Sunday, March 15, 2009

On the act of creation


This is a kind of a side topic, but somehow related to this Blog. I am getting various relations to this Blog, some of them as comments, and some as off-line Emails. Recently I have received an Email about it, I'll not cite it, but reading it reminded me a really old book that I have read at the age of 16-17 0r so, called -- the act of creation by Arthur Koestler -- whose cover (from the Amazon site) you can see here. I think that this is the first heavy book I've read in English, and it was not a very easy reading. Anyway --- the book is making a claim that there are three types of "creative people": the scientist, the artist and the joker - both of them apply similar patterns of thinking to achieve a different goal. I have moved through different phases in life -- since early childhood I used to do what is called today "stand-up comedy" in all class parties, with the biggest performance in the final party after high-school graduation; in other phase in life I spent some time on writing poetry and short stories (even published some), and from a certain point in life I have deserted both and became a scientist, which is still how I define myself today.

Thinking in retrospect I tend to agree with Arthur Koestler that these three types of creation share something in common. How does it relate to my Blog ? -- I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.... Back to "event processing thinking" - soon.

1 comment:

Jack Rusher said...

Hey Opher, this post reminds me of something from Musil's The Man Without Qualities: "A man who wants the truth becomes a scientist; a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity may become a writer; but what should a man do who wants something in between?"