Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

Sai quoted:
<<
"Tinkering consists of exploring relatively minor variations on known
themes, or subjecting new stimuli to an array of already known
techniques."
 >>

This is my problem with the article.  If this is tinkering, then
*everything* is tinkering: there is no such thing as creativity.
The definition of "minor" there is nebulous, of course, but other
than that, everything that Dutch describes (even his examples
of creativity) sound like tinkering, only "better" tinkering, in
his opinion.  Every new idea has to come from somewhere;
has to be an extension of some principle that's already known.
I mean, Mozart?  It's still music.  It may be good, it may be
"new", but it's not like it's not music that's created with a piano--
even using scales and time signatures that were familiar to
him.  It's still tinkering.

The geometry example is terrible.  So there are these 17 plane
space groups, and only three cultures use all 17.  This doesn't
appear to me to say anything about anything, other than that
there are 17 plane space groups in geometric design, and only
three cultures use all 17.  Why is one culture more creative if
they discover all 17, whereas another culture discovers 12?
Plane space groups 13-17 are just variations on the same old
geometric art thing.  Why should one have to explore every
aspect of every single domain one encounters just to earn
the title "creative"?  And even if you can prove numerically
that the difference between two plane space groups is more
"creative" than the difference between the variations found
within one plane space group, how can one reliably extend
this to other artforms, like writing, let's say?  And even if
one did, and one proved, for example, that Beckett's The
Unnamable is a more creative novel qua "the novel" than
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, that's not going to make The
Unnamable better than The Great Gatsby, or Beckett a better
writer of fiction than Fitzgerald necessarily.

I think I'm pretty much of the same opinion as Mark Reed: by
Dutch's definition, it's all tinkering at some level.

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/