Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

In a message dated 6/26/2006 6:22:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time, sai@SAIZAI.COM
writes:

>It seems to me that a majority of conlanging is tinkering rather than
>creativity. I think that's why a lot of it doesn't really interest me.
Given how the word "tinkering" is used in the essay ("Tinkering consists of
exploring relatively minor variations on known themes, or subjecting new
stimuli to an array of already known techniques."), it's fair to say that conlanging
is mostly tinkering.  But so is just about everything else.

Physics is mostly tinkering: surely the amount of time physicists spend
creating entirely novel theories is less than the amount they spend working out the
consequences of existing theories, thinking up experimaents to test existing
theories, measuring more precisely physical constants already known frome
existing theories, etc.  As the essay itself says, "Even the most creative people
spend most of their time tinkering. That's probably a hallmark of real
creativity . . ."

I'm at a loss to think of a field that _isn't_ mostly tinkering.  As I said,
physics surely doesn't qualify, and neither would any science I can think of,
and probably no branch of art either.

Doug