CREATIVE MIND CLASS
The concept of creativity has been perceived differently throughout the history of mankind. For instance, in ancient Greek, the idea of art with the exception of poetry did not involve freedom of action but rather subjection to rules. The greek idea of art was further on conceived by the Romans, who according to them the visual artists were considered to be sharing with imagination and inspiration of poets (Tzonis, A. 2014). During the medieval period, creativity was perceived as God’s act. In this era, creativity ceased to apply to human activities. The people of middle ages changed the perception about creativity held by the people of antiquity, in fact, the medieval people revoked the exceptional status of poetry, which they believed that it was a craft and not creativity. For a long period of time the concept of human creativity was met with a lot of resistance since it was believed that the term creation was reserved for only creating something from nothing and yet the creative people of the time, who were making poetry, their themes were gotten from society hence their acts were considered not to be creativity.
In the 19th century art was recognized as creativity and later on at the turn of he 20th-century discussions emerged of having creativity in the sciences and nature, which has been perceived as transferring the concepts of art to science. With the introduction of animation in technology, this is an example of creativity taken in the field of science.
From the development of creativity idea, it shows that through creativity one can change his/her status in the society, for instance in the antiquity poets were perceived in high esteem by the community as they could create exciting poems that entertained the society. It is true that from this I have a capacity to bring about social change in the culture, considering that poets used their creativity to en down poems that showed the current state of the society, hence me too I have the capability of using creativity to pen down poems and even songs that reflect the current state of the society and criticize the evils in the community such as greed for wealth by politicians, in the long run, it will have an effect of creating a culture that is free from oppression and hunger.
The power of creativity is that it brings a feeling of accomplishment when one creates an idea and gives it life. The creative process is classified into four stages; preparation incubation, illumination and verification. The brain gathers information from the environment in the first stage, in the second stage the mind wanders and make a stretch on the ideas, the third stage involves making connections between ideas and finally in the last step the creative ideas are refined by critical thinking (Kanematsu, H., & Barry, D. M. 2016). Direct involvement helps to improve creativity in an individual for instance, in the first stage where you gather information from the environment, there is need to be actively engaged in the environment to get creative ideas. For example, by observing people suffering from hunger, a creative idea may come up to devise ways of alleviating hunger.
Experiential learning can be said to be the learning through reflection on doing a particular task and thinking like Da Vinci proposes seven steps to be a creative thinker. The first step has curiosity. Great minds are always engaged in asking questions; one can apply this step on real life by having a theme for a particular day and then recording the observations in a notebook and from this, you select a question and right down your thinking and association without editing as they occur.
Dimostrazione is another step in thinking like Da Vinci, it includes persistence and the willingness to learn from mistakes (Kharkhurin, A. V. 2014). This idea can be applied by one checking his/her belief and their sources. A person ought to verify whether he is holding beliefs that he has no experiential verification. Also one ought to seek friends who can have different perspectives about the notion that one is holding on.
The third step of thinking like da Vinci is sensazione, which is the continual refinement of our senses. Leonardo Da Vinci was of the view that the secrets of dimostarzione can only be revealed through the sense of sight. This can be applied in real life by one first describing a particular experience in detail. For instance, one can observe the span at which the new moon takes before being found a then describe such detail and the experience in a note book. Also one can learn to listen to the sounds around them, for instance, loud noises from the environment which may be coming from a nearby pub or even the softest sound we have in our bodies such as the normal breathing (Kharkhurin, A. V. 2014).
There is a need to be able to embrace ambiguity and even uncertainty to be able to become a genius. This ability to be able to hold the tension of opposites was referred to as Sfumato by Da Vincci. This idea can be applied in real life b trying to make new friends that posses ambiguity. Here you begin first by listing situations in your life that uncertainty usually reigns, for instance, waiting to be informed whether you landed your dream job during the interview or not. Also one ought to cultivate the art of confusion endurance which involves sharpening senses in times of paradox (Kanematsu, H., & Barry, D. M. 2016).
The learning experiences in this course have helped me to have a pragmatic approach towards being a critical thinker. For instance, the Da Vincci approach to thinking like a genius has been very influential.
References
Kanematsu, H., & Barry, D. M. (2016). Theory of creativity. In STEM and ICT education in intelligent environments (pp. 9-13). Springer, Cham.
Kharkhurin, A. V. (2014). Creativity. 4in1: Four-criterion construct of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 26(3), 338-352.
Tzonis, A. (2014). Creativity real and imagined in architectural education. Frontiers of Architecture
Guegan, J., Buisine, S., Mantelet, F., Maranzana, N., & Segonds, F. (2016). Avatar-mediated creativity: When embodying inventors makes engineers more creative. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 165-175. Ral Research, 3(3), 331-333.