brettworks

“How are you to recognize ‘fundamentals’? One test is they have lasted a long time. Another test is from the fundamentals all the rest of the field can be derived by using the standard methods in the field” (p.9).

“Creativity seems, among other things, to be ‘usefully’ putting together things which were not perceived to be related before, and it may be the initial psychological distance between the things which counts most” (p. 325).

“Probably the most important tool in creativity is the use of an analogy. Something seems like something else which we knew in the past. Wide acquaintance with various fields of knowledge is thus a help—provided you have the knowledge filed away so it is available when needed, rather than to be found only when led directly to it. This flexible access to pieces of knowledge seems to come from looking at knowledge while you are acquiring it from many different angles, turning over any new idea to see its many sides before filing it away. This implies effort on your part not to take the easy, immediately useful ‘memorizing the material’ path, but to prepare your mind for the future. It is for this reason I have urged you in many of the chapters to get down to the fundamentals of a field, since it implies you must examine things many ways before you can decide what is fundamental and what is frills. In fact, for one person they may be in one order, and for another in the opposite order. What is fundamental partly depends on the individual and their mental makeup. It is obvious you need many ‘hooks’ on the knowledge if you are to use it in new situations” (p. 328).