Experience and Creativity.

DI GREGORI MARÍA CRISTINA; ANA ROSA PÉREZ RANSANZ

The Paths of creation. Creativity in Science and Art.

Peter Lang. International Academic Publishers.

Lugar: Pieterlen; Año: 2011; p. 65 - 86

Motivated by Livingston’s remarks, we propose to examine Poincaré’s ideas about “invention” in mathematics, as well as certain aspects of Livingston’s analysis on creativity in the field of the fine arts. We argue that Poincaré developed important ideas about the creative process that deserve closer attention and further elaboration. But we also argue that, even when limited to the mathematical field, his proposal can be enriched in light of some other contemporary philosophical contributions, particularly John Dewey’s theory of experience, which—as we’ll see—holds that science, technique, technology, the fine arts, and indeed any other human activity, far from obeying external or mysterious forces, instead respond to life’s essential conditions and operate only at the substratum of feelings, expectations, beliefs, aims and assessments. From beginning to end, this notion of a basis for human action permeates Dewey’s conception of experience. Thus experience is defined in terms of “transactions” where nature and human beings work together, and in which the human factor directs and modifies, but at the same time is transformed. Regarding this point, we’ll focus on two of Dewey’s theses that we unreservedly endorse. The first holds that experience is an art in the most basic sense of the word. The second asserts that experience is action, fundamentally and universally. This engages us with a notion of creativity as a capacity within every human being—and is radically opposed to the idea of creativity as a “gift” endowed on only certain “gifted” persons. Based on these considerations, we argue that Dewey’s theory represents a quite useful and suggestive philosophical frame for “rescuing” and reevaluating Poincare’s ideas, at the same time it allows one to question certain critiques Livingston makes of Poincaré. We also sustain that the alternative proposal Livingston advocates suffers from a limited view of creativity, since it does not consider the central contributions of classical pragmatists or a series of more recent naturalist and neo-pragmatist approaches on the matter. Finally, in line with numerous empirical studies’ conclusions, we reinforce the idea of creativity as a faculty shared by all human beings that is grounded in the projection-focused nature of experience as well as in the aesthetic (affective/evaluative) quality inherent to all human activity, and whose development depends to a large extent on the social context in which individuals grow.