Editor's Note

In thinking about this issue of In Character, I have become aware of how frequently people use the term “creative” today. In the last week, I have heard the word employed to describe ways to fix Medicare, variations in fingering on the piano, an applicant for a job in public relations, methods for getting people to buy hybrid cars, astronomers’ strategies for discovering new planets, and a three-point shot in a basketball game. I thought that covered it all until the other day, walking in the streets of Manhattan, I noticed the sign for a new business, “Creative Parking, LLC.” While no one wants his car parked “creatively,” this particular sign was a hint at how far we have “defined creativity down.” Creative now seems to be the adjective we use to describe anything worthwhile or interesting

In the survey we commissioned for this issue, we gave 2,700 people a list of professions and asked whether creativity was important to being successful in each one. After looking at the results (page 13), all I could think was, “Pity the poor dentist.” Only 36 percent of respondents think it is important for a dentist to be creative, compared with 64 percent for a high school chemistry teacher and 94 percent for a songwriter. Maybe these results shouldn’t be surprising, but consider the innovations in each of these fields in the last fifty years. How much has the job of a high school chemistry teacher changed? How much has songwriting improved? Now, ask yourself, would you rather have your teeth cared for by your dentist today or one in 1955? Dentistry may not have the “feeling” of creativity, but, in fact, inventions and imagination have transformed dentistry over the past fifty years – and the skill and knowledge of one’s own dentist matters hugely.

I’m not arguing that we don’t value dentists. We certainly reward them financially for their efforts. We just wouldn’t put them high on the invitation list for our next dinner party.

When did creativity take on this relatively indiscriminating meaning – referring to anything good? When did it become so desirable? Older generations of American parents were less intent on their children being creative: they wanted them to be smart or attractive or polite or diligent or kind (think Lake Wobegon). Now, according to our survey, fully one quarter of adults in this country think that encouraging creativity should be the primary mission of our schools. One more legacy of the baby boom generation, perhaps?

Regardless of how the shift came about, it seems the subject of creativity is long overdue for a reevaluation. And so we have asked our authors to explore the meaning of creativity, whether it can be fostered in others, and how it affects our everyday lives. Sharon Begley, the science columnist of the Wall Street Journal, offers what might be the most succinct definition of creativity, and the one largely agreed upon by scientists – “Creativity is marked by the bringing together of seemingly unrelated ideas, memories, images, and thoughts.” And she takes up the question of how important knowledge and intelligence are in the brain’s ability to integrate these disparate cognitive elements. Educational psychologist Howard Gardner draws on fifteen years of research to assess some of the personality and environmental factors that make for creative people.

We are fortunate that our interview subject for this issue, David Gelernter, is a walking illustration of so many of these abstract ideas about creativity. A painter, writer, educator, computer programmer, and businessman, he has given much thought to the interactions of various disciplines. Interestingly, he notes, “Everything I do is a facet of the same underlying thoughts, ideas, ‘visions,’ et cetera. A man only gets one head, one mind, one ‘cognitive personality.’”

Despite his own success, Gelernter believes that creativity “is rarely good for any particular human being.” Indeed, in chronicling some of the fascinating experiments being done to determine how the brain produces creative ideas, Begley also explores the question of creativity’s relation to madness.

Why were many of history’s most brilliant artists and scientists also psychologically disturbed? Gregory Wolfe, editor of Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion, asks a related question in his article, and perhaps the fundamental question about creativity for readers of In Character: Is creativity a virtue? He points to society’s list of badly behaved creative people and wonders whether we can reasonably say that creativity helps people lead moral lives. But for every philandering poet, we can find an artist who was inspired to creative lengths by his faith.

How does theology – particularly the idea of man made in the image of the Creator – inform our understanding of creativity? Adam Keiper, the managing editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society, gets at the very human nature of creativity in his contribution. Despite the best efforts of science, he concludes, we seem unable to make a truly creative machine.

Nonetheless, it seems that some of the musical compositions of robots described by Keiper may be superior to some of the plays reviewed by Terry Teachout during his tenure as theater critic for the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps creativity is best understood by its absence. It seems as though many of the plays Teachout writes about are closer to propaganda than creative works of art that can properly stand on their own. Rather than “heightening our perception and awareness of things as they are,” he argues, political art tends to follow a formula, leaving the characters one-dimensional at best.

The ability to be creative, to think, as they say, “outside the box” is considered a very valuable commodity in our culture today. Businesses spend billions of dollars a year on research and development, but do we really know how creativity in business is fostered? Daniel Akst, a novelist who also writes a column for the New York Times business section, lays out for readers the history of innovation in America. He explores such important questions as whether groups of people can be creative, how technology has both helped and hindered individual creativity, and whether we are more or less creative as a society than we used to be, in the process throwing a wrench into the common assumption that we are innovating faster than ever before.

In business, as in other fields, there is always a danger that the creative juices will stop flowing. Indeed, that seemed to happen in cities across America in the 1960s, when the problems of governing an urban environment became seemingly impossible to tackle. And that is where Fred and Harry Siegel, both experts on urban public policy, begin their contribution to this issue. Pundits and politicians, both on the Left and Right, concluded forty years ago that there was little government could do to solve the problems of the inner city. The story of the complete turnaround in the decline of urban life raises a lot of important questions: How were the lines of communication in government opened? How did new ideas in academia make their way into a stale bureaucracy?

Perhaps the idea of creative governance seems a little funny, but, as the authors note, we are “a country that prides itself on innovation,” not only in science, art, and industry but in politics as well. “Our Founding Fathers were nothing if not creative.” Continuing this tradition seems a vital part of our future, but maybe we can continue parking our cars the old-fashioned way.