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FIRE_IN_THE_BRIG
April 24, 2009
I do enjoy groping for insight
in unlikely places...
UNLIKELY_PLACES
Consider, for example:
"Fire in the Crucible"
by John Briggs (1990)
Nothing about this book inspires confidence,
not its subtitle "The Self-Creation of
Creativity of Genius"; nor its table of
contents of wide, bold type with oddly
embedded bullets; nor it's back cover bio
"an associate professor of English and The only thing lower
journalism at Western Connecticut State"... on the totem pole is
"Some Guy on the Internet".
Skimming through it, one can see
it's essentially a survey of Great
Geniuses throughout history, with
an eye toward induction of general
principles about creativity.
Here we have a work we can abuse at
will without guilt or fear of reprisal...
Let's toss it in the grinder, and
see what comes out.
Hit the index, pick a name:
Betrand Russell... discussed
in chapter 6 "ominvalence".
Omnivalence? Ah yes, the NEOLOOGIES
neologism game.
Trying to piece together what Briggs
means by this is difficult.
Omnivalence is supposed to be
Briggs sketches in a definition beyond ambivalence?
by a string of examples
and it's not clear they A deep conviction that there's
add up to anything. something more out there than
the obvious choices?
He seems to be using one term
to refer to two phenomena,
and I don't get the link
between them:
o A universal occurrence
of ambivalence, of contraries
o Eternal dissatisfaction,
a need to keep moving beyond,
to reach for something deeper.
Maybe the idea is that because
contradictions are rife,
certainty is impossible, and
we are always left with an
There's a problem with eternal, open-ended quest...
taking contradiction as
your core principle: "from Or something like that.
a contradiction, anything
follows". You're stuck Universal
worshipping The Mystery Ambivalence
without really being able =>
to say anything. "Omnivalence".
The Tao is a way But wouldn't that
that goes nowhere. literally mean
Or anywhere. "all valued"?
Okay, maybe the
--------------- term fits better
than I thought.
A websearch on
"omnivalence"
turns up Briggs
own web pages:
[ref]
There's a re-write of some
of the material published
in his book. Here he
actually tries to say what
he means, rather than force
the reader to infer it:
"Evidently, contradictory feelings which we
might be inclined to identify as conflictual
ambivalence, are, on closer examination,
something else. Such feelings seem to be
experienced by creators not as ambivalent
conflict, but as possibilities, potentials,
mystery, openness. Omnivalence might be a
better term, from the Latin omni, meaning
'affects all things,' and related to ops Perhaps the 1990 book
'wealth,' plus valence or 'strength.' had to have the latin
(Briggs & McCluskey, 1989). " chopped out of it in
hopes of the
bestseller list.
All values, all feelings,
all together into a multiplicity
of strengths, an embrace of
everything.
Elsewhere, I think I've talked about
being in a confused state, but feeling
as though it's a pregnant confusion that
might lead somewhere.
That appears to be the kind of thing
that Briggs is trying to get at. (On the other hand,
you can't be too
Uh oh: he goes careful about these
on to speak in things.)
praise of irony:
"Irony is a perfect
instrument for nuance." It's also pretty good
for never saying what
you mean, and never
feeling the need to
mean anything.
Briggs is trying to be a
grasshopper of an intellect,
he bounces from dropped name
to dropped name, with just the
barest of contact with ideas
associated with the name.
Einstein's thought
experiments were
playful; the
So that's what "semiotician"
Korzybsky was. Korzybsky tells us
"the map is not the
EXCEPTION territory"; Koestler
said stuff like this
too.
Koestler is (Briggs is not the
apparently the, sort to pass up a
There's an Arthur uh, *inspiration* chance at quoting
Koestler book from for Briggs. an authority,
1964 titled "The Act relevant or not.)
of Creation" which I
suspect one would be
better off reading.
Koestler's take:
creativity is about the
fusion of self-consistent I would guess this idea,
but habitually separated combined with Koestler's
frames of reference. example is what leads
Briggs to these
Referenced by wikipedia: disorienting leaps
Jason Comerford (2005) between examples culled
from different fields.
"Koestler’s basic idea
is that there are If he could get it to
'matrices' or patterns work, this would be
of thought that govern very impressive.
the human animal, and
that the creative act (For me, reading people
is the 'bisociation,' like this is cautionary:
as he puts it, of two I really need to make
(or more) apparently sure I don't come off
incompatible frames of like one of these guys...)
thought -- "
[ref]
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