Creativity, Nature or Nurture?
Is creativity something that we’re born with or is it something we learn? It’s a question that people in art based fields often ask themselves. Studies by major universities show that people who tend to be more creative have different biological characteristics than those who are not. But not everyone is convinced. Some studies argue that creativity is a renewable resource that can be taught, enhanced and fueled, just like any other skill. So, is it nature or nurture? Let’s use myself as an example to delve into the subject and investigate whether the artistic drive inside of you is a gift of evolution or simple upbringing.
My mother was a very talented artist in the late 60’s and early 70’s. She had painted canvases spread across her bedroom, sketch pads stored in stacks throughout our basement and framed photographs of her old art studios inside her office. Even as a boy, I remember asking myself, “will I be like mom (or as we say here in Chicago, ‘ma’)?” As I think back, I don’t recall her ever sitting me down and teaching me how to paint or tell stories, yet as I continued to grow, I learned that I had quite the knack for drawing and writing. Kids in grammar school use to come to me all the time and ask if I could help them sketch a picture or think of a story idea for a school assignment. To be honest, I never gave it much thought until I decided to pursue my career as an author. Now though, I often wonder, did I teach myself to be creative, using my mom as a guide, or was it something innate that helped me become the fairly creative man I am today?
According to researcher Kenneth Heilman of the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience at Cornell University, I never really had a choice. Kenneth discovered that the brain is divided into two halves that are joined by fibers called the corpus callosum. Writers, artists and musicians tend to have smaller corpus callosums, which allows each side of their brain to communicate better, creating new ideas and associations more easily. Kenneth found that people with this phenomenon benefit through an incubation of ideas that are critical for the divergent-thinking component of creativity. So for Keneth, my brain is just wired that way due to my small corpus callosum (hey, size isn’t everything).
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Helsinki conducted a similar study associated to musical creativity. In their extensive assessment, they found that musical creativity is based on one’s natural ability to judge pitch, as well as the coordination of beat and harmony. It’s the brain’s inherent ability to reorganize information that makes one a great musician. This explains why so many musicians like Mozart had successful careers at early ages. It has always been in their DNA.
On the contrary, according to Tina Seelig, the Executive Director of Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program, I, like any other creative person, slowly learned how to be as creative as I am. Through her studies, Tina has learned that creativity is a part of the “Innovation Engine”, a set of skills that can be improved by anyone with the right mindset. In Tina’s eyes, creativity is the process of creating new ideas, something that anyone can do if they just learn to think beyond the obvious. There are hundreds of paths, some easier than others, that can help you sharpen your creative skills. Through her studies, Tina has learned that we are all naturally creative, and like any other ability, some people may have more natural talent. However, it doesn’t mean that others can’t be just as creatively proficient. All they need to learn are techniques that help enhance their capacity. Much like speed reading or rollerblading, it’s a skill to be honed.
So which is it? While I want to believe that artists, much like Jedi or Hogwarts wizards, are biologically chosen to become who they are, I have to say that I have a hard time buying into that mindset. People aren’t just packaged in gift wrap and a bow, creative as they’ll ever be at birth. No, it seems to be something that slowly develops. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I’ve also met some pretty amazing artists within my day that didn’t do anything different from friends and colleagues when it came to improving their talent, yet they somehow managed to be twice as gifted as others when it came to painting, writing music, or sculpting. Maybe they’re just lucky?
Regardless, for me, it’s hard to agree with any blanket statement which states that creativity only has one explanation like genetics or daily practice. In my eyes, creativity is more than just what scientists can put under a microscope. Yes, it’s a combination of biology and skill, and yet it’s still something more. It’s an orchestra of experience, cleverness, inclination, dreams, love and chance. It’s a desire to make people happy with your work and a satisfaction that comes with conceiving something all your own. That’s something that you just can’t put into one from of scientific rationalization. Does that sound mawkishly sentimental? Perhaps. Still, it’s something I live by.
Through this short blog, we’ve studied what some experts have to say about creativity, using me as an example. But what do you think creativity is? When you examine who you are, can you explain it? Were you born with creativity or is it something that you were taught? Is it understandable or unexplainable? We as readers and writers sometimes forget that we live in a pool of creativity each day. Every blog you post or article you read is someone’s creativity put into motion. Maybe it’s time you take a second to ask yourself how you became the creative wonder that you are.
SEE THE FULL ARTICLE:
The Guardian, “Are Some People Born Creative”: http://www.theguardian.com/science/bl...
Business News Daily, “Who Says Creativity Can’t Be Learned”: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2471...
My mother was a very talented artist in the late 60’s and early 70’s. She had painted canvases spread across her bedroom, sketch pads stored in stacks throughout our basement and framed photographs of her old art studios inside her office. Even as a boy, I remember asking myself, “will I be like mom (or as we say here in Chicago, ‘ma’)?” As I think back, I don’t recall her ever sitting me down and teaching me how to paint or tell stories, yet as I continued to grow, I learned that I had quite the knack for drawing and writing. Kids in grammar school use to come to me all the time and ask if I could help them sketch a picture or think of a story idea for a school assignment. To be honest, I never gave it much thought until I decided to pursue my career as an author. Now though, I often wonder, did I teach myself to be creative, using my mom as a guide, or was it something innate that helped me become the fairly creative man I am today?
According to researcher Kenneth Heilman of the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience at Cornell University, I never really had a choice. Kenneth discovered that the brain is divided into two halves that are joined by fibers called the corpus callosum. Writers, artists and musicians tend to have smaller corpus callosums, which allows each side of their brain to communicate better, creating new ideas and associations more easily. Kenneth found that people with this phenomenon benefit through an incubation of ideas that are critical for the divergent-thinking component of creativity. So for Keneth, my brain is just wired that way due to my small corpus callosum (hey, size isn’t everything).
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Helsinki conducted a similar study associated to musical creativity. In their extensive assessment, they found that musical creativity is based on one’s natural ability to judge pitch, as well as the coordination of beat and harmony. It’s the brain’s inherent ability to reorganize information that makes one a great musician. This explains why so many musicians like Mozart had successful careers at early ages. It has always been in their DNA.
On the contrary, according to Tina Seelig, the Executive Director of Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program, I, like any other creative person, slowly learned how to be as creative as I am. Through her studies, Tina has learned that creativity is a part of the “Innovation Engine”, a set of skills that can be improved by anyone with the right mindset. In Tina’s eyes, creativity is the process of creating new ideas, something that anyone can do if they just learn to think beyond the obvious. There are hundreds of paths, some easier than others, that can help you sharpen your creative skills. Through her studies, Tina has learned that we are all naturally creative, and like any other ability, some people may have more natural talent. However, it doesn’t mean that others can’t be just as creatively proficient. All they need to learn are techniques that help enhance their capacity. Much like speed reading or rollerblading, it’s a skill to be honed.
So which is it? While I want to believe that artists, much like Jedi or Hogwarts wizards, are biologically chosen to become who they are, I have to say that I have a hard time buying into that mindset. People aren’t just packaged in gift wrap and a bow, creative as they’ll ever be at birth. No, it seems to be something that slowly develops. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I’ve also met some pretty amazing artists within my day that didn’t do anything different from friends and colleagues when it came to improving their talent, yet they somehow managed to be twice as gifted as others when it came to painting, writing music, or sculpting. Maybe they’re just lucky?
Regardless, for me, it’s hard to agree with any blanket statement which states that creativity only has one explanation like genetics or daily practice. In my eyes, creativity is more than just what scientists can put under a microscope. Yes, it’s a combination of biology and skill, and yet it’s still something more. It’s an orchestra of experience, cleverness, inclination, dreams, love and chance. It’s a desire to make people happy with your work and a satisfaction that comes with conceiving something all your own. That’s something that you just can’t put into one from of scientific rationalization. Does that sound mawkishly sentimental? Perhaps. Still, it’s something I live by.
Through this short blog, we’ve studied what some experts have to say about creativity, using me as an example. But what do you think creativity is? When you examine who you are, can you explain it? Were you born with creativity or is it something that you were taught? Is it understandable or unexplainable? We as readers and writers sometimes forget that we live in a pool of creativity each day. Every blog you post or article you read is someone’s creativity put into motion. Maybe it’s time you take a second to ask yourself how you became the creative wonder that you are.
SEE THE FULL ARTICLE:
The Guardian, “Are Some People Born Creative”: http://www.theguardian.com/science/bl...
Business News Daily, “Who Says Creativity Can’t Be Learned”: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2471...
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Wow Wanda,What a great comment. Thanks so much for sharing. I love how you mention that you feel as if being an artist has always been engrained in you, but it was through suffering, and the need to express your anguish, that it awoke your inner talents. It sounds like a seed in the dirt, ready to bloom if only it receives the right amount of rain. Great comment once again.
Warm Regards,
Justin
Soon the writing in distress mode became writings of romance and words of poetry. So yes I believe my writing, my creativity was birth out of the sufferings I had encountered. That which was birth was that which I had longed for. The tenderness of blossoming, friendship, true love floating in the rhapsody of oneness; and then carried away to a place of serenity.
It may have been birth out of pain but within I truly believe writing has always been with me and in me. Is this creative spirit in my DNA? I believe it is, but would it have unleashed itself had it not been from that part of my journey of being in the valley of despair? One can’t help but believe that my journey in writing was always meant to be. It may have been just a small strand traveling took hold, and wrapped itself around me as if my existence, my breath, my being; my survival could not find refuge without it.
Generations of aunt’s before me whom I never met or heard words of sweet whispers of stories flowing from their lips were writers. Maybe in looking ahead they knew I would need to have the ability to write out of a need to survive and therefore I was chosen.
As I developed within my mother’s womb, it"creativity" from generations before formed itself within me. Waiting patiently for me to receive, to take hold and realize that my creative spirit was there to guide me, to help me.
Often words flow from deep within as if my inner being is guiding my thoughts as the words are released from within. Writing is comfortable residing within me, it is free to express, and it is loved.
There are times during my sleep, vivid thoughts bursting awaken me scrambling to find something to transfer those thoughts on to. Sometimes my fingers can’t keep up with the thoughts or the thoughts are being transferred so quickly to my hand as if someone has taken control of my hand and I can’t stop it. Once it is out I can peaceably fall back to sleep.
Is it because I am open to its existence, my inner being, open to listening to me the small voice within?
My mom designed dresses for her precious four daughters using brown paper bags for a pattern and every stitch neatly in place by her tender hands. Yes it was a necessity, it was love. As a single mother she did not have the means to take us school shopping ; but year after year she could be found stretched out on the hard wooden floors drawing her new patterns on those brown grocery bags to transfer on to the material she had selected, would soon adorn us in a way you could never imagine.
Was it in her DNA? Was it birth out of her past coming from a family of eight, picking cotton in the south and not knowing where their next meal was coming from? How do you explain, out of all of her siblings she was the only one to birth such creativity? Was it because she too had experienced trauma?
I gave birth to three children, out of the three two are writers (lyrics, poetry); both can sing and one out of the two writers is also an artist (draws and paints) and is a photographer. But my eldest has no desire to be creative. So even though she has the same DNA the creative spirit has yet to birth, she has to be open to receive it.
I honestly feel that there are individuals that believed, accepted and received the creative spirit within; simply because they could not ignore the calling which had taken root within.
Awe so exciting, bursting with joy, life; creativity and the freedom of just flowing with it. With the ability to share that which was shaped and formed within you with others traveling.
There are those who have a desire to write to transfer their words to a piece of paper but, they need a little help. They seek out resources, take classes in which a skill to write is developed. Maybe there were those who were of generation’s prior, writers and artist’s that connected and said you would be the chosen one to birth that which was lost in the generations after them.
Then again maybe it is something we all have, some have to work at it, for some the words just flow effortlessly for the creative spirit within thrives to come alive.
Have you ever noticed in a room full of people all admiring the same piece of art there are those who are able to see beyond the paint and the lines. In fact the creative minds have an ability to see objects within the art which is portrayed for all to see but is perceived by the creative spirit to be more than just a painting. Some may see it at first glance, there are some who may take longer and then there are those who struggle who do not have that burning desire to stop, to admire to take in. They can’t see what your creative spirit has the ability to do just that, “create”.
Is it because one’s creative mind of interpretation is open to the universe? Open to that which has been passed on from the many generations before?
From whence it came to be either from the depths of trauma, from generations before you, from the many classes one may have taken to become a writer; while there standing , admiring the artwork which is before you; it doesn’t matter how your creativity came to be.
In that moment there is peace as your body gives in to the solace that surrounds you. You may feel an overwhelming need to reach out to touch and feel that which your spirit has guided you to see. It is a connection, an oneness with the artist behind the artwork so you pause and take a moment to listen and appreciate. You don’t move quickly from the art that has drawn you in; you can’t so you linger until you are released to move on.
I have never thought prior to reading your blog about how my ability to write stories, poetry, plays; design and make jewelry, see things others can’t; always bursting with new ideas as fresh as the morning dew came to be.
I just appreciate and follow the path designed for me.
And then yes I do believe we all have a story to tell.