Composite Theories: Howard Gruber

To seriously study creativity, it is useful to know something about the first scientific efforts to define and explain it, attributable to psychology.

  1. Step 1: Small doses...visuals!

    The idiosyncrasies, concepts and language of mechanical engineering are somewhat distant from the psychological approach and it is easy for the reader to lose the thread of the explanations by becoming entangled with its specific terminology and its forms of expression.

    For this reason, I have preferred to extract small fragments of the theories of creativity and make an effort to create my own graphic image for them.

    My graphics involve the risk of biasing and/or distorting the original ideas, which also exists when trying to paraphrase them, but it brings the will to understand them and translate them into engineering language in the hope of bringing both approaches closer together.

    To this end, I have relied on research works that compile and summarize these theories. In particular, the work of authors Busse & Mansfield that appears in the quotes in the next step of the tutorial.

  2. Step 2: Composite Theories: Howard Gruber

    Busse & Mansfield (pp. 51-52) cite Howard Gruber's theory (Darwin on man: a psychological study of scientific creativity, 1974) derived from associative, Gestalt and Piagetian influences. It is illustrated with a new geometric pattern that arises from the effort to deeply understand two other pre-existing ones.


    References:

    • Busse, T. V., & Mansfield, R. S. (1984). Teorías del proceso creador: revisión y perspectiva. (©. 2.-2. reservados, Ed.) Studies in Psychology = Estudios de Psicología, nº 18 (traducido del Journal of Creative Behavior, num. 2, vol. 14, 91-103, 1980), 47-57. Recuperado el 18 de diciembre de 2020, de https://dialnet.unirioja.es/ejemplar/7049
    • Gruber, H. E. (1974). Darwin on man: a psychological study of scientific creativity. Junto con los escritos primeros y sin publicar de Darwin, transcritos y comentados por P. H. Barret. Nueva York: Dutton.


  3. Step 3: My graphic interpretation

    Composite Theory: Howard Gruber (1974)


    Note. The patterns of two independent systems (circles and squares) are interrelated after a more complex and gradual process than simple association, which takes time and efforts of deep understanding, including processes of assimilation and accommodation until the emergence of a new pattern (triangles). ) unproductive from the rules that govern each isolated system. Source: illustration by the author.


    Reference: all texts and images in this tutorial were extracted from the doctoral thesis cited below,

    • Valderrey, M.E. (2021), “Catalizadores Creativos en Ingeniería Conceptual: Evaluación de Habilidades Visuales y Verbales para Diseño Mecánico”. Propuesta de tesis doctoral, UNINI-México.


  4. Step 4: Links

    This tutorial comes from:

    Composite Theories: Jacques Hadamard

    and continues in:

    Composite Theories: George Haslerud

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