Theory of Creativity in Science: Busse & Mansfield

Marcelo Valderrey

25 Jun, 2024 02:41 PM

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: Theory of Creativity in Science: Busse & Mansfield

   Busse & Mansfield (pp. 53-56) present their own theory of the creative process in science, based on five essential, related processes in a sequence that is not necessarily fixed. It is illustrated through a flow chart that reflects these stages (in the figures with background color) and the dynamics of their interactions between the numerous elements mentioned in the theory.

   
   

   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

   
   

3. Step 3: My graphic interpretation

   Theory of Creativity in Science: Busse & Mansfiel (1984)

   

   
   

   Note. It refers to creativity in science and adds a new component: problem selection. It also details the “mental sets” that restrict the solution and its need for reformulation, debugging and verification to achieve authentically creative products. The authors assume the validity of their theory in science, since ideas can be tested against real-world data, and suggest that it may not apply to other fields where the criteria are subjective and aesthetic. 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: George Haslerud

   and continues in:

   ...