Design Science News - How do we understand creativity and the brain?

“The students were buzzing with excitement after the visit. Some of them told me that you were their favourite part of our trip, and for me it was wonderful to see how they could bounce their ideas around with you. Honestly, I think you might have left them with new paths to consider when they return home to the US.”

Sebastian Scott Engen, CIS

We hosted 20 students and course leaders from DIS Copenhagen, a Danish non-profit educational foundation that helps students study abroad. The students, from across the United States, were exploring and debating human creativity through neurobiological, cognitive and psychological perspectives.

To help them think about the relationship between our minds and our creativity, we shared a little about our purpose, some of our projects, the creative approaches that help us bring knowledge to life and our take on the neuroscience of creativity.

That approach is, in part, based on ideas from Gardner, Thomas Nagel and Søren Kierkegaard. Gardner recognises that we have multiple intelligences (not just logical-mathematical), all of which are foundations for a creative life in which relationships, language, space, nature, movement, melody and nature are more fully valued.

Nagel says, “Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and nonphysical – that is, capable of combining into mental wholes”. While Kierkegaard tells us, “To fully embrace your creativity you must master your dread of the unknown.” So our advice to those attending was that “the path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made”, and “that they should use their studies to lean into their difficulties and enjoy trying, failing and practising that together help us to find new connections and new possibilities every day.”