September 2023
Cumulative Record. Chapter 26: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 2
Let me tell you about Chomsky. I published Verbal Behavior in 1957. In 1958 I received a 55-page typewritten review by someone I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky. I read half a dozen pages, saw that it missed the point of my book, and went no further. (p. 391)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 20
A person who, as we say, lives for art, for whom art is the most important thing in the world, is not so much one who finds art reinforcing as one who has enjoyed a favorable history of painting or looking at pictures. The technique with which a dishonest gambler “hooks” his victim shows what […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 19
Mutation must . . . be followed by selection . . . The picture eventually left on the canvas is only one product of the combined processes of mutation and selection. An artist who will henceforth paint in a different way is another. (p. 386)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 18
We may not like to credit any aspect of a successful painting to chance, but, if we are willing to admit that chance does make a contribution, we can take steps to improve the chances. Mutations may be made more probable by making the control of a medium less precise or by encouraging disturbances. (p. […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 17
The word “origin” in The Origin of Species is important, for the book is essentially a study of originality. The multiplicity of living forms is accounted for in terms of mutation and selection, without appealing to any prior design. There are comparable elements in the behavior of the artist who produces original works. (p. 385)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 16
Novelty or originality can occur in a wholly deterministic system. A convenient archetypal pattern is the theory of evolution. The living forms on the earth show a variety far beyond that of works of art. The diversity was once attributed to the whims and vagaries of a creative Mind, but Darwin proposed an alternative explanation. […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 15
For Koestler a behavioral analysis of creativity is not only impossible but ludicrous, since novelty cannot arise in a “mechanistic” system. A creative mind must be at work. But a creative mind explains nothing. It is an appeal to the miraculous: mind is brought in to do what the body cannot do. But we must […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 14
The very assignment of producing a creative artist may seem contradictory. How can behavior be original or creative if it has been “produced”? Production presupposes some form of external control, but creativity, taken literally, denies such control. (p. 385)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 13
Learning the techniques of others does not interfere with the discovery of techniques of one’s own. On the contrary, the artist who has acquired a variety of techniques from his predecessors is in the best possible position to make truly original discoveries. (p. 384)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 11
When teachers abandoned older forms of discipline, they lost control, and to the extent that they have not found suitable substitutes, it is quite correct to say that they can no longer teach. And they have, therefore, been tempted to let students discover knowledge for themselves. (p. 384)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 25: Creating the Creative Artist. Quote 10
The history of art is to a large extent the history of what artists and viewers have found reinforcing. Universality is the universality of reinforcing effects. Changes in fashion come about as some reinforcers lose power and others gain. The emphasis is important in its bearing upon the practical problem of improving the place of […]