There's always been a big question in philosophical psychology about the concept of creativity and original thinking.
The basic argument goes something like this; without your current observations you could never come up with an original thought, because all of your thoughts are based on what you feel, touch, taste, smell, hear, or see.
For those who claim to come up with original thinking, they are merely cross pollinating ideas from one sector or area of the human endeavor to another.
Is that truly original, or is that just seeing something in a different light, comparing it to something that shares at least one or two similar attributes? I mean really this is a good question, especially for someone like me who claims to come up with at least two original thoughts every single day, at least for the last seven years.
But are these thoughts really and truly original, or is this creativity merely the correlation of moving puzzle pieces around and making them fit in places they might not normally be observed.
What's that famous quote; "if you steal an idea and copy from one source, it is plagiarism, if you take bits and pieces from many different sources (the more the better) then it is research.
" You see, collecting data, observations, and combining them with experiences, concepts, ideas, and calling all that a new innovation or original thinking is therefore suspect.
Do you see the point? Often we see a piece of artwork, a new design, or observe a human do something different and we say to ourselves; "that's original," but I ask is it really, or did they just see what others didn't see, because they were thinking about it differently from a different angle.
When this happens we often say they are thinking outside the box, but if all the information garnered to compile the new concept of thought came from within the box, one could ask; "are they really thinking outside the box?" Perhaps this gets back to the question of; what is creativity, and how do we know a creative genius when we see one? If their creativity is untypical, and uncommon we might call them highly creative, or original, perhaps because their minds are wired differently, and they see things none of us saw when we observed the exact same thing.
Still, does this make them the creative genius of originality, or are their minds just wired in such a way that they are able to make connections and links between the things they experience and observe that we are less readily able to do? Let me leave you with that thought, we are not going to solve this question, or come up with the exact correct answer today.
It is a philosophical circular argument and conundrum.
But it is worth at least a little bit of your time to consider.
Think on it.