the idea: develop a creative method

A lot of thought has been put into science and what it takes to create reliable scientific evidence.  The scientific method was one of the outcomes of the Enlightenment, the 17th century intellectual revolution that has shaped our entire intellectual system.  Like many others, I was taught the scientific method early on in my education.  Then I was retaught and retaught and retaught throughout the rest of my education (and that’s including the four years of high school I skipped, I can’t imagine how many more times they teach about it then).

For those of you who have forgotten what the scientific method is, or only have hazy recollections of scary classrooms, here it is:

1.) Ask a question

2.) Do background research

3.) Create a hypothesis (which I still say as hypo-the-sis.  For some reason Hypo the Sis has always been a clown in my mental imagery)

4.) Experiment, test the htpothesis

5.) Analyze data and draw conclusions

6.) Report results

Scientists follow this method more or less to the T day in and day out.  Children are taught it, it’s in billions of textbooks, so we get it.  It’s important.

And yet, creative thought, which is as important as scientific thought, has no method.  This may be because there isn’t one, because each person has their own creative method.  But before Enlightenment, science was all over the place as well.  It took hundreds of years to really nail down science the way we view it now and the people we now think of as our greatest minds were challenged every step of the way.

My mind is already churning, trying to figure out if there really could be a creative method.  Parts of it would be the same, background research, experimentation (with an entirely different twist), but then maybe also repetition? determination?  I’m not sure how to make a method out of this, but I intend to try!