Understanding the Process of Creation: A New Approach

Abstract

Our contemporary civilization increasingly relies on creative approaches and solutions. This growing dependence makes issues of control, regulation, and management of the process of creation ever more important. This article finds two major current theoretical perspectives on creativity and the process of creation to be vulnerable in one important respect: their explanation of the production of disequilibrium, which plays a singularly important role in the process of creation, does not pass the test of rational justification. This article suggests that the production of disequilibrium is intimately related to equilibration—the essential operation of rational thought processes. The emphasis on the role equilibration makes a rational justification of the production of disequilibrium possible. The new theoretical perspective opens the path toward a comprehensive and objective understanding of the process of creation, which is the main condition for regulating, controlling, and managing this process.