الابداع : أمس واليوم وغداً ١_a , كتاب الإبداع وتربية

Chapter one

Creativity: yesterday, today and tomorrow

From Goulton to 1950

Although geniuses in the various fields of human actions have always been the subject of distinction and appreciation, it was Galton's English studies on geniuses in 1869 that drew the attention of scientists to geniuses. In fact, Golton did not seriously try to understand the mental processes by which geniuses produce their new ideas, but he directed his study towards the genetic determinants of creative achievement. Golton's study became one of the classics of genetics, but for many reasons he failed to reach conclusive results.

Achieving a correct understanding of creative persons and the processes involved in creativity is the responsibility of psychologists. But the first psychologists were facing great difficulties in understanding simple psychological processes such as sensation, perception and remembering, which made them do not have neither the time nor the courage necessary to discuss a problem such as the problem of creativity. It is well known that old psychology books dealt with the subject of creativity, if they dealt with it, under the title (Imagination) or (Creative Imagination) and they did not stop at it for long.

And when behaviorism dominated psychology - in America at least - it excluded the topic of creativity among the psychological topics it excluded. In the meantime, the psychological rose - especially the rose of intelligence, had turned its century and created among it » (Binet) the French, the pillars of intelligence that the countries of the world, especially America, took. The first intelligence prizes, the "Beneh" and the "Terman" prizes, aimed at predicting school achievement, especially at the primary level, where much attention is not paid to creativity.

But the lack of correlation between the results of the intelligence awards and the results of the tests that were considered a function of creativity was noticed from the beginning, even before the intelligence awards became a reality. This was noted by Dearborn in 1898, Chassell in 1916, Andrews in 1930 and Welsh in 1946. Terman came to the conclusion that creative talents and traits fall outside the scope of intelligence, which is more related to educational talents. Today's scientists have surpassed (Terman) until they have come to say that intelligence includes, when we look at it broadly, on several components, some of which, at least, are not closely related to others.

If and in any case, the view that prevailed in the first half of our twentieth century was that intelligence was considered a unified ability that could not be analyzed, and the factor analysis came to contradict that.

Whatever it is, several attempts have been made to study creativity and many methods have been used to identify it and the processes that make it up. All of this took place in the first half of this century. Useful results were reached, although it was not possible to rely on them. Perhaps the best of what these studies have come back with is a list of thinking stages that appear to the creator in a typical manner and in all his creative processes, starting from feeling the need for creative effort and ending with realizing the creative idea and applying it. Wallace and Rossman have suggested steps to take place during the total creative event. Rossman's steps were related to inventors in particular, and Wallace's steps were related to creative production in general.

Only a few scholars and researchers took seriously the steps proposed by (Wallace), which are the well-known steps: preparation, spawning, inspiration, and verification. One of these few scientists was the psychologist (Patrick Patrick) who tried between 1935 and 1941 to determine - by laboratory experimentation - whether the steps (Wallace) were correct and whether they were done in the same order that he mentioned and what role each step plays in the course of life. Complete creative accident. I have found that these stages are essential, but their arrangement in the manner specified by (Wallace) is not always the case. This was supported by late research conducted by other scholars.

Among the important things that the researchers concerned with regarding creativity is the issue of the age at which creativity is more likely to occur than others, then the issue of the quantity and quality of creativity and its relationship to age.

Studying creativity since 1950

Indeed, the thirties and forties witnessed an increase in interest in the study of creativity, but the year 1950 is considered a turning point in this study. For this reason, we will try to point out some of them quickly.

There were many reasons for this interest, because the Second World War, among other things, called for great efforts to invent, innovate and improve in the various fields of life, especially those related to war. Then the advent of peace, which was not peace in the true sense of the word, plunged the world into the mire of the Cold War, which required great efforts in the field of invention and creativity, and hence the growing demand for invented brains, from which there was never enough of what the nations participating in this Cold War needed.

Then the space age began, and the race escalated between the two great giants, America and the Soviet Union. There were missiles, electronic brains, and so on. As a result of that, the increasing demand for creative brains, and thus the insistence on psychologists to reveal these brains and define the meaning of creativity, its components, and the methods of its formation, and then the mother’s request to her educators and schools to prepare the largest possible number of creators and inventors.

In order to demonstrate the validity of what we referred to regarding the growing interest in creativity and creators, we set an example in the book (Alex F. Osborn), who wrote in 1953 his famous book on applied imagination, which hardly appeared until psychologists, educators, and those concerned with matters of creativity and invention grabbed it until it was printed in many editions in A short time and it was translated into many languages, which indicates a global interest in the subject. Then Osborne established the Foundation for Creative Education and the Institute for Creative Problem Solving, which worked for twelve years at the State University of New York at Buffalo and formed the Foundation for Creative Education, which publishes a magazine with this name to this day.

The research that began since the middle of this century and for the reasons we mentioned and others branched out and differentiated and followed several paths and asked the basic questions: What? And how? And why? Efforts have been made, and still are, to solve some practical problems based on these researches.

It is natural for research in a new field that has no history to be tactile in nature and not based on experimental hypotheses. Indeed, the research of many scientists after 1952 was of this kind, and it was launched from different starting points and dealt with different fields and groups. The results of this research were that highly creative people, at least in the groups studied, tend to be very interested in aesthetic and theoretical matters, and they also tend to be intuitive and introverted, as for their condition.
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