Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

Sai Emrys, On 26/06/2006 23:21:
> http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/WhyAntiInt.htm
>
> See the section entitled "tinkering versus creativity" (but read the
> whole thing).
>
> 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.
>
> Actually, this is a useful distinction to make that I haven't before.
> Yay useful concepts.
I enjoy your philosophical approach to the field of conlanging...

In this instance, my first reactions are:

1. The article is unclear about what is meant by "tinkering". I can think of two
definitions, which, in the present context, would be substantially different.
One definition is "making changes for changes' sake". The other is "making
incremental comparatively small-scale improvements". Only the former definition
can legitimately be contrasted with creativity. Most conlanging is certainly
tinkering in one or the other sense, but if some conlanging consists mainly of
tinkering in the former sense, then I think that that conlanging is of the
so-called artlang sort (-- because engelanging gives comparatively clear
criteria for what counts as an improvement, and hence most changes are
improvements (else they'd not be made)).

2. On the matter of 'creativity', the article may be striving to articulate a
view that has some truth to it, but the article appears to be using the term in
a sense that is both vague and not quite consistent with its ordinary sense.
Ordinarily, 'creativity' means making new things, and is distinct from, though
related to, curiosity and originality and 'artism' (a word I feel compelled to
invent for the nonce: by it, I mean those qualities that give a work of art
value qua work of art, the nature of which is the topic of Aesthetics (the
branch of philosophy)). I would certainly maintain that the average child is
more creative than the average adult, but not more curious and certainly not
more original, and absolutely less artistic. (I have been creative and original
all my life, but became artistic only after puberty.) Conlanging, I feel, is
intrinsically creative, but offers comparatively little scope for originality,
and even less for artism.

These at any rate are my initial thoughts, & I reserve the right to recant...

--And.

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