To enable us to better get a grip upon the creative process at work we have to consider what kind of thinking we are doing. The 21st century is marked as the period in which we have acquired in the past five or ten years greater knowledge of how the human brain functions than we have acquired in any of the previous ten thousand years of our evolution as human beings. In previous generations we have had explorers searching the seven seas for far continents, knowledge wealth and power . Not knowing that the land they found was not the Indies they expected but a totally different place. Now the searchers and discoverers of our age are the Magellans of the Mind, unlocking treasures that explain not so much where we are but how we are, and perhaps even more exciting explaining the way we are. For ten thousand years the mind has been a locked treasure box. Now with the aid of CAT scans that show what part of the brain is functioning when we talk and how that changes when we engage in argument , or discourse where verbal reasoning becomes combative. Now this still curious and unexplained space is starting to unlock some some of its secrets. Still parts of the map are not filled in, still we are learning to adapt and change our concepts of how we thing and what we classify as intelligence. We are beginning for example to understand that there are many different kinds of intelligence. A little while ago I saw a newspaper article condemning the footballer David Beckham for freely admitting to being unable to do his young sons mathematics homework. The implication of the article was that the football captain of the English team was thick, was unintelligent. Yet anyone who sees Beckham on the football pitch connecting almost telepathically with a fellow player thirty, forty yards away, able to effortlessly pass a ball to pinpoint accuracy, read a situation in three dimension, move, compete, win a ball, pass and score all with fluid, elegant, almost arrogant movements, one would hardly call that unintelligent. For Beckhams intelligence is kinetic, it involves doing, it involves visual intelligence. His intelligence is certainly not verbal, for anyone who listens to him would know that he doesnt explain himself terribly well. Yet give him a ball, a challenge and ten fellow footballers and you will see something approaching magic.
Hopefully we will gain a fuller understanding of this marvellous mechanism we inhabit and cast aside some of the rather crude and simplistic systems of measuring how the brain is functioning. I can remember passing the 11 plus examination which is a test of our IQ or Intelligence Quotient given to all 11 year olds. Those fortunate enough to pass would go to grammar schools, those less fortunate to what were known as secondary modern schools. I say pass but it should be scraped through. I did this exam in a village school in Flamborough which I am pleased to say is now flattened to the ground. The class was supervised by a Mr Wall who was a reasonably adequate teacher apart from the fact that he had pets. One of his pets was a boy called Philip May. A bright good looking sportsman Philip was, natural for teachers pet. I was a stuttering dribbling incomer and it irked Mr Wall somewhat when I got the grammar school place and Philip by 1 or 2 marks did not. It irked him enough to tell Philip of the narrowness of his defeat. From then on, I had acquired an enemy. Whenever we played cricket as village boys did, Philip May would gird himself up for an especially wicked ball aimed at my box. When he was umpiring I was always run out and when he was batting it was always my leg breaks that he managed to clout over mid off for 6. i was I should admit an especially poor bowler of leg beaks. He said nothing to me about our respective exam results, and throughout our secondary school careers he kept a cool distance from me and I from him. I somehow knew i had an enemy there though i could never work out why. It was only when we were comparing exam results as 18 year olds that he verbalised his anger. If Id have gone to that school I would have done better than you, he said. True Yorkshire bluntness. Well done Mr Wall, really good job there.
My success in the 11 plus prompted the purchase of a paperback book Measure your own IQ Youre a clever boy getting through that exam, you must have a high IQ. Intelligence Quotient was the means by which we measured how intelligent we were. Ive often thought that tapping people on the head and listening to the different sounds the tapping made would have been an equally valid method of measurement given the complexity of the problem. But I read the book, did the tests, cheated a bit. If you had 4 cows and each cow gave 4.5 litres of milk.. you know the kind of thing. 4 boys run a hundred yards, how many miles does it take Peter Mandelsohn to …. according to the book I was pretty bright, 120 something. It was only IQ, but that was all we had.
In those days and perhaps in these days too, it was only a certain kind of intelligence that was valued. The classical intelligence, logic, rationality, numeracy, the ability to argue, linguistic skill, all this became the voice of reason, the classical intelligence. These left brain functions dominated our culture and to an extent still dominate the way we value and view ourselves. Other skills, other intelligences, visual intelligence, musical intelligence, the ability to think intuitively, holistically, sporting kinetic intelligence, manual dexterity all suffered a lower social valuation.
But hopefully now things are changing with the understanding that there is not just the simple classical intelligence but instead multiple intelligence. We are able to better evaluate and better understand how we think. Howard Gardener in his book Multiple Intelligence describes how our classical left brain thinkers fall in to 2 or 3 catagories, our rational logical mathematicians, our ordered and persuasive linguists and writers. Whereas on the right, those right brain thinkers, we find visual thinkers, sportsmen and women with a kinetic intelligence, musicians and holistic thinkers, intuitive, back of the head creative thinkers. All of this enables us to comprehend, understand and most important, value different kinds of skills and intelligences. As the great martial artist Deshimaru said we must learn to think with our whole body, and certainly if we are to do this then we need to keep in place certain of the more destructive critical attributes of left brain thinking.
How often have you tried to do something, whack a golf ball down the green, or hit a tennis ball, hit a nail with a hammer, anything. You attempt it , make an error, hit the ball off the fairway, net the tennis ball and bend the nail. Immediately you are greeted with a chorus of left brain voices saying you pratt, you cant do that. Why dont you hold the racket further down, change your grip on that club, stop holding that hammer around its neck. Most criticism is destructive and the most destructive of destructive criticism is that between our own ears. I well remember playing a league tennis match with a much more able younger player. Ive taken up tennis in my 50s after a 30 year break and find learning the game much more arduous than my young son. Id agreed to meet this young buck. He began his first service game with four clean aces. This boy was serving so hard and fast that I could barely put a racket on the ball let alone return it. By the time I had settled and got the measure, at least sufficient measure to put racket on ball, this guy had served out the first set 6-3. I was trying everything. My left brain was going crazy saying, come in, stand up to it, take it early, do all the stuff the coaching manual tells you. The second set I had to do something and the only thing I could think of doing nothing. Literally eliminating anything in my head that got in the way of my concentration. I think I was remembering something a coaching manual had told me which was to leave all of the critical advice at the side of the court, just watch the ball, watch the seams on the ball and fill your head with that, nothing else.
Just imagine for a moment what the human body has got to do just to return a tennis ball travelling at probably 80 to 90 miles an hour. Hit with topspin, the ball will be bouncing high and hard, you dont know which side of your body the ball will be travelling, whether its to your forehand or your backhand, or even directly into your body. This guy had been aiming straight for me and my torso had half a dozen round cherry shaped bruises around my midriff. Think of the process of instructing the various muscles within the body to first recognise which way the ball is going, to instruct the feet to move , then the arms, place the racket adjust ones balance and finally strike the ball returning it over the net. All of that done without conscious thought . Thats right, you are not in charge not in command on a concious level. Virginia Wade one of our great tennis heroines said success in tennis was about liberating your mind to allow your body to do the right thing.
Liberating your mind, freeing your mind to allow your body to do the right thing. Theres a phrase to conjure with. Anyway our young buck went on to close down the second set at 6-4, but I took 3 of his service games to deuce and was able to serve and play my own game more freely as a a result of the increased confidence I had from freeing my mind. Or more specifically leaving the critical censorious part of my left brain on the side of the court, literally that critical little bastard didnt accompany me on to the tennis court, instead I had unalduterated concentration, focus and as a by-product increased and growing self confidence. Another by-product was that I enjoyed the second set immensely. I enjoyed not only my play but the play of my opponent who had enabled me to play to the very best of my ability however limited that may be.
It occurs to me that there are at least 3 general categories of thought. The first is the dominant thought process accepted by our culture. The thought pattern engendered within conscious thought. Rational thought processes fall in to this category. Language falls within this category, mathematical thinking, the sequential processing of ideas. Because I do this, then I do that, because this has happened that must happen. Critical thinking falls within this category for it is the critical thinking of the rational mind, argument, the classical pedagogic process of dispute, once again falls again within this rational conscious thought process. Most of our dominant thought processes, and the sorts of processes valued by our culture are rational processes. We value them highly and we value the people who excel in this manner of thinking most highly. They are our politicians, our teachers, scientists, and critics. These are the dominant forces of our intellectual elite, and rightly so. For their contribution to our culture is massive.
Hopefully we will gain a fuller understanding of this marvellous mechanism we inhabit and cast aside some of the rather crude and simplistic systems of measuring how the brain is functioning. I can remember passing the 11 plus examination which is a test of our IQ or Intelligence Quotient given to all 11 year olds. Those fortunate enough to pass would go to grammar schools, those less fortunate to what were known as secondary modern schools. I say pass but it should be scraped through. I did this exam in a village school in Flamborough which I am pleased to say is now flattened to the ground. The class was supervised by a Mr Wall who was a reasonably adequate teacher apart from the fact that he had pets. One of his pets was a boy called Philip May. A bright good looking sportsman Philip was, natural for teachers pet. I was a stuttering dribbling incomer and it irked Mr Wall somewhat when I got the grammar school place and Philip by 1 or 2 marks did not. It irked him enough to tell Philip of the narrowness of his defeat. From then on, I had acquired an enemy. Whenever we played cricket as village boys did, Philip May would gird himself up for an especially wicked ball aimed at my box. When he was umpiring I was always run out and when he was batting it was always my leg breaks that he managed to clout over mid off for 6. i was I should admit an especially poor bowler of leg beaks. He said nothing to me about our respective exam results, and throughout our secondary school careers he kept a cool distance from me and I from him. I somehow knew i had an enemy there though i could never work out why. It was only when we were comparing exam results as 18 year olds that he verbalised his anger. If Id have gone to that school I would have done better than you, he said. True Yorkshire bluntness. Well done Mr Wall, really good job there.
My success in the 11 plus prompted the purchase of a paperback book Measure your own IQ Youre a clever boy getting through that exam, you must have a high IQ. Intelligence Quotient was the means by which we measured how intelligent we were. Ive often thought that tapping people on the head and listening to the different sounds the tapping made would have been an equally valid method of measurement given the complexity of the problem. But I read the book, did the tests, cheated a bit. If you had 4 cows and each cow gave 4.5 litres of milk.. you know the kind of thing. 4 boys run a hundred yards, how many miles does it take Peter Mandelsohn to …. according to the book I was pretty bright, 120 something. It was only IQ, but that was all we had.
In those days and perhaps in these days too, it was only a certain kind of intelligence that was valued. The classical intelligence, logic, rationality, numeracy, the ability to argue, linguistic skill, all this became the voice of reason, the classical intelligence. These left brain functions dominated our culture and to an extent still dominate the way we value and view ourselves. Other skills, other intelligences, visual intelligence, musical intelligence, the ability to think intuitively, holistically, sporting kinetic intelligence, manual dexterity all suffered a lower social valuation.
But hopefully now things are changing with the understanding that there is not just the simple classical intelligence but instead multiple intelligence. We are able to better evaluate and better understand how we think. Howard Gardener in his book Multiple Intelligence describes how our classical left brain thinkers fall in to 2 or 3 catagories, our rational logical mathematicians, our ordered and persuasive linguists and writers. Whereas on the right, those right brain thinkers, we find visual thinkers, sportsmen and women with a kinetic intelligence, musicians and holistic thinkers, intuitive, back of the head creative thinkers. All of this enables us to comprehend, understand and most important, value different kinds of skills and intelligences. As the great martial artist Deshimaru said we must learn to think with our whole body, and certainly if we are to do this then we need to keep in place certain of the more destructive critical attributes of left brain thinking.
How often have you tried to do something, whack a golf ball down the green, or hit a tennis ball, hit a nail with a hammer, anything. You attempt it , make an error, hit the ball off the fairway, net the tennis ball and bend the nail. Immediately you are greeted with a chorus of left brain voices saying you pratt, you cant do that. Why dont you hold the racket further down, change your grip on that club, stop holding that hammer around its neck. Most criticism is destructive and the most destructive of destructive criticism is that between our own ears. I well remember playing a league tennis match with a much more able younger player. Ive taken up tennis in my 50s after a 30 year break and find learning the game much more arduous than my young son. Id agreed to meet this young buck. He began his first service game with four clean aces. This boy was serving so hard and fast that I could barely put a racket on the ball let alone return it. By the time I had settled and got the measure, at least sufficient measure to put racket on ball, this guy had served out the first set 6-3. I was trying everything. My left brain was going crazy saying, come in, stand up to it, take it early, do all the stuff the coaching manual tells you. The second set I had to do something and the only thing I could think of doing nothing. Literally eliminating anything in my head that got in the way of my concentration. I think I was remembering something a coaching manual had told me which was to leave all of the critical advice at the side of the court, just watch the ball, watch the seams on the ball and fill your head with that, nothing else.
Just imagine for a moment what the human body has got to do just to return a tennis ball travelling at probably 80 to 90 miles an hour. Hit with topspin, the ball will be bouncing high and hard, you dont know which side of your body the ball will be travelling, whether its to your forehand or your backhand, or even directly into your body. This guy had been aiming straight for me and my torso had half a dozen round cherry shaped bruises around my midriff. Think of the process of instructing the various muscles within the body to first recognise which way the ball is going, to instruct the feet to move , then the arms, place the racket adjust ones balance and finally strike the ball returning it over the net. All of that done without conscious thought . Thats right, you are not in charge not in command on a concious level. Virginia Wade one of our great tennis heroines said success in tennis was about liberating your mind to allow your body to do the right thing.
Liberating your mind, freeing your mind to allow your body to do the right thing. Theres a phrase to conjure with. Anyway our young buck went on to close down the second set at 6-4, but I took 3 of his service games to deuce and was able to serve and play my own game more freely as a a result of the increased confidence I had from freeing my mind. Or more specifically leaving the critical censorious part of my left brain on the side of the court, literally that critical little bastard didnt accompany me on to the tennis court, instead I had unalduterated concentration, focus and as a by-product increased and growing self confidence. Another by-product was that I enjoyed the second set immensely. I enjoyed not only my play but the play of my opponent who had enabled me to play to the very best of my ability however limited that may be.
It occurs to me that there are at least 3 general categories of thought. The first is the dominant thought process accepted by our culture. The thought pattern engendered within conscious thought. Rational thought processes fall in to this category. Language falls within this category, mathematical thinking, the sequential processing of ideas. Because I do this, then I do that, because this has happened that must happen. Critical thinking falls within this category for it is the critical thinking of the rational mind, argument, the classical pedagogic process of dispute, once again falls again within this rational conscious thought process. Most of our dominant thought processes, and the sorts of processes valued by our culture are rational processes. We value them highly and we value the people who excel in this manner of thinking most highly. They are our politicians, our teachers, scientists, and critics. These are the dominant forces of our intellectual elite, and rightly so. For their contribution to our culture is massive.
There is however another thought process apart from the rational. That I would suggest is a process of Reflective Cognition. This way many of us learn to do all sorts of complex mechanical actions. For example in order to ride a bicycle one would first of all watch somebody riding a bike. We would then have a go, get on the bike, pedal a couple of revolutions and fall off. We would then use a process of reflection. We do, we reflect, we analyse, and as a consequence we modify our behaviour then we do again. So we might climb on the bike, wobble left and right, but still fall off. We then reflect again , push the pedals a bit harder keep the handle bars a bit straighter and lo were going forward feet up keep pedalling. This is essentially the learning process a child engages upon when a he or she learns how to walk. No parent teaches a child how to walk but somehow they manage to do it by this process of reflective cognition. No matter how many manuals one might read about learning how to serve a tennis ball and how many coaching lessons one might pay for at 20 an hour, reflective cognition, watching good practice, uncritically observing ones performance, modifying ones behaviour and reflecting upon it is how one learns to serve a tennis ball, strike a golf ball or drive a car. This process is partly conscious and partly unconscious. The bodily actions that one engages when serving a tennis ball are immensely complex and learning how to do it requires many hours of practice and quiet reflection believe me I know.
Ther third principle thought process is unconcious thought, this is the thought process that is engaged whenever a finger is lifted to hit a keyboard, or return service or whenever an eyelid is opened at break of day. We do not control this acomplex series of neural messages are passed between brain and eyelid and stuff happens. This more to the point is also the process pretty largely engaged whenever we involve ourselves in Creative Thinking.
