It's fascinating how often tales of creative effort seem to be incomplete.
I read just today about Mr Colt and his famous revolver. But the blogger says, essentially, that the creative idea wasn't his, he just developed a design used in the Indian Army.
I say "just" possibly unjustly; development is no easy matter. No doubt the development itself was full of creative acts. But the first order acts, to wit the identification of the problem (introducing a suitable pistol for horsemen) and the start of its solution (the revolver principle) had already been accomplished.
Once a whole civilisation begins to throw up acts of creativity, their interactions must become very hard to disentangle.
I guess this adds one more reason why creatives aren't always liked very much. Identifying problems, but no solutions, will be viewed as mere 'complaining' by non-creatives.
It's fascinating how often tales of creative effort seem to be incomplete.
ReplyDeleteI read just today about Mr Colt and his famous revolver. But the blogger says, essentially, that the creative idea wasn't his, he just developed a design used in the Indian Army.
I say "just" possibly unjustly; development is no easy matter. No doubt the development itself was full of creative acts. But the first order acts, to wit the identification of the problem (introducing a suitable pistol for horsemen) and the start of its solution (the revolver principle) had already been accomplished.
Once a whole civilisation begins to throw up acts of creativity, their interactions must become very hard to disentangle.
I guess this adds one more reason why creatives aren't always liked very much. Identifying problems, but no solutions, will be viewed as mere 'complaining' by non-creatives.
ReplyDelete