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Isaac Asimov: Where do people get new ideas from?

Isaac Asimov 's essay on creativity from 1959. Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) is an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known as the author of science fiction and popular science works. Azimov is considered one of the "Big Three" of science fiction writers of his time, along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clark .

Note by Arthur Obermeier, friend of the author:

In 1959, I worked as a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston. The company was a product of MIT and initially studied the effects of nuclear weapons on aircraft designs. The company signed a contract with ARPA with the abbreviation GLIPAR (Guide Line Identification Program for Antimissile Research) to identify the most creative approaches to creating an anti-ballistic defense system. The government understood that no matter how much was spent on improving and supplementing existing technologies, they would still remain unsatisfactory. They wanted us and several other contractors to think outside the box.

When I first joined the project, I suggested that Isaac Asimov, who was my good friend, would be a worthy participant. He agreed and attended several meetings. Later, he decided not to continue, because he did not want to have access to any classified information; this would limit his freedom of expression. However, before leaving, he wrote, as his only formal contribution, this essay on creativity. This essay has never been published or exceeded the scope of our small group. When I recently discovered it again while parsing old papers, I realized that its essence is as relevant today as when he wrote it. It describes not only the creative process and nature of creative people, but also the environment that promotes creativity.

About creativity


Where do people get new ideas from?

It seems that the process of any creativity is essentially the same in all its varieties and manifestations, so the development of a new art form, a new gadget, a new scientific approach - all this is due to common factors. What interests us most is the “creation” of a new scientific approach or the new application of the old, but we can speak in a generalized way.

One way to study this issue is to look at the great ideas of the past and see how they were created. Unfortunately, the path of creation is never understood even by the "creators" themselves.

But what if the same revolutionary idea simultaneously and independently came to two people? It may be possible to detect common factors. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selectionindependently designed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace .

There is a lot in common. Both traveled to distant places, noting the strange species of plants and animals and their diversity from place to place. Both are extremely wanted to find an explanation for this, and the two that did not work, until they both read the " Essay on Population " Malthus .

Both further saw how the concepts of overpopulation and dropout (which Malthus applied to human beings) fit into the concept of evolution by natural selection (when applied to species in general).

Therefore, it is obvious that we need not only people with good experience in a certain field, but also people who are able to establish a connection between subject 1 and subject 2, the relationship of which at first glance is not obvious.

Undoubtedly, in the first half of the 19th century, many naturalists studied the differences between species. A large number of people read Malthus. Perhaps some of them simultaneously studied the species and read Malthus. But someone who studied the species was needed, read Malthus and could establish a relationship.

This is a key point - a rare trait is required. Once the relationship is established, it becomes apparent. It is believed that Thomas G. Huxley after reading "On the Origin of Species" exclaimed: "How stupid it was for me not to think of it!"

But why didn’t he think of it? From the history of human thought, it may seem that it is difficult to think of an idea, even when all the facts are there. To establish a relationship, you need some courage. It should be necessary, because any relationship that does not require courage will be immediately discovered by many and will not develop as a “new idea”, but as a simple “consequence of an old idea”.

A new idea seems reasonable only later. At first, it usually seems pointless. The point of meaninglessness may seem to be the assumption that the Earth was round and not flat, or that it was moving, not the Sun, or that force was needed to stop an object in motion, and not force to keep it in motion, and so on .

A person who is able to stand up against rationality, authority and common sense should have impressive self-confidence. Since such a person is rare, he should seem eccentric to everyone else (at least in this respect). An eccentric person in one respect is often eccentric in others.

Therefore, the person who is most likely to come up with fresh ideas is a person with good experience in the field and unusual habits. (However, eccentricity alone is not enough).

When you have the right people, the next question is: do you need to bring them together so that they can discuss the problem together, or do you need to tell each of them about the problem and let them work separately?

It seems to me that in terms of creativity, isolation is needed. A creative person is constantly working on a task anyway. His mind is constantly shuffling information, even when he is not aware of it. (The famous example of how Kekule built a benzene structure in a dream is well known ).

The presence of others can only slow down this process, because creation causes confusion. For every good new idea, there are one hundred, ten thousand stupid ideas that you naturally do not want to flaunt.

Nevertheless, the meeting of such people may be desirable not only for reasons related to the act of creation itself.

There are no two people whose mental stocks are exactly the same. One person may know A, but not B, another may know B, but not A, and if both A and B are known, then a decision may come to both - although not necessarily immediately or even in the foreseeable future.

Moreover, the information can be not only about individual subjects A and B, but also about combinations, such as A – B, which are not essential in themselves. However, if one person mentions an unusual combination A – B, and the other - an unusual combination A – B, it may well turn out that the answer will bring a combination AB – B, which none of them thought individually.

Then it seems to me that the goal of brain work sessions is not to search for new ideas, but to familiarize participants with facts, combinations of facts, theories and wandering thoughts.

But how to persuade creative people to do this? First of all, you need lightness, relaxation and a general sense of permissiveness. The world as a whole does not approve of creativity, and engaging in creativity in public is especially nasty. Even making assumptions in public is a rather frightening task. Therefore, people should feel that others will not argue.

If at least one of those present shows hostility to the stupidity inevitable at such a session, then the rest will freeze. An unfriendly person can be a storehouse of information, but it will more than compensate for the harm done to them. Then it seems to me necessary that all the people at the session be ready to express stupid things and listen to the stupid things of others.

If a participant in the session has a much higher reputation than others, or is more eloquent, or has a clearly more strong-willed character, he may well seize the initiative at the conference and limit the participation of others only to passive obedience. This person himself can be extremely useful, but he can be attracted to work alone, because he neutralizes others.

The optimal size of the group is perhaps not very high. Probably no more than five people are needed. In a larger group, the total stock of information may be greater, but there will be tension due to the expectation of an opportunity to speak out, which can be very annoying. It is probably better to hold several sessions with a different composition of participants than a single session with all participants. (This will entail some repetition, but even repetition in itself is not undesirable. The point is not what people say at these conferences, but that they inspire each other in the future).

For a better result, you need a sense of informality. I think fun, addressing by name, playfulness, easy play are important - not by themselves, but because they cause a desire to become involved in the recklessness of creativity. I think that is why, perhaps, a meeting at someone’s house or at a dinner in some restaurant is better than a meeting in a conference room.

Probably the most limiting thing is a sense of responsibility. Great ideas of the past came from people who were not paid for great ideas, but paid to be teachers or patent clerks, or petty officials, or not paid at all. Great ideas were side effects.

Feeling guilty for not deserving your salary because you didn’t get a great idea - this seems to me to be the surest way to ensure that no great ideas come any further.

And then your company is conducting this state-funded brainwashing program. Just imagining that congressmen or philistines find out that scientists may be fooling around, chatting, telling dirty jokes at the expense of the state, you can start in a cold sweat. In fact, the average scientist has enough conscience not to even want to think that he is doing it, even if no one knows about it.

I would suggest that the participants in the brain work session be given nominal instructions — preparing short reports, summaries of conclusions, or short answers to the tasks posed — and that they would receive a fee for the brain work session. Then the brain work session will not be officially paid, which will also give it more relaxation.

I do not think that brain work sessions can be conducted without direction. We need someone who will play a role similar to that of a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst, as I understand it, asking the right questions (and with the exception of these questions, intervening as little as possible), encourages the patient himself to talk about his past life in such a way as to achieve a new understanding in his own eyes.

Similarly, the session arbiter will need to sit, provoking the animals, asking insightful questions, making the necessary comments, delicately returning them to the essence of the question. Since the arbiter will not know which question is insightful, what comment is necessary, and what is the essence of the question, his work will not be easy.

As for the "gadgets" to arouse fantasy, I think that they should appear during the sessions of this nonsense. If the participants are completely relaxed, free of obligations, discuss something interesting and by their nature extraordinary, then they themselves will come up with mechanisms to arouse the discussion.

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