What Exactly Is Creativity?
What Exactly Is Creativity?
  • Reporter Park Tae-yoon
  • 승인 2013.06.05 19:03
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FEATURE : The word ?reativity?

The word “Creativity” is increasingly used in society. We can easily hear the word “creativity” everywhere as the significance of it is growing bigger and bigger. Some people say that creativity is the key to success. However, some of them do not know the exact meaning of creativity. The Postech Times cover creativity in multiple ways. The first  article compares creativity in the arts and science. The second shows the viewpoint of creativity in “Korea Science and ICT Conference 2013” in Coex, Seoul, during from May 21 to 22.  The last one is about patents. The fruit of creativity is related to the patent. The Postech Times looks into how creativity is reflected in patents and suggests some examples of it.      

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What Exactly Is Creativity?

Creativity means numerous things to various people. Nowadays, creativity is a topic at many conferences and contests. The word “Creativity” is being bandied about here, there, and everywhere. Researchers define it as the development of ideas, products, or solutions that are perceived as unique, novel, relevant, and useful. However, people are actually unable to discriminate between creativity and creation, and creativity and innovation. People come to interpret it literally and then the word “Creativity” can be defined in any number of ways in different fields. Creativity can also be defined at many distinct levels - cognitively, intellectually, socially, economically, spiritually, and from the finite perspective of different disciplines - science, art, literature, business, music, and so on. As creativity is defined diversely in many fields, creativity is an important attribute for good scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and entertainers. Then, what are their ideas of “Creativity”?
Basically, creativity springs up in the experience of daily life. Even if people are in the monotonous experience and context of daily life, creativity is formed when they look into the routine with a new viewpoint at the same time. In this way, the creativity of scientists and artists has something in common: the ability to observe. Essential for scientists, observation is a tool that leads scientists to research experimental evidence that could be easily ignored by the unobservant. Sensitivity of artists views the inner workings of humankind in depth. As creativity opens the door of a new literary world for artists, it also provides opportunities to draw scientific theory. Based on creative and imaginative thought, scientists and artists transmute collected fragments of thought into new stories in new ways. As a result, the products of creativity are pieces of poetry, paintings, and scientific theses. However, there are different viewpoints about creativity between art and science.
At first, creativity in science is associated with productive thinking that new discovery and invention substitute existing knowledge and technology. Therefore, it has led to an affluent society. To put it simply, scientists are those who use their creativity to create new things and to understand nature for the benefit of mankind. For example, Issac Newton had come up with the concept of gravity by observing a falling apple, and Einstein enlarged the concept of gravitation in the universe. On the other hand, in art and literature, creativity is associated with originality and appropriateness that makes the difference between the previous ones. In the art practice and theory of Davor Dzalto, human creativity is taken as a basic feature of both the personal existence of human beings and art production. For this thinker, creativity is a basic cultural and anthropological category, since it enables human manifestation in the world as a “real presence” in contrast to the progressive “virtualization” of the world.
Creativity plays important role in our lives. Sometimes, it makes people materially comfortable. In addition, it occasionally fills a sense of emptiness through the arts. Because of these reasons, creativity seems to be bandied everywhere. In some ways, that is quite natural.