greatest hits: Wickelgren on creativity

from ktm 1

Creativity is an outgrowth of learning, and a lot of it. The past twenty-five years of cognitive psychology research has shown that the more a person knows about a subject, the more creative he or she can be in it. No question an adult poses is considered creative if someone else has already asked it. Thus, an adult must know what has come before to ask creative questions.

This is true more generally as well. A student's ability to be creative in any area of knowledge increases with his or her knowledge of that area. Knowledge forms the fodder for creative new ideas.

This was a revelation to me.

For years I'd been interested in creativity, and had been trying to read books and articles on the subject, none of which told me anything at all.

Finally I gave up.

When I read this passage in Wickelgren, all became clear.

Creativity, like problem-solving and conceptual understanding, is an emergent property.

I had been looking for some kind of essentialist, biological, "trait" explanation of creativity.

The reason I couldn't find it was that creativity develops in the wake of learning.
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Math Coach (the book that started it all for me)