Abstract
Invention of problem situations and experimental objects to study others’ thinking is a special kind of creativity worthy of scientific interest. The objects are considered in terms of Latour’s actor network theory (as nonhuman actants), cultural psychology (as cultural tools), and Gibson’s theory of affordances (as meta-affordances). A fundamental problem of validity in studies of curiosity and exploration is discussed. The author’s experience of inventions of exploratory objects to be experimented with is analyzed. An inter(trans)-disciplinary insight penetrating and integrating all levels of the work on an exploratory object is described. An example of participants’ revealing of an object’s unexpected faculties (“serendipities”) undesirable from the experimenter’s point of view is given. It is shown that an object designed to study thinking in one sample can be used in another sample with unexpected results. It is argued that automatic generation of problem posing-and-solving situations and exploratory objects, beginning from some levels of their novelty and complexity, is hardly possible because of fundamental limitations of “standard means to generate or score non-standard ends”.
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Notes
Poddjakow is another Latin letters’ spelling of Poddiakov.
I need to explain how I as a psychologist am able to do things like that at all. I’ve been interested in physics and mathematics ever since I was a teenager and I went to the specialised physical-mathematical class of School 91 in Moscow, whose most famous alumni (cited on the school’s site) are the Fields medalist Maxim Kontsevich and the creator of the famous computer game Tetris Alexey Pazhitnov. I am not claiming to be on a par with them, but, having left the school with certificates of merit in physics and geometry, I am equipped to create something in this area. The school’s site: https://91.ru/o-шкoлe/иcтopия-шкoлы/выдaющиecя-выпycкники; English Google online translation https://91-ru.translate.goog/o-шкoлe/иcтopия-шкoлы/выдaющиecя-выпycкники/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp. Access date: June 24, 2022.
The term “systems insight” (in context of systems thinking) cannot be used here because it has been coined in different trademarks (one can run a Google search for “systems insight” and see the results). The term “complex insight” looks tautological (in some sense, any insight is a somewhat complex one), and a combination of “complex” and “insight” is used in a context different from the inter(trans)-disciplinary insight: “On the basis of their [Gestalt psychologists’] research with complex ‘insight problems,’ they characterized insight as a reinterpretation or restructuring of one's representation of a stimulus or situation after a period of unconscious processing” (Erickson & Kounios, 2015).
It does not mean that people will not try to design standard algorithms to generate unique and non-standard exploratory objects to test exploration and creativity. Nowadays, “mass request for uniqueness” does exist, as Asmolov (2020) emphasizes (perhaps this request is partly imposed). I can give an example. In internet shops, one can buy many absolutely identical shirts (or hoodies) with printed slogan “Escape from standard! Be yourself”. You may repeat it a few times and hear its drum rhythm. Mass marches of people dressed in these identical shirts and chanting the slogan to the drumbeat might be a possible grotesque episode in some future movie.
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The work is supported by grant 20–013-00838 from Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
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Not applicable because the article deals with analysis of invention and design of experimental objects and not with results of empirical studies with use of these objects. The results have been described in previous publications of mine (Poddiakov, 2001, 2011a, 2011b, 2017a).
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Poddiakov, A. Creativity of Creativity Researchers: Invention of Problems and Experimental Objects to Study Thinking. Integr. psych. behav. 57, 43–64 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09713-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09713-4