes or invalidates

the rest. As a result, the body of personal accounts of creativity, as a whole, has been

ignored, whether or not there were supernatural affiliations.

Minimization of the Creative Process

 

67 Ibid., 213,208.
68 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 17.

30

In contrast to creativity’s association with genius during the Romantic period,
many contemporary views of creativity actually minimize creativity as a special process
in at least two distinct ways. Chuck Frey, a self-described creative thinker in public
relations, describes creative moments as a general occurrence and postulates that, “While
the average person may ignore or overlook these hunches, the creative person knows that

he or she must record all ideas, no matter how wild or impractical - and evaluate them

”69

later. While the tendency to record ideas is important, Frey’s view suggests that this

is the primary unique characteristic of the creative person, and that we all have similar
hunches.

Cognitive perspectives also hold that creativity is a fimdamentally ordinary
process. Weisberg articulates his position in the introduction to his book:

I take what can be called a ‘cognitive’ perspective on creativity—a view
advocated also by Perkins (1981) and Simon and his coworkers (N ewell &
Simon, 1972; Simon, 1986), among others—which proposes that creative
products of all sorts are brought about by our ordinary cognitive processes,
such as those involved in our day-to-day problem-solving activities.

From the point of view of the researcher studying creativity, there may be
no difference in the processes that bring about a great scientific or artistic
advance and those underlying someone’s making a new salad from

leftovers in the refrigerator. 70

He concludes the work with a succinct summary, “The ordinary thinking view assumes
that all innovation is built firmly on the past, and evidence to support that assumption has
been presented throughout the book.”71 Music educator and composer/arranger David

Elliott, describes the position of cognitivists, commenting that, “cognitive scientists today

 

69 C. Frey, “Creativity is 99% Perspiration and 1% Inspiration,” Creative Behavior,
http://mmvcreativebehaviorcomiindex.php‘.’PlD=75 (2008), par. 3. (accessed January 26, 2008).
70 Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts, xi.

7‘ Ibid., 596.

31

tend to hold that what goes on in consciousness during the making of creative products
involves the same kinds of cognitive strategies we use to solve everyday problems,
including metaphorical, analogical, and lateral forms of thinking.”72 Even if creativity is
made up of ordinary thought processes, the processes seem to be carried out in an
extraordinary way among professional creators. In all areas of life, there are those who
somehow take ordinary processes where few can go. For instance, professional
basketball player Michael Jordan, and I may both play basketball, and both play the game
with ordinary physical movements, but there is enough difference in our application of
those physical movements as to make it appear that he has an arsenal of physical
movements totally unknown to me. Even when creators are utilizing ordinary processes,

they do it in a way that goes well beyond ordinary experience.

Summary

Highly regarded creators in various fields within the arts have provided accounts
of inspiration experience. Many believed that they could not create effectively without
inspiration. The nature of these experiences varies greatly, even among those accounts
that have supernatural connections. While all supernatural accounts require a
suspension of natural expectations, some of the accounts are more difficult to believe
than others. Ironically, the comments these artists have made about life in their work
have been praised, while at the same time, their accounts of their own creative processes
have been largely criticized and ignored by contemporary psychologists and others who
study the creative process.

Reasons for rejection of the personal accounts of creative artists include the fact
that not all artists seem have to such experiences, disputes over historical accuracy or

veracity, and questions of motivation and personal aggrandizement. From a

 

72 D. J. Elliott, Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995), 223.

32

philosophical outlook, there are at least two additional causes. First, it is difficult to see
inside the creative process from without, and it is also difficult to observe the process
from the inside. Certainly, many whose view is only from the outside have doubted that
artists can perceive more fully from the inside. Second, many have allowed worldviews
to preclude any consideration of the inspiration accounts. The chronology of change in
acceptance of artists’ personal accounts seems to coincide with the rise of philosophies
that deny the existence of anything outside the material universe, including materialism,
naturalism, and humanism, the growth of which was precipitated by Darwin’s theories.
The a priori rejection of the immaterial caused the rejection of accounts that included
supernatural elements, but it consequentially caused other, non-supematural accounts, to
be ignored. It is difficult to understand why investigators did not consider the accounts,
at least, as perceptions, if not as facts.

What about creativity is the same and different in science, mathematics and other
quantifiable fields, and the arts? Are they really the same process? Do accounts of the
creative experience among people in the arts and those in science and math suggest an
identical experience? These questions are crucial to the question of inspiration in artistic

creativity, and will be considered in the next chapter.

33

Chapter Three

A LOOK AT UNIQUE QUALITIES OF ARTISTIC CREATIVITY

Many of the defining aspects of creativity are shared among various creative
domains. In light of these similarities, creativity in science and mathematics and
creativity in the arts have often been treated collectively. This collective treatment tends
to marginalize or eliminate the consideration of inspiration. However, similarity is not
equivalency. There are considerable differences, in every aspect, between the creative
experiences in these domains, which substantiate uniqueness of the creative experience in
the arts. This uniqueness calls for a discriminate treatment of the study of creativity in
the arts that is aligned with the experiential accounts of acknowledged professionals in
the field. This chapter will examine similarities and differences in the creative
experience in artistic creativity and scientific/mathematic creativity and show that the

creative experience in the arts is unique in each part of the creative experience.

Similarities in artistic and scientific/mathematical creativity

Artistic creativity and creativity in scientific discovery share basic components.
Both typically require the identification of a problem, exploration of possible solutions,
and the selection of a solution from possible solution. Both require that creators go
beyond conceptual restraints of convention within their domains. Both rely upon the
recognition of relationships between ideas (analogy), and the ability to connect new ideas
with currently held domain knowledge into novel combinations. In both domains, there

are sometimes moments that could be described as aha moments, within which some

34

kind of clarity is achieved at an accelerated pace. Eysenck finds several shared themes
between creativity in science and music, including, “(8) speculation; (b)creative
imagination; (c) inventiveness, ingenuity and the role of prior knowledge, and (d)
selectivity and critical evaluation?” To amplify Eysenck’s themes, we can see that
scientists and artists must select ideas by first considering many possible ideas
(speculation). Both exercise original creative imagination in developing initial thoughts
about the direction of their efforts (creative imagination). The process of making a
complete work from these ideas in both domains requires ingenuity, and must be
inventively tied to previous domain knowledge (inventiveness, ingenuity and the role of
prior knowledge). The developing product in each domain is constantly subject to
critical evaluation of its validity and quality, and is the result of continuous selectivity
between possible options (selectivity and critical evaluation).

The concept of near-equivalency between artistic and scientific/mathematical
creativity is also strengthened by the argument that creativity is comprised solely of
ordinary thinking processes. Weisberg sees artistic creativity and creativity in science
and math as based upon ordinary thought processes, saying that “There is no doubt that
scientists, artists, and inventors, for example, bring forth innovations. It is just that those
innovations are based on the ordinary thought processes that we all carry out.”74 It is
unclear why Weisberg would need to make this assertion, except to eliminate the concept
of inspiration, at least in the supernatural connotation that is generally a dividing factor

between creativity in these domains.

 

73 H. J. Eysenck, Genius: The Natural History of Creativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 263.

7" Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Imtention, and the Arts, 5.

35

The conclusion that the creative process is the same, or nearly the same, in the
arts and in science and mathematics is common among psychologists and others who
study the creative process from a cognitive perspective. For instance, Crosby and
Williams 1987), in Creative Problem Solving in Physics, Philosophy, and Painting:
Three Case Studies, begin by stating their intention to Show that “the creative process in
the humanities does not differ fiindamentally from that in the sciences and, in fact, shares
a common structure with it.”75 Tang argues that “discovery in science varies little fiom
creativity in music,”76 but Tang’s selectivity of primary sources in science and art does
not make for persuasive conclusions. It is quite possible to extend the idea of
fimdamental similarities to one of general equivalency, thus obscuring, and effectively
negating, credible differences that point to the uniqueness of the creative process and
experience in the arts.

Realization of the differences between the creative experience in the arts and in
science and math is crucial to serious consideration of inspiration in the creative process.
The idea of inspiration is not only outside the cognitivist concept of the creative
experience, but it is also rare in accounts of creative experiences in science and
mathematics. Inspiration also short-circuits the idea of a progression of steps in the
creative process, such as that described by Wallas,77 a point of reference for most
contemporary concepts of creativity. Only by making a valid case for the separation of

the experience of artistic creativity and that of scientific/mathematical creativity can the

 

75 D. A. Crosby, & R G. Williams, “Creative Problem-solving in Physics, Philosophy, and Painting: Three
Case Studies,” in Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies from the Classical Age to the Twentieth
Century, ed. M. Ansler (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press 1987), 168.

76 P. C. L. Tang, “On the Similarities Between Scientific Discovery and Musical Creativity: A
Philosophical Analysis,” Leonardo, 17, no. 4, (1984): 261.

’7 Wallas, The Art of Thought, 8o.

36

consideration of inspiration be substantiated. It is possible, however, that the scarcity of
accounts of inspiration in the science and mathematics might point to a difference in the
value that might be placed on accounts of inspiration-like experiences in domains

strongly emphasizing empirical data as the measure of ideas.

Differences between artistic and scientific/mathematical creativity

Psychologists (Brown 1989; Feist 1998; Mooney 196378;) have identified at least
four components of creativity including (1) the creative process, (2) the creative product,
(3) the creative person and (4) the creative situation. These elements are part of the
creative process in both scientific/mathematical and artistic creativity. Within the
fundamental components of creativity, differences between artistic creativity and

scientific/mathematical creativity emerge, and we will now consider these differences.

The Creative Person

The general perception that creativity resides in a certain kind of person has
sparked numerous conjectures and investigations into the characteristics of creative
persons and their associated personality or physical traits. The implications of this
concept prompted Galton to examine genius as a hereditary characteristic and to suggest
that we should breed humans as we do animals, in order to improve the human race.79
The association of genius and creativity was identified by philosopher Immanuel Kant

(1724-1804), who argued that since the creation of art transcends existing concepts and

 

78 R L. Mooney, “A Conceptual Model for Integrating Four Approaches to the Identification of Creative
Talent,” in Scientific Creativity: Its Recognition and Development, ed. C. W. Taylor and F. Barron (New
York: Wiley, 1963), 331—343.

79 F. Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Its Consequences, (New York: D. Appleton
and Co., 1870), 346, 356, 357.

37

 

rules, “Nature, in the subject must (By the harmony of its faculties) give the rule to Art;
i.e. beautiful Art is only possible as a product of Genius.”80 Kant, in fact, defines genius
as “a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given”, thus directly
connecting genius with artistic creativity. Lombroso’s (1895) The Man of Genius“ ,
paired many kinds of physical abnormalities and psychological pathologies with specific
traits of genius. This line of thought continues today in the work of Eysenck (1995), who
found that

...there is a common genetic basis for great potential in creativity and for

psychopathological deviation that are inimical to creativity and

achievement; it appears to be psychoticism in the absence of psychosis

that is the vital element in translating the trait of creativity (originality)

from potential into actual achievement.82

The pairing of genius, and sometimes madness, has had a rather discordant

history in the arts, but a contemporary and more palatable description of the creative
person is found in Sternberg (1988), who describes six major characteristics that are
associated with creative persons, including lack of conventionality, the ability to make
connections and distinctions between ideas and things, aesthetic taste and imagination,
decisional skill and flexibility, drive for accomplishment and willingness to challenge
norms. 83 Sternberg proceeded to demonstrate, as well, that the abilities to recognize the

existence of a problem, to define the problem and to form a strategy for solving the

problem are all parts of successful creation.84 Simonton supports and adds to these

 

80 J. H. Bernhard, trans, Kant ’s Kritik of Judgment (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892), 189.

8’ C. Lombroso, The Man of Genius (London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895).

82 Eysenck, Genius: The Natural History of Creativity, 236.

83 R J. Sternberg, “A Three-facet Model of Creativity,” in The Nature of Creativity, ed. R. J. Sternberg
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 128.

8‘ Sternberg, “A Three-facet Model of Creativity,” 132-134.

38

 

qualities, “The capacity to play with ideas is facilitated by impulsiveness, flexibility,

independence, and a risk-taking disposition.”85
In more direct terms, there seems to be a connection between the creativity and

chaos. Gerard, in his 1774 Essay on Genius, refers to the association of chaos and

creativity, writing that:

Thus imagination is no unskillful architect; it collects and chooses the
materials; and though they may at first lie in a rude and undigested chaos,
it in a great measure, by its own force, by means of its associating power,
after repeated attempts and transpositions, designs a regular and well-

proportioned edifice.86

Barron, who studied highly creative people during the 19505 and 19608 at the Institute for
Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at UC Berkeley, observed the tendency
toward chaos in creative personalities and ruminates,

Thus, in the individuals whom in retrospect we identify as the bearers of
the creative impulse in our generation there appears to be a positive
preference for what we are accustomed to call disorder, but which to them
is simply the possibility of a fiIture order whose principle of organization

cannot now be told.87

This relationship between the creative person and a high tolerance for chaos is
appropriate, especially in the arts, for as we shall see in fiirther discussion, the creative
arts enviromnent is a multi-dimensional array of decision points that bears the appearance

ofchaos.

 

85 D. K. Simonton, Scientific Genius: A Psychology of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), 43.

8" A. Gerard, An Essay on Genius. (London: Printed for W. Strahan, T. Canell and W. Cresch, 1774), 65.
87 F. Barron, No Rootless Flower: An Ecology of Creativity (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995), 63.

39

It is a generally observable fact that there are differences between those who
pursue creativity in science and mathematics, and those who pursue creativity in the arts.
However, there is also research to support the notion. Simonton (2005) discriminates
between the characteristics of creative persons in art and science domains, finding that
artistic creators are much more likely to suffer from emotional or mental instability in
comparison to scientific creators, and that creative scientists are more likely than creative
artists to be firstborn children and to have come from stable families.88 Simonton also
found that creative scientists came from more stable (conventional) backgrounds than
creative artists, and that creative artists did not generally do as well in school.

Simonton’s findings support generally-held perceptions of the differences
between artistic and scientific types of people. These differences in types of creative
persons suggest that life experience, as well as inherent characteristics, may influence
creative thought processes. However, the causality of life experiences upon creativity has
not been established, and it is possible that more or less creative natures could also be
affecting external circumstances. In either case, it stands to reason that the creative
processes in different kinds of persons may be identifiably different. Artistic
temperaments, as described in Simonton, are probably more prone to take risks and to
avoid, rather than embrace, systems of rules. They are also more likely to search for
means of self-expression, because of the more prominent affective qualities of anxiety,

. . . . 8
emotlon and sensrtIVIty. 9

 

88 D. K. Simonton, “Creativity in Psychology,” in Creativity Across Domains: Faces of the Muse, ed. J. C.
Kaufinan & J. Baer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2005), 141.

89 G. J. Feist, “A Meta-analysis of Personality in Scientific and Artistic Creativity,” Personality and Social
Psychology Review 2, no. 4, (1998): 294.

40

The Creative Product

Burghardt described artistic creativity as “a manifestation of creativity with no
functional purpose [our italics], only aesthetic purpose.”9O Cropley and Cropley,
examining creativity in engineering, went a step further, making a case for defining
creativity in the three discrete categories of functional, latent, and aesthetic creativity,
based upon functionality.91 One could easily argue the point that artistic works, as a
whole, are created with some measure of functionality. A Bach cantata created for a
particular worship service, a computer-animated sequence designed for a commercial
advertisement, a choreographed dance created as part of a Broadway musical, or even a
commissioned work formed with some consideration of pleasing a patron, are all
impregnated with various degrees of fimctionality, which Kant called interest.92 At the
same time, there is a difference in the utilitarian level of a primarily aesthetic product in
comparison to that of a primarily filnctional product, which is generally recognizable and
which is part of the description of the difference between art and science. It is reasonable
to expect that there is a corresponding difference in the processes that create observably
different products. Many of the differences in product are intertwined with similar
considerations of process and environment, and we will look at them together as part of

the creative process.

The Creative Process

 

90 D. Cropley & A. Cropley, “Engineering Creativity: A Systems Concept of Functional Creativity,” in
Creativity Across Domains: Faces of the Muse, ed. J. C. Kaufinan & J. Baer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2005), 171.

9‘ Ibid., 171.

92 Kant, The Critique of Judgment, I74.

41

The narrower boundaries and problem solving orientation of the creative
experience in science and math are better adapted to an experience with prescribed stages
than the creative experience in the arts. Wallas’ generally accepted partitioning of the
creative process into stages (preparation, incubation, illumination and verification)”, is
an excellent example. Wallas, while still maintaining that the stages could “generally be

distinguished from each other” in the creative arts,94

acknowledged that “the stages
leading success are not very easily fitted into a ‘problem and solution’ scheme.”95 These
stages have been widely accepted as discrete and progressive stages, though they were a
product of Wallas’ thought, not his empirical research. Eindhoven and Vinacke,
however, in further study of the creative processes in painting, found that, “. . .the ‘stages’
are not stages at all, but processes which occur during creation. They blend together and
go along concurrently.” They concluded that, “An artificial and incomplete conception of
creative activity results from the view that it is divisible into four successive stages.” and
that “creativity is a dynamic whole in which the processes that have been labeled ‘stages’
are interwoven in a complex and continuous fashion.” 96 Regarding stages in children’s
composing, Kratus also discerned that “The evidence, however, does not imply that these
are discrete, clearly defined stages. Subjects did not suddenly shift fiom using

exploration to development to repetition. Rather, processes were intermingled, with one

process and then another tending to predominate at various times.97 The creative process

 

93 Wallas, The Art of Thought, 80.

9" Ibid., 82.

95 Ibid., 82.

96 J. E. Eindhoven, “Creative Process in Painting,” Journal ofGeneral Psychology 47 (1952): 161,164.

97 J. Kratus, “A Time Analysis of the Compositional Processes Used by Children Ages Seven to Eleven,”
Journal of Research in Music Education 37, no. 1 (1989): 17.

42

 

 

in the arts seems to be a more fluid, flexible process, adapting to momentary needs, and
reacting to momentary decisions.

The kind of discrepancies that exist between Wallas’ application of stages and the
conclusions of studies by Eindhoven and Vinacke, and by Kratus could probably been
avoided if Wallas had simply consulted with creative professionals, who would likely
have made it clear that these were overlapping processes, rather than stages. Instead, he
reshaped perceptions around his idea that inspiration accounts merely reflected the
“difficulty of relating conscious purpose to creative thought.”98 Current psychological
profiles of the creative experience suffer from the same failure to take full advantage of
available information on the creative process from practicing professionals.

Archaeologist and anthropologist Froelich G. Rainey had this to say about Louis
Giddings, whom Rainey described as “the best example I know of a really creative
thinker in archeology”:

He conceived of the idea that people in the Arctic would always live right
out on or near the sea, because that’s where they lived on the sea
mammals. So he thought, as you went back on those beach lines, you get
older and older remains. He pursued this idea for a couple of years until
he found the perfect example, and there he demonstrated that there were
about a dozen different cultures on some 114 beach lines. Well, we’d all
seen these beach lines. We all knew this perfectly obvious thing, this
perfectly sensible, rational conclusion that he came to. But he persisted,
and proved it, you see. It’s another example of this sort of creative

process.99

 

98 Wallas, The Art of Thought, 8, 55.
99 s. Rosner & L. E. Abt, eds., The Creative Experience (New York: Dell Publishing. 1970), 13.

43

 

The original idea—that people in the Arctic would always live right out on or near the
sea, was logic-based. He took a methodical approach in following through with his
original idea, and the conclusion was a rational one which could be completely
appreciated by others in the field. There is much scientific and mathematical creativity
that far exceeds this example, but the example is not unusual within the domain.

The creative process in the arts, such as music composition or other project-based
creative work, is toward a goal, hence a problem, which cannot be completely identified
until the work is completed and evades any kind of universal process. Ducasse
elucidates,

In work the particular nature of the end to which the work is (or is
believed to be) the means, is clearly known beforehand. In art, on the

contrary, the particular nature of that which one is in process of creating is

clearly known only after it is created.100

There are several areas in the creative process that overlap considerations of the

creative product and environment, and these deserve individual attention.

Novelty, discovery and ex nihilo creativity
Novelty is a basic element of creativity models. Rothenberg and Hausman make
the a priori assumption that created products have the critical attributes of “newness and

”101

value , and proceed to indicate an inverse correlation between the level of

predictability and the level of creativity: “But the degree to which predictive power is

 

‘00 C. J. Ducasse, “Creative Art, Work, and Play,” in Creativity in the Arts, ed. V. Tomas (1929;
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976): 73.

‘01 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 6-7.

44

 

attained is also the degree to which the products of so-called creative processes would not
be unprecedented, unexpected, and therefore new.”102
Sternberg defines creativity as, “the ability to produce work that is novel (i.e.,
original, unexpected), high in quality, and appropriate (i.e., useful, meets task
constraints)’”03 Weisberg places more emphasis on originality, specifying that, “Creative
thinking occurs when a person intentionally produces a novel product while working on

9 4
some task. ”0

Beyond agreement that novelty is a characteristic of the creative product,
there are meaningful differences in perspective, and some unanswered questions.
Csikszentmihalyi employs a definition that restricts a creative product to that
which “changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new
one”.105 On the other hand, Johnson-Laird asserts that the creative product need be novel
only to the creator, even if others had the same idea?” Weisberg straddles both
positions, in saying that, “sometimes those intentional novel products are valued highly
by society, and sometimes they are not, but all of them are creative products.”107
Amabile determined that a product was creative if, “to the extent that appropriate

”108

observers independently agree it is creative. Weisberg asserts that all products are

less than completely novel and that “There are always antecedents to any creative

 

”’2 Ibid., 19.

103 R J. Sternberg, J. C. Kaufman, & J. E. Pretz, Jean E., The Creativity Conundrum: a Propulsion Model
of Kinds of Creative Contributions (New York: Psychology Press, 2002), 1.

“’4 Weisberg (2006) 52.

105 Csikszenmihalyi, M. (1996) . Creativity: Flow and the Psychologv of Discovery and Invention. Reed
Business Information, Inc., 28.

106 Johnson-Laird, RN. (1988). Freedom and Constraint in Creativity. In Robert J. Sternberg (ed.), The

nature of creativity: Contemporary psychological perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

204.
107

52.
108

Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts,

T. M. Amabile, Creativity in context: Update to The Social Psychology: of C reattvitv (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1996), 33-34.

45

 

Idea 99109

, which seems reasonable, since our understanding of most things created, for
both creator and observer, is based upon our understanding of things that have gone
before. If this is the case, however, then what does it mean, for something to be novel?

Partridge and Rowe illuminate a paradoxical situation:

If a result has been derived from previous experience, then it is hard to see
how it can be novel. If on the other hand a creative act contains something

new, that is, not derived fiom experience then it is difficult to see where it

could have come from.”1 10

McDonough, in discussing emergentism, takes a position opposite that of
cognitive scientists: “Whereas persons of a scientific cast of mind generally try to define
creativity as the rearrangement of pre-existing elements (Boden 1994), emergentism
offers the possibility of a new kind of creativity that involves the birth of something

- l
genuinely new.”ll

Partridge and Rowe (Partridge & Rowe 2002) distinguish between
input creativity, which is derived from perception and problem solving, and output
creativity, which derived from the “production of something new, that originates fi'om
within the creator”.1 '2
From these differences, we can see that there are unanswered questions about the
definitions of novel and of creativity. Is it novelty in the thought process, or in the

product that determines creativity? For whom must the product be novel? Who should

judge the creativity of a product? How much connection with previous experience is

 

109 . . . . . . . . .
Weisberg, Creattvrty: Understanding Innovation tn Problem Solving, Scrence, Invention, and the Arts,

53.
l 10 Partridge & Rowe, Creativity: A Computational Modeling Approach, 216.
111 McDonough, “Emergence and Creativity: Five Degrees of Freedom,” 284.

“2 Partridge & Rowe, Creativity: A Computational Modeling Approach, 216.

46

acceptable? IS there anything that is really new? Should accidental discoveries be
considered creative? These crises of definition are important, and their resolution has
tremendous implications for the way that we think about creativity and the way that we
nurture it, identify it, and reward it.

The problem of definition is also related, in many respects, to the differences
between creativity in different domains. Weisberg sees a significant difference between
creativity in the arts and in math and science, placing them at opposite ends of a
continuum, the ends of which are described as a) finding a penny in the street, and b) the
creativity associated with God’s creation of the universe: “Artistic and scientific
creativity are Shown to overlap, with scientific creativity leaning more toward discovery
and artistic creativity leaning more toward ‘ex nihilo’.”1 ‘3 Weisberg is not the first, or
the only, person to place artistic and scientific creativity at two ends of a continuum.
Rosner and Lawrence, speaking with Middle East correspondent, Arthur Koestler (1905-
1983), uncovered a similar continuum in the course of their interview:

K: We ought to distinguish whether we talk about writing or about
problem-solving in science. You see, in writing, you’ve got a lot of
problem-solving situations, but the main job of writing is not problem-
solving. Whereas if you look at science, it is problem solving. So, we
ought to distinguish between these two.

R & L: You feel there is a difference in the creative act in the arts and in
the sciences?

K: Well I have tried to point out that it’s a continuum.

R&L: Yes.

K: Nevertheless we are in different . . .

R&LRegions?

 

”3 Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts,
57.

47

K: Yes, regions of the continuum. You see, you can say writing is
problem-solving, finding the right expression and so on, but that is
stretching the analogy too far. No. It’s a different thing. I repeat, in
writing you do come up against problems which are capable of a solution.

But that isn’t the essence ofwriting.114

The creative environment and resulting process are remarkably different in
artistic and scientific creativity. Scientific and mathematical creativity is often intent
upon discovering the natural principles that describe or govern the universe. These
descriptions and principles do not contradict one another, but work in harmony to
(eventually) define the universe in toto. As a result, the scientist or mathematician is
often working on a problem with a single answer. The creative person in these domains
is commonly searching for an answer that already exists, but has not been described or
described in fill]. This leads to a quandary in determining the creative component or
product in science, to which Dennis Flanagan, former staff writer for Scientific American,
answers:

First I ask: What is a creative act in science? Is it the invention of an
atomic bomb? In my opinion the answer is no. A truly creative act in
science is the discovery of a new principle, and the invention of an atomic
bomb is the application of principles already known. A creative act in
science is Copernicus putting the sun in the center of the solar system. A
creative act in science is Lobachevski deciding that a geometry can exist

in which two parallel line meet.I '5

 

114
115

Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 136.

D. Flanagan, “Creativity in science,” in Creativity: An Examination of the Creative Process, ed. P.
Smith (New York: Art Directors Club, 1959), 104.

48

Fairly, it is difficult to determine whether the product in the scientific/mathematic
domain is the formula or theory that can be described in domain terms, or the
developmental thoughts that occur in the mind of the creative person. This dilemma was
described by Lloyd Morgan in 1933:

But a further question arose. One discovers and does not invent the facts.
Does one invent the laws or discover them? Or are there some laws —
those of chemistry, for example — that we invent as hypotheses subject to
revision; and others — such as those of mathematics — that are already
there, in the very nature of things, for us to discover and nowise invent? I
knew not what answer to give. And when I consulted a mathematician of
accredited standing, after indicating profitable lines of thought, he said

that, after all, it was for each of us to find out — if he could.1 ’6

The creative process and product in the arts lean much more in the direction of
true novelty, in relationship to the continua described by Weisberg and Koestler. The
creative process in the arts is more a process of creation than discovery, and the resulting
product is more a created, than a discovered, product. Logical support for this can be
observed in the fact that the product in scientific and mathematical creativity can be
reproduced and ultimately be empirically and independently verified. It can be measured
against something that is tangible. In contrast, it is easier to make a case for genuine
novelty in artistic creativity, because the verification of the product is not made primarily
through objective means. The artistic product cannot be measured against anything
tangible. An artistic solution is correct, or not, only in the mind of the artistic creator,

and its quality is then verified by the endurance of a created work over time and by the

 

“6 C. L. Morgan, “Emergent Novelty, " The Emergence of Novelty (London: Williams & Norgate, 1933),
30-3 1.

49

opinion of experts in the field, and not by objective measure. Hickey and Webster
remind the music educator that a “creative musical product is best produced in situations
where there are no right or wrong answers.”117 Truer novelty in artistic products is also
evidenced in the fact that they may be imitated, but not duplicated by another creator. In
comparing the creative process in Picasso’s Guernica, and in Watson and Crick’s
discovery of the double helix shape of DNA, Weisberg concludes that:

one might look upon artistic creativity as an inherently subjective
process, since the artist brings objects into existence as he or she carries
out the creative process. Once again: no Picasso, no Guemica. On the
other hand, scientific creativity is an objective process that deals with
object that exist ‘out there’, independent of the scientist ...... The scientists
does not bring objects into being through the creative process; he or she
discovers objects that exist independent of the scientist and of the creative

process. Again with no Watson and Crick, there would still be DNA.118

The reproducibility of creative products in science and math is evident. Simonton
points to examples: “. . .the creation of calculus by Newton and Leibniz, the proposal of a
theory of evolution by Darwin and Wallace, and the discovery of the laws of genetic
inheritance by Mendel, De Vries, Correns, and Tschermak.”119

Even where the result of scientific/mathematical creativity may be novel, the ties
to previous work is much more evident. Richard Feynman, looking back on the
processes that resulted in his Nobel Prize winning space-time view of quantum

electrodynamics, expresses, with candor, that the “End result was merely re-expressing

 

117
118
55.

“9 D. K. Simonton, Creativity in Science: C hance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist (Cambridge: University of
Cambridge, 2004), 11.

M. Hickey, & P. Webster, “Creative thinking in music,” Music Educators Journal 88, no. 1 (2001): 21.
Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts,

50

what was previously known, although in a form which is much more efficient for the
calculation of specific problems?”20 When the product of scientific creativity is not a re-
statement of previous ideas, it is still closely and logically tied through steps, consisting
of the previous work by the scientists or by others in the field. Amsler summarizes: “For
physics supposedly exhibits constant linear progress in disclosing the facts of nature,
each generation of physicists adding new plateaus of achievement and understanding to
the ones previously laid down, with no need to criticize or alter in any fundamental sense
what has gone before?!”
Scientific/mathematical steps are constructed of small, discrete bits of domain
knowledge and discovery. It is impossible, by definition, to leap far beyond any previous
step, for the result is could not be substantiated. Artistic steps are generally constructed
of large ideas, or principles. Furthermore, the domain-steps that connect current domain
knowledge to new creative work are much more evident in science and math than they

are in the arts. Kant illuminates the comparison:

The reason is that Newton could make all his steps, from the first elements
of geometry to his own great and profound discoveries, intuitively plain
and definite as regards consequence, not only to himself but to every one
else. But a Homer or a Wieland cannot Show how his Ideas, so rich in
fancy and yet so full of thought, come together in his head, simply because

he does not know and therefore cannot teach others.122

Creative thinking in science and mathematics is also much more a logical process.

Computers, designed on the basis of rule-based systems, help to illustrate the logical

 

120 R P. Feynman, “The Development of the Space-time View of Quantum Electrodynamics,” Science,
153, no. 3737 (Aug 12, 1966), 707.

12] M. Ansler, ed., Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies fi'om the Classical Age to the Twentieth
Century (Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 196.

122 Bernhard, Kant ’s Kritik of Judgment, 189-190.

51

basis of scientific creativity. Hayes refers to a computer program called BACON 1,

which incorporated the following search heuristics:

1. Look for variables (or combinations of variables) with constant value.
2. Look for linear relations among variables.

3. If two variables increase together, consider their ratio

4. If one variable increases while another decreases, consider their product.

When provided with appropriate data, the program successfully induced Boyle’s Law,
Kepler’s third law, Galileo’s law, and Ohm’s law. ’23 Such mechanized reasoning
challenges perceptions of creativity in empirical domains and leads Hofstadter to muse:

We now know that world-class chess-playing ability can indeed be
achieved by brute-force techniques — techniques that in no way attempt to
replicate or emulate what goes on in the head of a chess

grandmaster. . .And thus, thanks to the remarkable achievements of the
past decade, one can no longer look at a subtle, elegant, and stunning
midgame chess move and say with confidence, ‘Only a genius could have
Spotted that move!’ because the move could just as well have emanated
from a mindless, lightning-fast full-width search as from the silent

machinations of an insightful human mind. ’24

This is not to deny creativity in math and science, as Feyman explains,

It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in
science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the
artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have

never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been

 

[23 J. R Hayes, “Cognitive Processes in Creativity,” in Handbook of Creativity, ed. J .A. Glover, R. R.
Ronning, & C. R Reynolds (New York: Plenum Press, 1989), 138.

12"D. Hofstadter, “Staring Emmy Straight in the Eye — and Doing My Best Not to Flinch,” in Creativity,
Cognition and Knowledge: An Interaction, ed. T. Dartnall (W estport, CN: Praeger, 2002), 68.

52

seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it

must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult125

The creative experience in science and math is, however, much more narrowly restricted
by the boundaries of previous domain knowledge and the natural boundaries of the
physical universe than the creative experience in the arts, in which the boundaries of
previous domain knowledge are flexible, and the limits of the physical universe primarily
the limits of human perception.

In summary, creative persons in the arts have been shown to be generally
distinguishable from those in science and math by personality and life experience. The
creative product is different in the arts because it is more aesthetic and less utilitarian
than the creative product in science and math and because it reflects a higher degree of
novelty. The artistic product, unlike that in science and math, is not reproducible, not
empirically or independently verifiable and not measurable against anything tangible.
The creative product and process are different in the arts because they are less clearly tied
to steps of previous domain advancement, and because they rely less on logical

connections.

Decision-making and the creative environment

Logical connections, or ties to other creative work, can be both progressive and
lateral. Progressive connections tie current creative efforts to the historical experience of
what has come before, while lateral connections reflect the influence of current thought

and invention. In the case of Watson and Crick’s discovery in the area of DNA research,

 

'25 R P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist (Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus
Books, 1998), 23.

53

their work was not only built upon the work of earlier scientists, but was also continually
involved in a process of intertwining and leap-flogging the research of other
contemporary researchers, including the work of Maurice Wilkins, of Linus Pauling, and
of Rosalind Franklin. '26

Creative decision-making in science and math is severely bound by this web of
decision-making and idea creation in these domains. Feyman explains that,

In physics there are so many accumulated observations that it is almost
impossible to think of a new idea which is different from all the ideas that
have been thought of before and yet that agrees with all the observations
that have already been made. And so, if you get anything new from
anyone, anywhere, you welcome it, and you do not argue about why the

other person says it is so.127

However, it is clear that differences in decision-making environments between
science and the arts result in discrete creative environments. While scientists and
mathematicians work within a developmental framework that often points directly to the
next step, the network of decision-making involved in artistic creation is overwhelming.
Ehrenzweig presents an illustration of decision-making in general creativity that is clearly
more appropriate to artistic creativity:

From each of these points many possible pathways radiate in all directions
leading to further crossroads where a new network of high- and by-ways
comes into view. Each choice is equally crucial for further progress. The
choice would be easy if we could command an aerial view of the entire
network of nodal points and radiating pathways still lying ahead. This is

never the case. If we could map out the entire way ahead, no further

 

‘26 Weisberg Creativity, Cognition and Knowledge: An Interaction.
127 Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist, 23.

54

search would be needed. As it is, the creative thinker has to make a
decision about his route without having the full information needed for his

choice. This dilemma belongs to the essence of creativity.128

The overwhelming array of artistic choices to be made by a music composer

involves not only intellectual and logical choice, but emotional factors as well. Twentieth

century composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), expressed the passionate quality of

artistic decision-making:

. . . the choices I make when I compose music, for example. They are
distressing, for they imply renouncing something. Creation thus passes
through torture. But a torture which is sane and natural. That is what is
most beautifill: to decide at any moment, to act, to renounce, to propose
something else. It is great. The joy is the fulfillment of living. That's what

it means to live.129

Another twentieth century composer, Igor Stravinsky, expresses another kind of

emotional stress associated with the process of artistic choice:

As for myself, I experience a sort of terror when, at the moment of setting
to work and finding myself before the infmitude of possibilities that
present themselves, I have the feeling that everything is permissible to me.
If everything is permissible to me, the best and the worst; if nothing offers
me any resistance, then any effort is inconceivable, and I cannot use

anything as 3‘ baSiSr and consequently every undertaking becomes futile.130

 

128A. Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art (Berkley: University of California Press, 1971), 35.
‘29 I. Xenakis, “Xenakis on Xenakis,” Perspectives of New Music 25 no. 1-2 (1987), 45.
‘30 Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, 66.

55

In fact the challenge presented by so many options in artistic creation must be at
least partly responsible for the malady called artists’ block. Composer, Dan Welcher
comments on beginning a new work, “The first few days of working on a new piece are
always the worst. The first few scratches, the first few ‘What am I doing here?’
emotions, the first feelings of inadequacy can nip a new work in the bud.”13 I There are
other causes for aItist’s block, besides the multitude of decisions to be made, as Kolodny
writes, “We can have anxieties related to our lack of knowledge of what the material will
be, what unconscious wishes it may express, or meanings it may have for us.”132
Blanchot amplifies this perspective in describing the difficulty of working creatively in

an area where there are no empirical boundaries:

Poetry is not granted the poet as a truth and a certainty against which he
could measure himself. He does not know whether he is a poet, but
neither does he know what poetry is, or even whether it is. It depends on
him, on his search. And this dependence does not make him master of
what he seeks; rather, it makes him uncertain of himself and as if
nonexistent. Every work, and each moment of the work, puts everything

into question all over again.133

Only in artistic creation is it common for a competent and knowledgeable
professional to be unable to bring his or her abilities to bear on a creative project at will.
In his Defence of Poetry, Shelley extends the idea with more elegance:

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted as the determination of

the will. A man cannot say, ‘I will compose poetry.’ The greatest poet

 

‘3‘ A. McCutchan, The Muse That Sings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 88.

'32 S. Kolodny, The Captive Muse: 0n Creativity and Its Inhibition (Madison, CT: Psychosocial Press,
2000), 3.

133 M. Blanchot, The Space of Literature: A Translation of “L ‘Espace Litteraire ”, trans. A. Smock (1955;
repr. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press (1982), 87.

56

even cannot say it: for the mind in creation is as a fading coal which some
invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory
brightness: this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which
fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our
natures are unprophetic of either its approach or its departure. Could this
influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to
predict the greatness of the results: but when composition begins,
inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has
ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the

original conception of the poet.134

Although there is not an exclusive solution for an artistic dilemma, there may be
only one solution that satisfies the artist and the artist is unwilling to compromise through
employment of alternative options, but would rather wait for inspiration. Composer
Steve Reich puts it this way:

There have been lessons to learn in all of this. After music for Eighteen
Musicians (1976), a very successful piece, came out, there was so much
touring that I didn’t write anything for almost a year. When I came back,
the faucet was dry, and it was terrifying. What I learned from that
experience is that it’s very important to make sure that you put in your
hours. There is something called inspiration, and it comes as a result of
sitting yourself down in front of blank music paper and just working away
until something begins to catch fire. If I don’t put in those hours — and
I’m a slow worker — the there ain’t no inspiration.” (McCutchan, 1999, p.

19)

 

134 P. Shelley, “Defense of Poetry,” in In Loci Critici: Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and
Practice from Aristotle Downwards, ed. G. Saintsbury (1821; repr. New York: Ginn & Company, 1903),
404.

57

In contrast, accounts of creative blocks in science and mathematics are rare. Rosner and

Lawrence interviewed Harlow Shapley, astronomer and, at the time, director of the

Harvard Observatory:

R&L: “Do you ever run into dry periods? Does your frustration
sometimes lead to blocks?

S: “No, I don’t remember such. I don’t remember being blocked. I
think that I just hammer away. I stay with it because I find so many places
where there are loose ends that I can work on, and there is enough

pleasure in the whole enterprise to keep me going until I finish it? ‘35

Rosner and Lawrence interviewed 23 creative persons in the different segments of

the arts and sciences. The interviews were “focused somewhat toward exploring certain

aspects of personality which we had reason to believe, on the basis of current research,

might be related to the creative process...

” '36. Among these interviews, there is little or

no suggestion of creative blocks among the creative persons in science, math and

technology. On the other hand, consider this interchange between Rosner and Abt and

fashion designer, Bonnie Cashin:

R&L: “Where do your ideas come from? ”

C: “This is hard to pinpoint. Actually my work, I guess, is always
on my mind even when I’m looking at a marvelous sky or
watching a play, or on holiday. I’m constantly re-designing
subconsciously.”

R&L: “What are the sources of your inspiration? ”

 

'35 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 37.

136 . .
Ibld., 1x.

58

C: “Sometimes ideas tumble upon each other. This is exhilarating.

Sometimes they just don’t come. I can’t even draw. At those times I’ll try
99 137

to quit. There’s no use struggling.

The human element in artistic creativity

Creative products in science and math, as well as in the arts, are valued in their
ingenuity (novelty), accuracy and efficiency (logic), often combined in the term
‘elegance’. But in addition to these, the creative product in the arts has its value in that
which is intangible. This is because the product of artistic creativity is infused with
human feeling. In the arts, people leave their personal imprint in the work they create,
and they create fiom a vantage point of feeling as well as intellect. When posed the
question of whether a computer program could ever write beautifill music, Hofstadter
(Hofstadter, 2002) calls the idea “a grotesque and shamefiil misestimation of the human
spirit” and continues,

A ‘program’ which could produce music as they did would have to wander
around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and
feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and
loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the
inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after a
human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-
weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe. In
it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear, anguish
and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it would have to

be a sense of grace, humor, rhythm, a sense of the unexpected — and of

 

137 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 242.

59

course an exquisite awareness of the magic of flesh creation. Therein, and

therein only, lie the sources of meaning in music. '38

The creative process in the arts is concerned with more than the tangible part that
can be technically analyzed. The creative product is forged in a place where feeling and
intellect meet. It somehow reflects and stores not only the feelings of the artist at the
time of its creation, but the sum of the life experience of the artist and how that affected
the perspective of the artist at the moment of creation. It is this characteristic, and not
that which we can see, hear or touch, that makes the artistic product so different from the
product of creativity in science and math, and it is this characteristic that comprises the
perceived aesthetic value in an artistic product. In music, for instance, two works by the
same composer may be equally satisfying from an analytic perspective. They may have
identically balanced forms, follow harmonic guidelines developed over many centuries,
even have melodies with similar changes of direction, musical intervals and range. Their
tempi and rhythmic patterns and meters may be equal. The equity in these empirically
decipherable ingredients, though, cannot explain why one of the two works will be
strongly preferred by critics and popular audiences. It is difficult to explain how an
intangible human element can make its way into a tangible product and then, in an
aesthetic experience, make its way back from the product to a receiving mind. Ducasse
attempted to explain:

...the act of expression is (in such a case) creative of something (1)

capable of being contemplated by the artist at least, and (2) such that in

 

138 Hofstadter, “Staring Emmy Straight in the Eye — and Doing My Best Not to Flinch,” 70.

60

 

 

contemplation that thing yields back to him the feeling, meaning, or

volition of which it was the attempted expression.139

While cognitive mental processes may be the same or similar in artistic creativity
and in scientific/mathematical creativity, analysis of artistic creative processes from a
purely cognitive standpoint will always fall short. Yet this is the prevailing current of
thought. Unequivocal differences in the creative person, product, environment and
process, join to form very different creative experiences. Artistic accounts of creative
experience are reflections, not only of thought, but of feeling. The personal connections
within creative accounts in empirical fields have a much more tenuous personal
connection to the creative product. When asked about the element of surprise and nature
of creativity within his experience, MIT Language and Linguistics faculty member,
Noam Chomsky, supplied this exchange

R&L:”What about the role of surprise in your work?”

C:“By searching the consequences of certain assumptions through a long
process of inference, one is able to predict certain empirical results. If
these results turn out to be correct, and if they do not directly reflect the
assumptions upon which they are based, we have something that is
surprising and exciting.”

R&L: “ Then your discovery of the relationships between your data and
the generalizations of your principles is what 's really creative or you?

C: “Yes, that’s right. That is the creative experience.”140

Chomsky’s responses are concise, and may not seem surprising, but their apparent

lack of personal feeling would be extraordinary in responses to the same questions posed

 

'39 Ducasse, “Creative Art, Work, and Play,” 76.
'40 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 85.

61

to an artistic creator. Likewise, many responses provided by artistic creators would seem
inappropriate and even mystifying to creative people in science and mathematics.
Accounts of the creative experience in the arts vary greatly from those in science and
mathematics because the experiences are very different. In the light of these differences,
it seems appropriate to consider the unique characteristics of the accounts of artistic

creators and others who may share the same kind of experience.

62

Chapter 4:

DEVELOPING A PROFILE OF THE INSPIRATION EXPERIENCE

The supernatural concept of inspiration is beset by problems that cannot be
resolved empirically, and so is best left as a mystery, or a matter of personal belief.
However, there is an unequivocal persistence of such claims. There are also numerous
accounts, with no supernatural attribution, whose experiential description is the same or
Similar. Chapter 3 established a rationale for looking uniquely at creativity in the arts.
After determining principles for the processing of personal accounts of the creative
experience, Chapter 4 will examine these accounts and the perceptions of the experiences
by artists, with the primary concern of looking for similarities. From these similarities in
all kinds of inspiration-like experiences, a new and broader concept of inspiration-as-
experience emerges, allowing the possibility of a correspondingly broader definition.
Further examination of the accounts will then serve to provide a set of categories of
inspiration experience. In all of this, I will attempt to bring some kind of order to the
disparate points of views on inspiration and the variety of accounts of the creative
experience. First, however, consider the breadth of the inspiration experience in the

accounts of creative artists.

The Pervasive and Persistent Nature of Inspiration in the Arts

Accounts of the creative experience in the arts abound with references to

inspiration or inspiration-like occurrences. These accounts have been both pervasive

63

among creative professionals in all segments of the arts and persistent through time.

Speaking to this, Clark concludes his work on the history of inspiration with the comment

that,

Inspiration has meant many different things at different times and places.
It has embraced diverse and contradictory images of authority. It has
related to forms of poetic practice as remote as oral, formulaic
composition and Celan’s conception of the written poetic sign as a forlorn
‘message in a bottle’. Always, however, the term has been a matter of

contention. 1‘”

Inspiration-like accounts have endured criticism over centuries, but recent

accounts of the creative experience in the arts still continue to contain the same elements

that have always confounded cognitive examination. The persistence of these elements,

which can be included under the umbrella term, inspiration, is verified by both writers

and artists. Again, Clark writes,

...accounts of inspiration have persisted, ineradicably, as part of Western
literary culture for more than three thousand years. They have provided a
recurrent source of controversy, obfuscation, enthusiasm, wonder, and
even comedy throughout this time. No sooner is the term disqualified for
various reasons than crucial aspects of it come back, sometimes from an

. . 4
unexpected directlon.1 2

Amabile writes that, “A great many outstanding creative individuals (e. g.

Poincare, 1924) have described the phenomenon of ‘incubation’: After ceasing to

consciously work on a difficult problem, they sometimes experience an apparent flash of

 

”1 Clark, The Theory of Inspiration, 283.

”2 Ibid., 1.

64

illumination, during which the solution appears to them unexpectedly.”143 John Clement
recognizes the same phenomenon, maintaining that, “In its strongest form, eurekaism is
associated with sudden flashes of inspiration, possibly following a period of incubation or
nonconscious mental activity. Thus some ideas form in and arrive suddenly from the
unconscious mind?”44 Clement discusses three possible levels on insight, including
breakthrough, scientific insight, and pure eureka, the latter of which he describes as “not
explainable via ordinary processes?”45
As we will see, an examination of personal accounts and perceptions produces a

set of consistent characteristics that are associated with the experiences that are variously

described as illumination, incubation, intuition and inspiration.

Treatment of Personal Accounts

Personal accounts have consistently been a difficult issue for both scientists and
philosophers. Barron describes the predicament faced by psychologists in studying
creativity:

Questions of the nature of knowledge and of life remain at the heart of the
science of mind. The psychology of creativity is peculiarly beset by such
problems, if for no other reason than its dependence on creative people to
serve as the source of data regarding the creative process in the psych.
And those people are not psychologists, usually. They have no special
interest in prescinding fiom the issues of philosophy (even when they are

psychologists!)146

 

’43 Amabile, Creativity in context: Update to The Social Psychology: of Creativity, 83.
'44 Clement, “Learning Via Model Construction and Criticism,” 342.

”5 Ibid., 379.

'46 Barron, No Rootless Flower: An Ecology of Creativity, 40.

65

Rothenberg makes this indictment of philosophical examinations of the creative
experience:

Philosophical investigators have erred primarily in an uncritical and
unsystematic use of empirical evidence to derive general principles or to
support various aspects of their overall speculations. By and large, they

have tended to take at face value the testimonies and descriptions of

. . . . 4
creative persons about their creatlve experiences.1 7

There have certame been periods in which the tendency to accept such accounts,
without hesitation, may have been prevalent. But, in fact, Rothenberg is subject to his
own criticism, since he has put aside the accounts of creative experiences without
empirical evidence to justify that decision. Even if we accept his contention, what can
replace the accounts of creative persons in observation and theorization about the creative
process? There is no other first-hand information available. Examination by second-
hand observers, in controlled environments, yields some important information, but does
not provide any inside information about how ideas occur or what prompts them. In
other words, it does not help us understand what is actually going on inside the mind of
the creator. Attempting to understand the creative process without serious consideration
of the accounts of creative persons is like counseling a psychological patient without
conversation. In such a case, observation on the basis of behavior alone, or even
behavior and logic, would be likely to produce incomplete and inaccurate results

regarding the patient’s psychological condition, for behavior can only provide evidence

 

I47

Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 23.

66

to support what has been inferred from mental and emotional observation. Behavioral
observation, even in conjunction with logical analysis, can still fall sh01t

In prescribing how individual accounts of the creative experience ought to be
regarded, Rothenberg suggested that, “An artist’s testimony about his experiences and
approaches must be interpreted or evaluated rather than only taken literally in order to be

- 9 4
used as ev1dence.’ I 8

How should this be accomplished? From what perspective should
the interpretation begin? It is clear that that ‘interpreted or evaluated’ could very easily
mean removing individual accounts that are not consistent with a writer’s
presuppositions. Interpretation of an individual account subjects the account to the
possibility of greater, not lesser inaccuracy, and is subject to the individual interpreter’s
point of view.

The arts have been, by tradition, a domain in which education has occurred
largely through the mentoring process. While information about the arts can be taught in
a typical classroom, performance of the art has been taught in centuries past, and
continues to be taught today, through the master-apprentice process. Discounting of the
accounts of creative artists, with regard to the creative process, removes a valuable source
of instruction in a mentor-apprentice relationship by proxy. It seems ludicrous that the
narratives of successful artists should be relegated en masse to fancy or misguided
perception. Anne McCutchan, author of The Muse That Sings, shared a conversation that
preceded the writing of her book:

I recently chatted with a university music education researcher

who asked me if I planned in this book to draw ‘measurable conclusions’

 

”8 Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 4.

67

about composers’ ‘cognitive skills.’ I was dismayed by those buzzwords,
which negate meaning instead of enlighten; her question illustrated for me
the remove at which many “experts” in arts education Operate. I wished
she had asked instead, how a composer’s mind works, to which I would
have answered, “Let’s dump your database and ask one of the five
composers on your faculty, or go listen to a child fool around on a

. 4
plano.l 9

Especially in the arts, there seems to be a great chasm between the outlooks of

professional researchers and psychologists, who attempt to analyze what occurs within

the professional experience, and the outlook of professionals who actually undergo the

experience. This exacerbates a natural divide that exists between the empirical and the

aesthetic. As Frank Barron describes it,

I believe that everyone who senses the working of the creative
process intraphysically rebels against attempts to understand creativity by
means of the scientific method in psychology, with its experiments and its
measures. In my own research, I was bound to find the first rebel

within.150

The accounts of creative artists need to be investigated, but before examining

them, we must first determine a framework within which we can regard these accounts.

The serious consideration of inspiration in artistic creativity is not an easy proposition.

The origins of the word, the history of accounts of creative moments in the arts, and

individual philosophical orientations all conspire against such consideration. But while

 

”9 McCutchan, The Muse That Sings, xiv.
‘50 Barron, No Rootless Flower: An Ecology of Creativity, 43.

68

empirical study of mental process is a crucial contributor to our understanding of human
thought, for now, at least, the accounts of creative professionals are the sum of data on
the inner-workings of the creative process. If, in fact, this is the only available first-
person data, that there must be a cogent method of approaching it. Several principles
Should guide such a process. First, all known accounts should be included, regardless of
their nature. This does not mean that we carelessly accept the accounts at face value, as
Rothenberg and Housman maintain that philosophers have done15 I, but we cannot simply
disregard some accounts on the basis of interpretation or evaluation, except where they
are supported by clear evidence. Data may be subject to some level of interpretation, but
removing it from the data pool upon personal discretion discredits conclusions based on
the remaining data. Neither must information necessarily be interpreted on an
individual account basis. Instead, individual accounts, unless proven to be false, or
fraudulent, should be incorporated in to whole body of accounts, and then analysis
applied to the whole. This allows the development of a whole picture of the accounts,
which will then suggest its own questions about individual accounts.

Second, classification should be based on observation of the data, not upon
preconceived constructs, regardless of the orientation of the observer. As in any other
observation-based methodology, conclusions should be drawn from the data, not from
presuppositions. From this approach, patterns of experience appear in the accounts of
artistic creators, suggesting a unique perspective on inspiration. In fact, a number of
discrete and recurring characteristics surface when accounts are subjected to this

framework.

 

15' Rothenberg & Hausman, The Creativity Question, 23-

69

Characteristics common to the inspiration experience

A review of the accounts of creative artists’ creative processes yields a collection
of recurring ideas about the source of inspiration. By category, artists attribute
inspiration variously to: (l) the supernatural, (2) dreams or unconscious/subconscious
manipulation of ideas, (3) an unfathomable mystery, (4) a lightning bolt or eureka
moment, (5) external images, and (6) the result of problem-solving.

When we transfer our focus from the source to which artists have attributed
inspiration, to a consideration of what comprises the inspiration experiences, we can see
that this phenomenon bears discrete characteristics that occur generally throughout
creative experiences in the arts. The characteristics do not all occur in all accounts, but
are regularly associated with the phenomenon, and can help us in profiling and defining
inspiration. The following examples are only representative and are well-substantiated
by many other accounts not replicated here.

Sudden and Transient

One of the common properties of inspiration is the perception that it occurs in a
moment. Bernard Lonergan, in the preface to Maria Schrady’s, Moments of Insight,
analytically described the momentary nature of the experience:

Great insights do not differ from ordinary ones in any intrinsic manner.
Their greatness is due to the fact that they occur at the culminating point
of a long series of commonly unnoticed insights. What slowly, and
perhaps secretly, has been going forward suddenly or in a brief and intense

period comes fully into view.152

 

152M. Shrady, Moments of Insight: The Emergence of Great Ideas in the Lives of Great Men (New York:
Harper and Row, 1972), viii.

70

Whether the moment comes at the end of a long series of unnoticed insights is
immaterial to the fact that it is a moment that is distinguishable fi'om the insights in series
that may have precipitated it. Industrial designer George Nelson explains the same
suddenness from a perceptual perspective:

I would say one of the main triggers is irritation. You look at a situation
and suddenly see it with fresh eyes. Then the status quo, whatever it is,
becomes very annoying and some pressure builds up more or less
unconsciously, and apparently one works away at this problem with a
view to getting rid of the irritation. At some point, if one is lucky, the

thing explodes153

British fashion designer Paul Smith also conveys this feeling, ruminating, “I look
at things, and ideas immediately develop in my head. I can look at something completely
unrelated to fashion, say some vegetables for example, and they suddenly become a shirt
pattern. I never think of ideas, they just come to me.”154 Inspiration is most often
associated with artistic creativity, but there are examples in quantitative domains.
Mathematician Henri Poincare (1854-1912), in telling of his discovery of certain
mathematical functions, describes a similar experience:

Then I turned my attention to the study of some arithmetic questions
apparently without much success and without a suspicion of any
connection. . .Disgusted with my failure, I went to spend a few days at the

seaside, and thought of something else. One morning, walking on the

 

‘53 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 254.
‘54 D. Nielsen & K Hartmann, Inspired: How Creative People Think, Work and Find Inspiration
(Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2005), 184.

71

bluff, the idea came to me, with just the same characteristics of brevity,

suddenness, and immediate certainty. ‘55

This represents an experience that might have followed a rather long period of problem-
solving activity or subconscious manipulation of ideas. Rather than perceiving the
inspirational moment as an expected result of long and logical thinking, Cary speaks of
the sense of surprise, or discovery that often accompanies an inspirational moment:

It is quite true that the artist, painter, writer or composer starts always with
an experience that is a kind of discovery. He comes upon it with the sense
of a discovery. It surprises him. This is what is usually called an intuition
or an inspiration. It carries with it always the feeling of directness. For
instance, you go walking in the fields and all at once they strike you in
quite a new aspect: you find it extraordinary that they should be like that.

This is what happened to Monet as a young man.156

Some believe that what many refer to, as inspiration, is actually a response to, or
anticipation of, a creative moment. Composer Igor Stravinsky expressed his accord with
the former:

Most music-lovers believe that what sets the composer’s creative
imagination in motion is a certain emotive disturbance generally
designated by the name of inspiration. I have no thought of denying to
inspiration the outstanding role that has devolved upon it in the generative
process we are studying; 1 simply maintain that inspiration is in no way a
prescribed condition of the creative act, but rather a manifestation that is

chronologically secondary. '57

 

’55 Barron, No Rootless Flower: An Ecology of Creativity, 70.

’56 J. Cary, Art and Reality: Ways of the Creative Process, ed. R. N. Anshen (New York: Harper &
Brothers, Publishers, 1958), l.

‘57 Stravinsky, The Poetics of Music, 50.

72

Partridge and Rowe propose the same idea, but provide an analytic interpretation:
“Cortical arousal, in other words, might indicate the mental registration of a creative
breakthrough, rather than being associated with the mechanism that cause the
breakthrough. It might occur after the moment of insight.” ‘58 Cinematographer Sidney
Lumet (b. 1924), expresses the concept experientially, musing that, “It’s funny because
it seem it always comes after the fact, the realization of where it came from comes after
the fact, in the sense that after you’ve done it, you look back and say ‘Ah ha, that was the
origin point.”159

Clark, on the other hand, hypothesizes that it is the sense in the artist that

something is about to happen:

The writer’s sense of emergent possibility in composition surely comes

from the constraints inherent in the generic, rhythmic, and semantic codes

as they intersect in a yet virtual space with other vectors, those that arise

from the demands of the writer’s own intentions, preoccupations,

fantasies, and somatic and rhythmic drives.160

The contrast in these two logical possibilities is illustrative of the spectrum of

explanations for inspiration, and also serves to demonstrate, in part, the problematic
history of the experience. Diversity in the perceptions about the timing of the
inspirational moment is really secondary to the importance of the accord expressed by
artists and others who note the suddenness of the event. Even though Stravinsky held

that feeling of inspiration actually followed the arrival of an idea, he still acknowledged

the feeling of an electrical spark in the inspiration process: “So we grub about in

 

‘58 Partridge & Rowe, “Creativity: A Computational Modeling Approach,’ 224.
‘59 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 216.
‘60 Clark, The Theory of Inspiration, 21.

73

expectation of our pleasure, guided by our scent, and suddenly we stumble against an
unknown obstacle. It gives us a jolt, a shock, and this shock fecundates our creative
power?!“ While no single and definitive conclusion can be reached from these accounts
about the sequential relationship of a new idea and the inspirational moment, there is
ample evidence of the sudden and transient nature of the experience.
Creative Rush

Creative people often feel a significant difference in their creative powers at the
time of inspiration. Bowra mentions this feeling of creative power that possesses
creators, who may have been creatively dry only moments before, asking, “What then of
the received wisdom that, when inspired, writers are ‘filled with an unaccountable power
which enables them to create not only more easily but better than at any other time?”162
Contemporary composer Dan Godfrey relates that, “One moment I’m wondering, where
is this going? The next moment, just like tumblers in a lock, things sort of fall into place,
I see the whole trajectory.”I63 This might result from the fact that a single problem has
been solved, upon which the solution of many others depends, much as filling a single
box within a crossword puzzle can make the solution of an entire word discernible. It
could also mean that completing a single creative problem suddenly opens up new
possibilities that were previously hidden within a sea of possibilities. Artistic creators
often make decisions, within inspirational experiences, among choices that might appear

to be equally logical to an observer. In fact, decision-making is perhaps the primary

challenge for the artist. Breton makes the association between decision-making and the

 

16' Stravinsky, The Poetics of Music, 55.

"’2 C. M. Bowra, Inspiration and Poetry. London: MacMillan, 1951). Quoted in T. Clark, The Theory of
Inspiration (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 30.

'63 McCutchan, The Muse That Sings, 101.

74

artist, suggesting that we can recognize inspiration, “by that total possession of our mind
which, at rare intervals, prevents our being, for every problem posed, the plaything of one
rational solution rather than some other equally rational solution. . .”164

The perception of a creative rush is common in the inspiration experience. It
might actually be a rush of new ideas, but it could also be the opening of some kind of
gate that was restraining the release of existing ideas, comparable to a sudden release
from artists’ block. It might be that the inspired idea is the spark in combustion, which
sets off a rapid series of subsequent chemical reactions or, in this case, a rapid series of
subsequent ideas. However, these questions are subordinate in this discussion to the fact
that there is often a perception of a creative rush.
Mystery

The feeling of mystery is present in many accounts, and underlies a diversity of
explanations, as artists strain to understand and give voice to feeling. Composer
Karlheinz Stockhausen, when questioned about the role of intuition in musical
composition in a 1997 interview, affirmed the mysterious nature of the compositional

experience:

Intuition transforms every normal action into something special that one
doesn’t know oneself. So I am a craftsman, I can start working with
sounds, with apparatuses and find all sorts of new combinations. But when
I want to create something that amazes me and moves me, I need intuition.
I don’t mean an intellectual idea. I need a sound vision, or I need to
become involved, to come into a state where I do something without

knowing why I do it . . . . Intuition comes, according to my own

 

“’4 A. Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. R. Seavert and H. R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1972), 161-162.

75

experience, from a higher world. It is an influence from the cosmos, into

- 6
our human mlnd.l 5

Mystery can be an irritant, reminding us of the limitations of our knowledge and
understanding. For composer-conductor Gunther Schuller, mystery is present, but not a
hindrance to creativity:

As an artist-and I believe I am a thinking artist, not hopefiIlly a mindless
artist—it doesn't bother me that I don't know everything about either the
creative process or its progeny. I am happy to know that it works, and that
in the main 1 can rely on it and the way it fimctions. The fact that there are
unrevealed and incomprehensible mysteries in the creative-arts process
and in our evaluation of its products does not disturb me, although it
arouses my curiosity. But I don't have to know how something works in

order to use it. ’66

About the mystery of creativity, aestheticist Eliseo Vivas wrote, “Mysteries are
not elucidated by encouraging us not to recognize them as mysteries, and the creative act
remains a mystery for the behaviorist.” Those familiar with the arts often express their
feeling that mystery is an integral part of the creative process, but they often doubt the
benefit of attempts to de-mystify it. Lapidaki expounds,

Imagination must be recognized as a mystery, which cannot be conveyed
without loss. And this limitation of teaching is as it should be. After all,
the quality of mystery is a common theme in nearly every composer’s
account (e. g., Boulez, 1986; Harvey, 1999; Ligeti, 1971; Schoenberg,
1975; Stockhausen, 1978). Once a mystery is ‘manipulated,’ something of

 

”’5 Stockhausen, K (1997). Interview by Iara Lee for Modulations.
http://www.furiouscomt’perfectlstockhauseninterviewhtml, par. 27. (accessed June 10, 2008)
”’5 McCutchan, The Muse That Sings, 117.

“’5 G. Schuller, Musings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 248.

76

it may become numb. One can only imply how things are, how things
reveal themselves from the unconscious. No one should attempt anything
more. Failing this, musical creativity remains a predictable academic

exercise (Lapidaki, 2001).167

Some artistic creators, like composer William Bolcom (b. 1938), decline even to
consider the mystery: “I don’t know howl compose — I just do it. It’s like the old joke
about the centipede: somebody asked him how he could walk with all those feet, and
when he thought about it, he fell over.’”68

Mystery should not be confused with mystique. Creative artists apply the label to
that which they simply cannot explain. In contrast to the views of those who, like
Rothenberg and Housman, feel that artists explain their experiences in a way that is
somehow beneficial to them, the expression of mystery is more often an admission of the
inability to determine what exactly is taking place at crucial points in the creative
experience. The fear of resolving that mystery among some is not like the desire to
maintain ignorance of a magician’s techniques of illusion, but a fear that too much
understanding might somehow disrupt a process that seems to work well without
complete understanding.

Trees and Seeds

Inspiration can produce a product that is complete, or nearly complete, but it more

often seems to produce a seed that is pregnant with possibility, leaving the artist with the

work of developing the inspired idea. Though quite different fi'om the popular notion of

inspiration, this concept is common among creative artists. Poet and writer Stephen

 

'67 E. Lapidaki, “Learning from Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experiences in Music
Education,” Philosophy of Music Education Review 15, no.2 (Fall 2007): 107.
'68 A. McCutchan, The Muse That Sings, 24.

77

Spender (1909-1995) spoke of the value of work resulting from the inspired ‘seed’, and
in comparing it with the full-blown, Mozartian type of inspiration, said that, “The result
must be the fullest development in a created aesthetic form of an original moment of
insight, and it does not matter whether genius devotes a lifetime to producing a small
result if that result be immortal”169 Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880), writing under the

pseudonym of George Eliot, said that, “The great difficulty is that the germ must appear

f99170

at a favourable moment, the rest goes of itsel Tchaikovsky wrote that, “Generally

speaking, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly.””'

Ducasse, using the same metaphor, described a process through which a germinal idea
develops:

What generally is present in the artist at the outset is a feeling which, in its
relation to the feeling which the finished elaborate work will embody, may
be characterized both as germinal and as general. It is the germ out of
which gradually grows the feeling finally embodied—the steps in its
grth following contemplation of the object already created at any given

moment. 172

Johannes Brahms described the sense of a seed idea that ferments subconsciously:

When I have found the first phrase of a song, I might shut the book there
and then, go for a walk, do some other work and perhaps not think of it
again for months. Nothing, however, is lost. If I afterwards approach the
subject again, it is sure to have taken shape. I can now really begin to

work173

 

‘69 S. Spender, “The Making of a Poem,” in B. Ghiselin, The Creative Process: Reflections on Invention in
the Arts and Sciences The Creative Process: Reflections on Invention in the Arts and Sciences (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1952, repr. paperback edition, 1985), 116.

170 Harding, An Anatomy of Inspiration, 8.

‘7' Ibid, 8.

”2 Ducasse, “Creative Art, Work, and Play,” 82.

173 Shrady, Moments of Insight: The Emergence of Great Ideas in the Lives of Great Men, 10.

78

Composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) spoke more explicitly of the
relationship of a seed idea and the resulting work in saying that, “It is one thing to

envision in a creative instant of inspiration and it is another thing to materialize one's

vision by painstaking connecting details until they fuse into a kind of organism.” '74

Russian author F yodor Dostoevsky agreed:

You evidently confuse the inspiration, that is, the first instantaneous vision
or emotion in the artist’s soul (which is always present), with the work. I,
for example, write every scene down at once, just as it first comes to me,

and rejoice in it; then I work at it for months and years.175

It is certainly possible that a ‘seed’ idea is the result of much subconscious
thought and the turning over of many ideas, but there are also many instances in which
this seems unlikely. Novelist Henry James (1843-1916), told the story of how a moment
in a Christmas Eve conversation provided the ‘germ’ of inspiration for his work, The
Spoils of Poynton. James related that,

What above all comes back to me with this reminiscence is the sense of
the inveterate minuteness, on such happy occasions, of the precious
particle—reduced, that is, to its mere fruitfill essence. Such is the truth
about the stray suggestion, the wandering word, the vague echo, at touch
of which the novelist’s imagination winces as at the prick of some'sharp
point: its virtue is all in its needle-like quality, the power to penetrate as
finely as possible. This fineness is what communicates the virus of
suggestion, anything more than the minimum of which spoils the

- 17
operatlon. 6

 

174 A. Schoenberg, L. Stein, & G. Schuller, Style and idea: Selected writings of Arnold Schoenberg, trans.
L. Black (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 215.

'75 Madigan & Elwood, Brainstorms and Thunderbolts, 283.

’76 H. James, The Spoils of Poynton (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1908), preface.

79

James’ recognition of the power and purity of a minute and utterly refined idea is rarely
expressed, and raises the question of what it is that the creator should seek.

Whether the inspired idea is a tree or a seed is somewhat irrelevant to our
discussion. To be sure, the idea of an idea springing full-blown into an artist’s mind is,
humanly, more difficult to accept. But again, it is not the purpose of this investigation to
determine the truth of individual accounts, but to consider all of the accounts and look for
shared experiences. It is important to understand that inspiration can be a complete work,
but is usually a small idea that precipitates a torrent of creativity around that idea.

Time and Place

Accounts of the creative experience are filled with examples of inspiration
occurring at times and places unrelated to a designated creative environment. For
example, Israeli composer Shulamit Ran (b. 1949) reveals that,

Several things might be playing in my head for weeks until just the right
thing or what seems to be the right thing presents itself. And those right
things can come at such odd times. One of my more important ideas
arrived while I was waiting at a bus stop, and another came when I was
taking the garbage to the chute — that gives you an idea of how odd, how

unpredictable, those moments can be.177
Henrik Birkvig, typographer for the Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark in
Copenhagen), divulges that he gets his “best ideas in the loo, shower, just before

sleeping, driving, watching TV or something completely unconnected to the work at

hand. '78 Amsterdam artist Otto Kruijssen, says he gets his best ideas,

 

80

...in crazy places: in the car, on my bicycle or in the shower. I used to
keep a waterproof marker in the shower to write things on the walls. Then
I copied them down in a sketchbook later. I also get a lot of ideas in bed.

In the hours between going to bed and falling asleep179

The relationship of sleep-time and inspiration is a common theme, and many, like
Kruijssen, keep notebooks of the ideas that come through inspirational experiences.
Robert Engman (b. 1927), who served as Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at
Yale University and in a similar position at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, shares his experience:

Inspirations and solutions are apt to come to me at night. Perhaps because
everything else has been dispensed with and certain inhibitions are no
longer there. I’ll wake up and be wide awake and know what that thing
I’ve struggled with has to be. If I don’t write it down, or work on it, then
it may not be there, so I have pads of paper and sometimes clay around all

over the place.180

Otto Loewi, who won the Nobel Prize for his study of the chemical transmission of nerve
impulses in 1936, revealed the importance of sleep in his discovery in this account:

The night before Easter Sunday of that year ( 1920) I awoke, turned on the
light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of thin paper. Then I fell
asleep again. It occurred to me at six o’clock in the morning that during
the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable
to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at three o’clock, the idea returned.
It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the
hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered seventeen years ago

was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed

 

'79 Nielsen & Hartmann, Inspired: How Creative People Think, Work and Find Inspiration, 114.
'80 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 350.

81

a sample experiment on a frog heart according to the nocturnal design. Its
results became the foundation of the theory of the chemical transmission
of the nervous impulse.181

William Bradford Cannon, a former physiologist at Harvard Medical School,

described how his sleep was interrupted by new material for his speeches:

As a matter of routine I have long trusted unconscious processes to serve
me — for example, when l have had to prepare a public address. I would
gather points for the address and write them down in a rough outline.
Within the next few nights I would have sudden spell of awakening, with
an onrush of illustrative instances, pertinent phrases and flesh ideas related

to those already listed. Paper and pencil at hand permitted the capture of

these fleeting thoughts before they faded into oblivion182

Just as Stravinsky and Clark sought alternative explanations for the relationship of
accomplishment and feeling at the moment of inspiration, some have find more
commonplace explanations for this relationship between Sleep and inspiration. Wilder
Penfield, Emeritus director of the Montreal Neurological Institute, explained his idea that
people who feel they have inspired creative experiences during sleep probably just woke
up with a fresh outlook, saying that, “when people say that their brain goes on working
during sleep and solves problems, this is probably a false interpretation. The brain
doesn’t do any working on problems during sleep.”183 To the present consideration of
inspiration, however, it matters less what kind of explanation an analyst proposes than the

fact that there is a body of personal accounts relating this kind of perception.

 

18' Madigan & Elwood, Brainstorms and Thunderbolts, 84.

”’2 W. B. Cannon, “The Role of Hunches in Scientific Thought,” in The Creativity Question, ed. A.
Rothenberg & C. R. Hausman, (1945; Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976), 63.
”’3 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 109.

82

Time and place seem to be relevant to the arrival of ideas. Their relevance,
though, is not consistent. Often, ideas come at times and places unrelated to the place
designated for that purpose. Maybe there is less anxiety, or perhaps the mind has worked
subconsciously in the interval. The tendency for ideas to arrive or develop around or
even during sleep-time is a frequent characteristic of creative accounts. Distracting
considerations of the routine schedules and demands of life may have been put to rest for
the day, allowing the mind more dedication to the creative task. How many great ideas
may have been spared by the nearby notebook and pen at times like these? The
significance of the relevance of time and place should not be lost on the aspiring artistic
creator, who can release some of the pressure to create at designated times and in

designated places, realizing that work at those times may produce results at another.

Fomenting the Inspiration Environment

Creative artists, often strongly convinced of the need for inspiration in their work,
take steps to set the stage for inspiration by adjusting the creative environment. Nielsen
and Hartmann’s (2005) Inspired: How creative people think, work and find
inspiration, '84 reveals much about the way that creative artists prepare their environment
to abet inspiration. Most of the creative artists interviewed in the book are active in the
fields of marketing and advertising, and rely on inspiration from moment to moment,
because their success or failure depends on a high volume of production. Surprisingly,
individual preferences for the creative environment are markedly different, though certain
themes predominate. Many artists prefer a clean workspace, but Stockholm architect

Thomas Sandell says, “ My office is open-plan and messy. That’s how I work the best”

 

”’4 Nielsen & Hartmarm, Inspired: How Creative People Think, Work and Find Inspiration.

83

(p. 175). Many keep photos and scrapbooks in the area surrounding their workspace.
Some artists prefer a quiet and serene environment. Anders Lund Madsen, a Copenhagen
comedian and entertainer, explains that “I get all my best ideas when submerged in
water. . . .The hotter the water, the better the ideas” (p. 122). Marksteen Adamson,
Creative Director of UK advertising firm, Arthur Steen Horne Adamson describes a
typical conception of nature as inspiration: “All you need to do is look around at creation
and it humbles you. It is the ultimate inspiration. The bush in Tanzania, my Maglite,
thermos, sleeping bag, tent and sunset. It’s all you need” '85 (p. 8). More often, though,
these creative persons seek more cluttered environments when courting inspiration.

Vicki Maguire, a senior copywriter in London found that, “Sitting on beautiful sand,
watching a beautiful sunset, surrounded by beautiful people. . .I couldn’t think of a bloody
thing” and “So for inspiration, I’d have to say: colour, chaos, noise, dirt, cities and mad
people” (p. 126). Ervin Olaf, a Netherlands photojournalist, remarks that “Silence is the
most important element of my working environment”, but says of inspiration, that he
prefers parties and the nightlife scene (p. 140).

Many artists are intentional about making their work environment most conducive
to inspiration, even if the elements that make the environment conducive varies from
artist to artist. Composer Richard Danielpour (b. 1956) articulates this clearly:
“Sometimes I take walks, sometimes I stay in the shower twice as long, sometimes I take

the train instead of a plane, to help myself get to the listening place.”186 Otto Kruijssen,

 

'85 Nielsen & Hartmann Inspired: How Creative People Think, Work and Find Inspiration, 8.
‘86 McCutchan, The Muse That Sings, 213.

84

Amsterdam painter, plays the same song all day long to get into the right frame of
mind.’87

All of this suggests not that inspiration can be bidden by a set of specific
circumstances, but that the mind and emotions, or state of mind, can be prepared for
inspiration by preparing the creative environment. It also shows how creative ideas, even
inspired ideas, have some connection to some other idea or image. Creative artists prime
the pump, sometimes, by clearing their minds fi'om distraction, or filling them with
collections of ideas, much like children, who rub their feet on a carpet, and then await a

spark of static electricity.

Waiting for Inspiration

Inspiration is seemingly out of the control of the artist, and is not equally
accessible at all times, thus the artist must sometimes wait. Playwright Neil Simon (b.
1927), when asked whether an idea “just kind of grabs you”, responded, “Well,
sometimes I just sit there for months and months. The idea... There is always one thing
that I always look for in the beginning of a play, and that is an event, an important event
in someone’s life.” ”’8 Regarding the waiting quandary, Henry David Thoreau wrote the
following lines in The Poet ’8 Delay, asking,

Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
Compelled to seek a milder day,
And leave no curious nest behind,

No woods still echoing to my lay?189

 

”’7 Nielsen & Hartmann Inspired: How Creative People Think, Work and Find Inspiration, 1 l4.

'88 Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 363.

'89 H. D. Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1906),
366.

85

that,

However, waiting is not always passive. Composer Steve Reich (b. 1936) relates

What I learned from that experience is that it’s very important to make
sure that you put in your hours. There is something called inspiration, and
it comes as a result of Sitting yourself down in fiont of blank music paper
and just working away until something begins to catch fire. If I don’t put

in those hours — and I’m a slow worker — the there ain’t no inspiration]90

Bright Sheng (b. 1955) takes the same approach in composing, explaining,

metaphorically, that,

I often think writing music is like having, for example, an antiques shop.
You have to keep the shop open everyday. Some days nobody comes, but
you still have to be there. Once in a while somebody comes in and
purchases a precious object for a large amount of money. If you are not
there that day, you will not make the sale. It’s very important to be

mentally ready to receive when the inspiration comes.191

Defining Inspiration

Without thoughtful examination of the words of creative artists, defining

inspiration would be merely conjecture. In the past, this has resulted in narrow

definitions that do not take in the full range of experience and thought. The original

definition of inspiration, as something entering the mind from outside, was usually

narrowly interpreted to indicate a supernatural connection of some kind. Few others have

offered other definitions of inspiration. In 195 8, Vincent Tomas wrote that, “Admittedly,

the concept of inspiration we have been making use of is in need of clarification. . .That it

 

‘90 McCutchan, The Muse That Sings, 19.

‘9‘ Ibid., 205.

86

”192 - . .
However, Insplratlon

should be already there is, for our purpose, the essential point.
is no longer effectively there, and the need for clarification is imminent. Lee posits this
psychologically based definition:
Inspiration is an unconscious mental process dictated by the dynamic
needs and quantitative relationships which comprise the emergency
situation described, and intended to relieve it. It consists of an effort to
achieve in fancy, and of oneself, the restitution to life and organic integrity
of the particular person towards who the artist had allowed himself to
experience again the impulse to destroy; the motive for doing so resides in
the great need to render oneself again persona grata with the maternal root
of conscience. '93
Lee’s definition does not resonate with the accounts of the creative experience that have
been included here. The examinations of accounts of creative persons and the
characteristics bound to them, however, call out for a broader definition, and one that
describes inspiration experientially, rather than psychologically; one that encapsulates the
accounts of creative artists, rather than the educated guesses of outside observers. We

can extract from the various accounts and explanations presented, thus far, that the

inspiration experience commonly include any of the following characteristics:

 

'92 v. Tomas, “Creativity in Art,” in Creativity in the Arts, ed. v. Tomas (1958; Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 108.

'93 H. B. Lee, “A Theory Concerning Free Creation in the Inventive Arts,” in The Creativity Question, ed.
A. Rothenberg & C. R Hausman (1940; Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976), I31.

87

I. perceived suddenness and/or transience

2. the sense of a rush of creative power

U)

a perception that control of the creative process by the
creative person is temporarily suspended

reflects a mixture of mental process and feeling

is a mystery that occurs, and is explained, in diverse ways
occurs at unpredictable times and places

results in both fully-developed and ‘seed’ ideas

99089.4”

sometimes follows long periods of waiting and/or work
10. actively sought by creative artists
11. subject to differences in the creative environment and in

creative persons

Figure 1. Characteristics of the inspiration experience

I would suggest the following definition derived from these considerations:

Inspiration — an experience common in artistic creativity, which, though often
sought by creative persons, arrives capriciously, and can result in fillly-
developed ideas, or creative ‘seeds’ that are perceived as ripe for
development. This is sometimes accompanied by a creative rush which
facilitates a sense of heightened creativity. It involves both feeling and
mental process, which may occur simultaneously or in sequence.

Accounts of the experience and explanations for it are diverse.

Summary

It is clear that all of these descriptions, in composite, defy original concepts of
inspiration. It seems that the word should be adjusted to fit a larger set of understandings.
What is common among the categories is that something can happen during the creative

process that provides a way to the answer that satisfies an artist. It is possible that

88

inspiration is, more often, simply a way to arrive at the one possibility from a nearly
infinite set of possibilities that will satisfy the artistic creator as the only real answer. It is
apparent that inspiration does not have a singular meaning in this context, and that the
arrival at that crucial moment of creativity is not achieved by a single means.

Could the characteristics of inspiration and the definition of inspiration been
deduced simply from common sense and observation? Perhaps. It is important, however,
that in this case, they did not result simply from common sense or logic, but that they
were derived from examination of the accounts of practicing creative artists. The validity
resulting from this kind of process allows us to consider practical application to creative
arts education, and particularly to creative music education, and in Chapter Five we will

proceed to do just that.

89

Chapter Five

Conclusions and Instructional Application

The processes of creative thought which include, in the cases we shall
review, inspiration, are best explained in the words of those who

possessed the creative faculty.194

The Untimely Demise of Inspiration

The gradual disappearance of the term inspiration in the contemporary discourse
on the creative process was a result of multiple factors. However, the accelerated
recession of the term seems to have coincided with the growth of a
materialist/naturalist/humanist worldview, and this is probably the greatest factor in its
decline. Twentieth century interest in the creative process, marked by Wallas’ The Art of
Thought (1926), which outlined discrete stages in the creative process, generally ignored
the accounts of creative arts professionals, when analyzing and making conclusions about
the creative process. Perhaps Wallas’ work was a convenient way of putting an end to
the inconvenient notion of inspiration, and so was adopted without empirical testing.
Consequent emphasis upon empirical research resulted in a dichotomy, in which
empirical research and a number of phenomenological studies of the creative process
took place during the same time, but with no interaction between the two approaches.

The general disregard for the accounts of creative artists about their creative
experience has been a mistake. The challenge of attempting to make sense of individual

accounts did not justify their omission from the investigative process. The accounts are so

 

'94 Harding, An Anatomy of Inspiration, 8.

90

numerous, and from such highly respected sources, and consistently bear such
commonality of features that they cannot be ignored. AS has been demonstrated, it is
quite possible to make some general conclusions about the creative experience in the arts
without validating or invalidating individual accounts. In the end, external analysis is no
substitute for internal experience.

A persistent materialist viewpoint bears great responsibility for this problem.
Prominent music educator David Elliott characterizes, from a materialist perspective, the
great divide between accounts of inspiration experiences and cognitive scientists:

Underlying the belief that creativity depends on a trick form of cognition
or a special kind of illumination process is another false assumption: that
creating is essentially passive. In this view, creative people work under
the control of special urges, flashes of insight, special feelings, or a
muse. . .In contrast, cognitive scientists today tend to hold that what goes
on in consciousness during the making of creative products involves the
same kinds of cognitive strategies we use to solve everyday problems,

including metaphorical, analogical, and lateral forms of thinking195

The view of Elliott and other cognitivists is based on a personal belief, or faith
system, based upon the premise that the universe is completely defined by its material
composition. This, by definition, removes many forms of inspiration from consideration.
Elliott is forthwith in acknowledging and explaining his point of View as a materialist,196
but his position, and that of other cognitivists must be acknowledged as a faith-based

system, since its premises cannot be proven. In Elliott’s statement above, there are two

particular weaknesses. First, the cognitive view veritably eliminates feeling as a part of

 

’95 Elliott, Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education, 223.
‘96 Ibid, 51-52.

91

the creative process. Granted, cognitivists see emotion and feeling as chemical-based
interactions within the brain, but this does not really resonate with human experience.
Humans intuitively understand a difference between thinking and feeling—a difference
which is not adequately explained from a strictly cognitive perspective. Second, the
mention of “special urges, flashes insight, special feelings or a muse” actually bears some
resemblance to many of the contemporary accounts of composers and other creative
artists. Whether it is actuality, or merely the perception of the artists, there is a
contradiction between the accounts and the viewpoint of cognitivists. This is borne out in
another statement by Elliott, in which he pronounces that,

“Contrary to myth, then, creative products do not arise by accident, or by

spontaneous insight, or as a result of unconscious processes.”197

In contrast to this statement are the many examples of personal accounts that
attribute inspirational moments particularly to spontaneous insight or unconscious
processes. Cognitivists have made no effort to address the differences between
perceptions of artists and their own analytical approach. The failure to investigate
accounts of creative artists, at least as perceptions, is more problematic, because it
represents an effort to develop an explanation, while intentionally eliminating a primary
source of data. Is it possible that there are other areas of human investigation in which
this point of view has disregarded indispensable data? Cognitivists have arrived at
empirical explanations of the creative process that make no attempt to connect with
experiential accounts of professional artists. Empirical explanations that do not correlate

with real human experience in the arts are of little practical value.

 

'97 Elliott, Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education, 229.

92

Artistic Creativity as a Unique Experience

Although there are similarities between the creative experience in the arts and in
other areas, there are clearly unique aspects in all of the generally accepted parts of the
creative experience, including the creative person, creative process, creative environment
and creative product. Personal accounts of experience in the arts are correspondingly
unique. In addition, there is a human component, a feeling component that is unique and
integral to artistic creativity. These points in association argue strongly for discrete
treatment of the creative process in the arts. This means that some research in creativity
should be designated strictly toward an understanding of the creative experience in the
arts. Investigations of the creative process in the arts must take feeling, as well as

thought, into consideration.

Inspiration Renewed

The removal of inspiration from theories on the creative process has been assisted
by (1) amalgamation of the arts with science and mathematics in considering the creative
process, (2) omission of personal accounts, in the discourse on the creative process, and
(3) the contentious history of inspiration. But its removal was premature. Not all
creative acts are a result of inspiration, nor do all creative artists experience the
phenomenon, but inspiration has been a common and consistent theme over time and
among artists of all genres. A broader definition of inspiration results from examination
of common and recurrent characteristics in personal accounts, and within this broadened
definition, the accounts seem to fall into at least six categories. Inspiration is not

adequately replaced by intuition, ‘aha’, or illumination; rather, these seem to distinguish

93

individual aspects of inspiration. Intuition, for example, implies the advance discernment
of possibilities that seems to occur sometimes in conjunction with the inspiration
experience. ‘Aha’ highlights the sudden and momentary nature of inspiration.
Illumination could well be a description of the mental and emotional response to a new
realization, also common to the inspiration experience. Inspiration can contain all of
these meanings, and should be returned to a position within the theory of creative process

in the arts.

Application to Instruction

Considerable effort has been expended in this work to review the history of
inspiration, to consider the unique aspects of inspiration and creativity in the arts, to
examine the accounts of artistic creators and others, and to proffer a broader definition of
inspiration that is aligned with these accounts and with logical reflection on the creative
process in the arts. So, what does it matter? It will probably not change the way that
professional artists create. They have been creating with general disregard to the analysis
of process that has been undertaken by others. However, it does matter greatly in the
teaching of creative arts. The creative arts, as a profession, have developed over many
centuries, and the processes by which creative artists create will probably not be affected
greatly by new observation or analysis. The teaching of creativity in the arts, on the other
hand, still holds many mysteries. The development of school music instruction in
composition and improvisation has been slower than in the visual and literary arts, in part
because of the emphasis upon live performance in music. This has also been reflected in

the preparation of music teachers. The implications of teaching, encouraging and

94

directing inspiration as a part of the creative process with students may bring that process
closer to the way that professionals create, which should be one of the primary objects of
education in the creative arts. What follows are some of the specific ways that this may

affect music education.

Mentors by Proxy

Educators in music performance integrate performance practice in their
instruction, so that students will begin to look at their performances in the same way that
professionals do, and for the sake of authenticity. Through this instruction, music
performance students learn when to use vibrato, what forte meant in the classical period,
and how long quarter notes should be in a particular context. Performance-oriented
music instruction has achieved recognized achievement on the basis of this model.
Creative arts students, who learn about inspiration and other professional-related aspects
of their art, are learning to create in the way that professionals create. The creative
professional should be the model for the creative student. Lapidaki emphasizes that we
must help students “grasp the essence of influential professional composers’ creative
concerns, even if they do not intend to become professional composers.”I98 At the same
time, we are referring primarily to the instruction of children. Teachers in the creative
arts are thus constrained to teach from opposite perspectives, first considering the
capacities of the young learner, and then remembering the goal in imitating the

professional.

 

‘98 Lapidaki, “Learning fi'om Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experiences in Music
Education,”, I.

95

Educators in higher education have an obligation to insure that music education
majors are well-acquainted with the craft of music composition and with the process as
perceived by professional composers, as well as in teaching strategies appropriate to
elementary and secondary school learners. Music education students, just as the students
they are to teach, must be acquainted with composers’ accounts of the creative process.
Music education researchers are similarly bound to investigate educational aspects of
creative music education from perspective of the creative professional as well as from
empirical research.

Jeremy Beck, in The Composer Within, describes the responsibilities of a music
composition teacher as a) to impart technical knowledge, b) to give historical perspective,
c) to provide real-world facts about the profession and d) to share personal strategies for
growth.199 Teachers of music composition may able to impart much of their own
personal experience as composers, but they can validate their experience and vastly
broaden it for the students by exposing them to the experiences of many composers and
other creative artists, whether the composers are living or only survived by their personal
accounts. The accounts provide pertinent information about the perceptions and habits of
professional composers, and also help students understand the human side of composers.
This will result in a better understanding of the creative process, and a better connection
with the professionals in the domain. Some of these accounts might resonate, more or
less, with particular students, helping students to find their own best approach to creating.

Again, Lapidaki elucidates,

 

’99 J. Beck, “The Composer Within,” Teaching Music 8 no. 4 (Feb 2001): 54-57.

96

Even though the question arises as to the extent to which children's
experience of composing resonates with those of professional adult
composers, it seems that the general themes that underlie the opinions of
the latter are not irrelevant or immaterial for real-world issues concerning

the music creativity of any person of any age and music background, if he

01' she wants to 0011113086200

Inspiration

Account to their own accounts, the inspiration experience is common to the
creative process of expert creators. While instruction in techniques, history and style are
important, omission of instruction about the inspiration experience makes for an
incomplete education in the creative arts. Even though inspiration is not a factor in all
creative efforts, students should learn about the characteristics of the inspiration
experience, how the creative environment is perceived to affect the probability of
inspiration, and how professionals often prepare their creative environments. They
should understand that creative work must proceed with or without inspirational
experience, and that the experience is not common to all artists. Creative arts students,
who learn about inspiration and other professional-related aspects of their art, are
learning to how professionals create. Of course, this is not the only objective of creative
arts instruction, for all students should have the experience to create in some measure, but
they will not all be capable of doing it in the same manner as professionals. Should
beginning composition students be expected to encounter inspiration in their early
efforts? Probably not, but we do not really know how or to what degree age is a factor in
the phenomenon. Student should know what inspiration is, what characterizes it, and

why it is important to many professionals. Accounts of successful creators manifest a

 

20° Lapidaki, “Learning from Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experiences in Music
Education,”, 111.

97

great diversity among people who create and in their approaches to artistic creativity, and
at the same time, it seems clear that it is not necessary to be a genius to have a good idea.
A Variety of Approaches

Professionals often look for ways to prepare their environment to facilitate
inspiration, and they do it in individual ways. These adjustments to the creative
environment might be related to personality or to the type of artistic media. Students
should be taught to be aware of the ways in which environment can affect their creativity,
while being encouraged, at the same time, to work within the limits of various
environments. Teachers, benefitting from an understanding of the different sources
professionals find for inspiration, might avoid the practice of settling upon one form of
inspiration for all students in all creative projects. Visual imagery, for example, may be
very helpful for some students at particular moments, but not helpfirl to all students or at
all times. As Aaron Copland said,

It is very difficult to describe the creative experience in such a way that it
would cover all cases. One of the essentials is the variety with which one
approaches any kind of artistic creation. It doesn’t start in any one

particular way and it is not always easy to say what gets you going.2°‘

Selectivity

Because inspiration often follows long periods of waiting and work, we can infer
that the first idea is not necessarily the best idea. Students are often prone to accept the
first thing that comes to mind, but professionals do not accept the first idea without
evaluating it, comparing it with other ideas, considering the extent to which additional

ideas could be developed from the original idea. Ideas are frequently just the seed for

 

20‘ Rosner & Abt, The Creative Experience, 273.

98

possibilities that are greater than the original idea. Some ideas that do not bear fruit
initially find purpose later on, when viewed from another perspective. Richard
Feynman’s Nobel Prize winning theory, explaining previous ideas of magnetic fields as
the interaction of a series of individual electron charges, was based on an idea he had
eight years earlier, which was subjected to time and correction before being complete. In
addition to this, study of the accounts of professionals suggests that they often wait for

ideas that they expect to spring from inspirational experiences.

Work Ethic

Students often have the perception that ideas are supposed to just come to them,
but inspired ideas do not come on demand, but occur at unpredictable times and places.
Creative professionals know that inspiration arrives unpredictably, but that they must
usually spend a lot of time, and perhaps on many different occasions, doing the work of
thinking, before but coming up with an idea worth developing. Artists’ block highlights
the principle that that, many times, really good ideas will not come, even when great
effort is expended. At the same time, there is a recurring theme among the many
accounts I have examined, that ideas can come at any time, not just in appropriated time

in a studio or lab.

Regulating the Creative Environment
Educators and students should consider the importance of the manipulating the
creative environment to encouraging inspiration. As we have seen, professionals vary in

their practical preferences for chaos or order, silence or noise, and take efforts to adjust

99

the environment to favor their creative efforts, and these may be changeable. Teachers
should consider that different students may thrive in different kinds of environment, and
think about changing the environment while observing the effects upon individual
students’ work. Students should be encouraged to examine their own efforts in
relationship to type of environment, to see if they are able to produce more effectively in

one type of environment, rather than another.

Challenges of the Creative Arts Environment

Professional artists face challenges that are specific to the creative arts
environment. Creative arts teachers should help students to understand that there are
mysteries in the creative process that may never be resolved, and that even professionals
continue to work with this understanding. In the light of the artistic paralysis that
professionals can encounter, and the complicated network of possibilities in artistic
creativity, students should be directed to focus upon the ideas, which release creativity,

rather than upon decisions, which can restrict it.

Creative Blocks

Understanding inspiration helps students to understand that not all creative work
sessions have the same levels of productivity or quality. Sometimes, qualified
professionals cannot even create an artistic product for some length of time. This is not
because they cannot conceive an idea, but because they work and wait for an idea that
particularly suits their expectations. Arnold Schoenberg pointed out that, “There are

times when I am unable to write a single example of simple counterpoint in two voices,

100

such as I ask sophomores to do in my classes. And in order to write a good example of
this sort, I must receive the co-operation of inspiration.”202 But creative blocks do

eventually come to an end, and they are common among creative artists.

Motivation

While teachers should support and encourage students through activities that may
be directed toward the mundanely creative act, they should simultaneously be nudging
students toward exceptionally creative acts, depending upon the unique abilities of each
student. Students should learn to evaluate ideas thoroughly before accepting them as a
final solution. At the same time, teachers may watch for signs of artistic potential that

may include a natural tendency to work toward the exceptionally creative.

Philosophical Considerations

There are also aesthetic and philosophical implications resulting from this
discussion on inspiration and artistic creativity. Students should learn and understand
that creativity in the arts is not simply a problem-solving experience, but is a fusion of
mental and emotional processes, resulting in a product that is infused with uniquely
human qualities. Meaning in artistic creativity is tied to personal experience, history and
culture, and the ability to communicate these through the medium of the created product.
Philosophy and the arts are closely related. Artists create from a philosophical

perspective, and philosophy helps us to comprehend artistic products and trends.

 

202 A. Schoenberg, L. Stein, & G. Schuller, Style and idea: Selected writings of Arnold Schoenberg, 67.

101

Teachers in creative arts should provide a philosophical and historical background to
their instruction, to deepen students’ understanding of their art.
Suggestions for further investigation

My investigation into the subject of inspiration points to the need for
firrther examination of the creative experience. The moment of inception of a creative
idea is still not clearly understood. Is inspiration an actual event in itself, or is it merely
the anticipation or reflection upon a decision that is about to be made, or was just made?
Are creative artists people inclined to have more inspiration experiences, are they just
people who use make of the ideas they have? What about ideas that the creative artist
considered to be inspired, but which had no promising result, or never received critical
favor? Susan K. Perry, in Flow and the Art of Fiction, tells us that, “Common among
writers at all levels is to experience a tiny flash of something like inspiration, sometimes
followed by a resounding. . .nothing.”203 The author has found no accounts of such
circumstances, yet they must exist in abundance, which would be to say that inspiration
does not guarantee success within a domain.

The paucity of investigation in the area of creative inspiration has left a field ripe
with questions for further investigation. What kinds of observation or studies might help
refine our understanding of inspiration, and how might creative professions help deepen
that understanding? Questions have been raised in these accounts about the varying
perceptions of creative artists on the inspirational experience. Exactly when does the

feeling of ‘aha’ occur? Is it a emotional accompaniment simultaneous to the arrival of an

 

203 S. K. Perry, “Flow and the Art of Fiction,” in Creativity Across Domains: Faces of the Muse, ed. J. C.
Kaufman & J. Baer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 24.

102

204 - -
, or rs a reactron to

idea, an anticipation based on the “sense of emergent possibility
what has already occurred? Does the mind work subconsciously on problems
circumscribed in the conscious mind, and if so, how? What about the feeling of a
creative rush, a common characteristic of creative artists? Does the single new idea open
a pathway to other, more easily selected options, or is there a psychological release of
tension that allows the creator to work with reduced anxiety? What are the characteristics
of the successful ‘seed’ or ‘germ’ ideas that often result fiom the inspiration experience?
Is there a psychological relationship between creative artists and their choice of creative
environment? In what other areas of life do people experience experiences similar to
those of creative artists? Are creative artists those who have these experiences, or do
those who have these experiences just tend to gravitate towards the arts? Can we expect
students in elementary and secondary school to experience inspiration? If so, how will
we know?

There is still much that is unexplained about how inspiration waned as a part of
the creative process. Was it a result of scientific theory developed in isolation from
experience or perhaps a result of a gradual change in feelings about supernatural
influence? Could it have been accelerated by particular individuals with strong agendas?
If so, by whom? Are there other similar areas of study that might have been marginalized
by individual worldview?

Finally, how do we go about repairing the divergence apparent in the

discrepancies between experiential accounts and empirical study on the creative

experience? In the end, we know that the truth about the creative experience in the arts

 

204 Clark, The Theory of Inspiration, 21.

103

should be one in which empirical evidence and experiential reports should converge and

reinforce one another.

104

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