What is the source of creative thought? Put differently, where do new ideas come from?
This is a loaded question, and perhaps one of the most basic philisophical conundrums in human experience. When we try to define the word “imagination”, we come across an inevitable tautology.
Q: “What is imagination?”
A: “The ability to generate novel information.”
Q: “How do we generate this novel information?”
A: “By using our imagination.”
We know that our minds are able to think of new things, and we have learned quit a bit about the mechanisms for forming these new thoughts into useful constructs. There are two basic processes at work, according to scholars: Divergence, where a multitude of possible solutions to a problem are considered, and convergence, where the ideas are sifted and brought together in a coherent fashion. This is what is meant by creativity.
However, this leaves the basic question unanswered: Where do the ideas come from in the first place?
Imagination is so close to the core of what makes us human that there is a natural reluctance to look at it too closely. If we analyze and unravel the very essence of humanity, will there be anything meaningful left? Most people prefer to look at imagination from a teleological perspective. Novel thoughts come from divine inspiration, from the soul, from the Platonic realm of ideas.
As poetic as these explanations are, they aren’t particularly useful in helping us understand the process. That doesn’t mean they are invalid, it simply means that a mechanistic approach is more helpful.
I think looking at simpler organisms help us to understand how humans work. We think of imagination as being uniquely human, but is it really? Can other species of animals create new ideas?
They can, and they do. Not only do individual animals come up with new ways to manipulate their environment, but they can teach other individuals, who pass the information along until it becomes a cultural entity. However, there is a key difference between how animals come up with ideas and how humans do it.
Animals figure things out by doing them. They try different things and discover what works best as they try them.
Humans, on the other hand, visualize. They work things out in their minds ahead of time. They use their linguistic abilities to analyze the ideas internally, using an inner monologue. They apply reasoning and experience to “test” the idea without actually acting it out.
This, of course, has led to the propagation of many ideas that are just plain wrong. The problem of crackpot ideas is a failing that animals, for the most part, do not share (although B.F. Skinner did note that pigeons are prone to superstition).
However, here is a key difference between animals and humans: Humans imagine things that have no obvious practical application, and they work tirelessly to bring these ideas to fruition. We owe all of our art, music, and poetry to this fact.
I won’t go into the reasons why this obsession to create gives humans an evolutionary advantage. I am merely interested in the mechanisms involved.
This brings us to another attribute that humans share with many animals, a bizarre and puzzling one that has left scientists scratching their heads for decades: REM sleep.
As is well known, Rapid Eye Movement sleep is a stage in the sleep cycle in which we have our most vivid dreams. The first observation about this sleep stage was that the eyes moved restlessly under the sleeping eyelids, as if scanning some imaginary landscape. People woken during this stage reported vivid dreams.
Later, experimenters learned that the parts of the brain associated with motor control were highly activated during this stage. When the brainstem mechanism for shutting down the voluntary muscles was disabled, animals appeared to “act out” their dreams.
While REM sleep was only discovered in the last century (oddly, because it could have been observed at any time by watching someone sleep!), dreams have long been a source of fascination in every culture. People have been trying to analyze the content of dreams for millenia. At first, it was assumed that they foretold the future. Later, the images were interpreted as symbols that revealed hidden insights into the dreamers personality.
As it turns out, the earlier assumption was closer to the truth.
More coming…
