The Act of Creation Read Free

criticisms and encouragement; to Professor Dennis Gabor,
Imperial College, London, Dr. Alan McGlashan, St. George's Hospital,
and Professor Michael Polanyi, Oxford, for many stimulating discussions
on the subject of this book. My grateful thanks are further due to
Dr. J. D. Cowan, Imperial College, for his criticism from the standpoint
of Communication Theory; to Dr. Rodney Maliphant for surveying the
literature on the psycho-physiology of weeping; to Dr. Christopher
Wallis for compiling a bibliography on the same subject; and to Miss
Edith Horsley for her patient and careful editorial work.

London, December 1963

The Act of Creation BOOK ONE

THE ART OF DISCOVERY
AND THE DISCOVERIES OF ART

PART ONE

THE JESTER

I

THE LOGIC OF LAUGHTER
The Triptych

The three panels of the rounded triptych shown on the frontispiece
indicate three domains of creativity which shade into each other
without sharp boundaries: Humour, Discovery, and Art. The reason for
this seemingly perverse order of arrangement -- the Sage flanked by the
Jester and the Artist on opposite sides -- will become apparent as the
argument unfolds.

Each horizontal line across the triptych stands for a pattern of creative
activity which is represented on all three panels; for instance: comic
comparison -- objective analogy -- poetic image. The first is intended
to make us laugh; the second to make us understand; the third to make us
marvel. The logical pattern of the creative process is the same in all
three cases; it consists in the discovery of hidden similarities. But
the emotional climate is different in the three panels: the comic simile
has a touch of aggressiveness; the scientist's reasoning by analogy is
emotionally detached, i.e. neutral; the poetic image is sympathetic or
admiring, inspired by a positive kind of emotion. I shall try to show
that all patterns of creative activity are tri-valent: they can enter
the service of humour, discovery, or art; and also, that as we travel
across the triptych from left to right, the emotional climate changes
by gradual transitions from aggressive to neutral to sympathetic and
identificatory -- or, to put it another way, from an absurd through an
abstract to a tragic or lyric view of existence. This may look like a
basketful of wild generalizations but is meant only as a first indication
of the direction in which the inquiry will move.

The panels on the diagram meet in curves to indicate that there are
no clear dividing lines between them. The fluidity of the boundaries
between Science and Art is evident, whether we consider Architecture,
Cooking, Psychotherapy, or the writing of History. The mathematician
talks of 'elegant' solutions, the surgeon of a 'beautiful' operation,
the literary critic of 'two-dimensionar characters. Science is said
to aim at Truth, Art at Beauty; but the criteria of Truth (such as
verifiability and refutability) are not as clean and hard as we tend
to believe, and the criteria of Beauty are, of course, even less so. A
glance at the chart on p. 332 [Figure 10a] will indicate that we can arrange neighbouring provinces of science
and art in series which show a continuous gradient from 'objective' to
'subjective', from 'verifiable truth' to 'aesthetic experience'. One
gradient, for instance, leads from the so-called exact sciences like
chemistry through biochemistry to biology, then through medicine --
which is, alas, a much less exact science -- to psychology, through
anthropology to history, through biography to the biographical novel,
and so on into the abyss of pure fiction. As we move along the sloping
curve, the dimension of 'objective verifiability' is seen to diminish
steadily, and the intuitive or aesthetic dimension to increase. Similar
graded series lead from construction engineering through architecture
and interior design to the hybrid 'arts and crafts' and finally to the
representative arts; here one variable of the curve could be called
'utility', the second 'beauty'. The point of