Dignity of Creative Studies

By Istvan Magyari-Beck

Originally appeared in the International Creativity Network Newsletter, volume 1, number 3, 1991, pages 1-2.

In August 1991 the Centennial Commemorative Conference on Michael Polanyi was held in Budapest where a scholar-participant from San Diego, USA expressed himself in the following way: We all know that since creativity was introduced to business administration, marketing, etc. creativity became a dirty word, almost as unpleasant as some business policies. Some authors and institutions in this field are trying to restore dignity to the discipline. (Joseph Perczel, Michael Polanyi and the Theoretical Revolution in Psychology, p. 6).

Well, what is wrong with creativity studies? One answer to this question might be that all the problems came from the generalization of the concept of creativity. Originally the term creativity was applied only in the domain of excellent results of arts, sciences, politics, etc. But in the course of further investigations, creativity scholars had to admit that all the people are creative, if not by their behavior, then certainly by their inner predispositions. Thus creativity became a term with an exceptionally large number range of meanings. All new, useful and valuable ideas are now called creative, and the concept of creativity has lost its aristocratic character.

But this answer would not be an appropriate one. Dignity is never a property of subject-matter. Medicine and criminology, for example, deal with illness and crime, topics which are by no means dignified; no one, however, will raise the question of the dignity of medicine and criminology. Dignity is always a question of the way the practitioners in a discipline study the topic. I would propose, therefore, that dignity with respect to a discipline might be applicable when several criteria have been met satisfactorily. It is very important, for example, to have a widely accepted and meaningful terminology, a basic theoretical framework which is able to put these terms in a sufficiently transparent structure and last but not least, successful applications which can also be justified from moral points of view.

Having all this in mind I have proposed a new discipline of creativity, which I prefer to call "Creatology". I have thus attempted to solve some of the common problems of viewing creativity as an area lacking in dignity. At present, the basic structure of this proposed discipline can be described using a matrix.

This matrix includes 12 main problem areas: creative culture; creative organization; creative group; creative person; creative processes on the levels of cultures, organizations, groups and person; creative product on the levels of cultures, organizations, groups and persons again. As all of these problem areas can be studies both qualitatively and quantitatively, and from either a factual (basic studies) and normative (application) perspective, all of the 12 squares can be divided into four subparts. This will lead to a matrix with 48 cells or subtopics.

One should also take into consideration that a number of subtopics (for example, methods of study for creative climate) which are not explicitly expressed by the matrix, but are nevertheless inherent in it. Notice that psychological investigations into creativity are limited to the assessment of individual creativeness (factual, quantitative parts of the personal ability of creativity) and creative techniques (normative qualitative parts of creative group processes). Creatology with its wider scope of investigation, suggesting relationships with other disciplines such as economics, sociology, management science, etc. , is far beyond psychology.

It seems certain that to build a new discipline at the end of the Twentieth Century requires the common effort of at least three basic cultural paradigms. Using semiotical terminology we need the contributions of syntactically, semantically and finally pragmatically oriented cultures. A syntactical approach (very strong, for example, in Central Europe) could give us the abstract theory of the phenomena of creativity. A semantic approach (well developed, for example, in Great Britain and its allies) would be able to work out the operational meaning of the terms used by the theory. A pragmatic approach (inherent, for example, in the culture of the United States) would investigate practical applications of the knowledge about creativity. Neither syntaxis, nor semantics, nor pragmatics alone would be enough for a new discipline of creativity. A theory without a real meaning and applicability is worth nothing. A mere set of meaningful but theoretically confused and useless sentences is also worth nothing. And finally the so called application of something which is neither theory nor a set of terms or sentences with a well established stable meaning is not an application but it is a blind trial and error procedure. Perhaps the Creatology matrix can serve as a basis for a new discipline which will be logical, meaningful and applicable.