Captured By Language

Reading ‘The Language Instinct’ by Steven Pinker I was struck by thoughts about creativity.

Generally I find that my most creative thoughts come when my mind is not burdened with structured thinking. When I am deep in Analysis or math I tend to lose a lot of creativity. I can certainly be creative within my Analysis, but things I typically associate with art don’t seem to come.

I was chatting about this with my wife and she had a lot of thoughts about how tied we are to language. Steven Pinker relates some of the theories on thinking, especially about mentalese, which is the language of the mind, and how it all languages are extensions of the language of the mind, but not the same.

But, I think that in many way as we are educated and are language is more and more cemented in our minds, we lose some of the richness of our mental language. I think that creativity is simply a more pure form of mentalese. When we eradicate language from our output (idea thanks to Laurence), we have a more readily understandable form. I think that is why design and especially different forms of art are more accessible and have a greater impact on people.

I have more to think about this topic as I would like to understand how to move myself out of math-mode and into creative design mode. Right now I can program at a moments notice and really be creative in my solutions, but then when I sit down to draw it takes a while. Usually if I have a couple days off work, by the time I can relax and stop thinking about things, the design creativity comes back. It would be nice to know how to clear my mind and be able to move right into art mode.