التخيل والحدس .. كتاب الإبداع وتربية

imagination and intuition

Before we look at the creative process in depth, we must discuss some other concepts that are often mentioned associated with creativity. Among these concepts is imagination and intuition. The word imagination has a number of different meanings. Thus, we can say: I can imagine what this house will look like when it is built. Or “Imagine what the Arab warriors were like in the Battle of Al-Qadisiyah, and in these two cases, we mean by imagining things that do not exist before the eyes of what happened in the past or will happen in the future, and the meaning of that is the ability to form images or mental concepts of things or things that man has not experienced. We conjure up in our minds not only possible things, but things or events far from the present reality, which are simply things created by our imagination. Thus, in the dead of winter, while we are sitting by the hearth in which the fire is raging, we can fly with our imagination to a land where the sun shines, warmth spreads, and trees flourish. When we do this, we use our imagination in what scientists call a daydream. There is no doubt that the distance is not far between a waking dream and a hallucination, or between a normal dream in which our imaginations operate.

There is another use of the word (imagine), and that is when we talk about imaginative thinkers, or children playing with fertile imaginations. We say about an article that “was written in an imaginative spirit.” And by that we mean that things happened with some kind of invention, even if we do not agree with exaggeration in invention, when we say “that the imagination of so-and-so has run wild with him instead of saying” he is lying.

The truth is that the term “imagination” always means going beyond the given facts. Thus, in the case of the child (Goose), the addition, the mere addition of numbers, was not an act of imagination. But discovering the relationship behind these numbers was an act of imaginative and therefore creative. (Bruner) suggests using the term Formal Effectiveness to describe what Goss did. It is limited to organizing the elements so that a person can see relationships that were not clear before and collect them in a way that did not exist. Despite our ability to imagine things that are not real, these things are actually connected in one way or another to parts of our real world. It seems, for example, that the paintings drawn by German artists of the Holy Land were similar in detail to what was present in Germany itself.

It seems at first glance that it is easy to say the contrast between regular logical thinking and imaginative thinking. In systemic thinking, the goal, the problem, and the method are clearly defined, and the process is well-studied and methodical. Finally, the problem is what the thinker can think about. Such systemic thinking is applied in situations where plans can be drawn up and where the number of variables and hypotheses is limited. As for insight, it occurs in solving confusing problems and is accompanied by the emergence of the unexpected, at the beginning with a sense of frustration, then an attempt at unification, feelings of amazement, and finally exposure and achievement.

(Hutchinson 1949) considers that these two models are the two ends of a measure of thinking. And (Bartlett 1958) agrees with him. He assumes that there are types of thinking distributed over a certain range, and he calls the two ends of this range thinking within closed systems, adventurous thinking. A person may be tempted to unite between imaginative or insightful thinking and adventurous thinking on the one hand, and systemic thinking (which lacks the imaginative streak) and thinking according to closed systems.. But this unification is neither accurate nor accurate.

Careful analysis shows us that imaginative thinking is, in fact, an important part of thinking within closed systems, and that the most important difference between systemic thinking and imaginative thinking is a difference in the size of the step that the thinker must take. We say this despite the existence of other differences such as the level of consciousness in which it occurs. Attempting to solve, bearing in mind that verifying the solution and fixing it with facts necessitates, of course, resorting to systemic thinking.

There is another way to look at the distinction between routine, systemic thinking and creative thinking, considering the first is characterized by access to common responses, while the second reaches uncommon and unfamiliar responses. Maltzman 1955).

If we return to Bartlett, we find that he puts at one end of the scale of thinking thinking within closed systems, and at the other end, adventurous thinking, which is represented by experimental thinking and in the thinking of the artist. He describes the contrast between the two as follows:

The thinker in a closed system is in a position where he contemplates a finished building. In many cases, the building is very complex and well-thought-out, and its building rules are difficult to estimate. Nevertheless, the thinker is in the position of a viewer looking for something that he considers always present... As for the experimental thinker, he is in the position of a person who must use all the tools at his disposal to complete a structure that has not yet been completed and that he himself will not be able to complete.

In experimental or adventurous thinking, the fancy becomes wider, the structure more loose, and the most important task shifts from solving the problem to formulating it in the best possible way, or to asking the right questions. Although there is more need and scope for imagination in adventurous thinking, imaginative thinking can happen in many fields and contexts.