Passage 1
In the field of psychology, there has long been a certain haziness surrounding the definition ofcreativity, an I-know-it-when-I-see-it attitude that has eluded a precise formulation. During ourconversation, Mark Beeman, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University, told me that heused to be reluctant to tell people what his area of study was, for fear of being dismissed ormisunderstood. What, for instance, crosses your mind when you think of creativity Well, we knowthat someone is creative if he produces new things or has new ideas. And yet, as John Kounios, apsychologist at Drexel University who collaborates frequently with Beeman, points out, that view iswrong, or at least not entirely right. "Creativity is the process, not the product," he says.
To illustrate, Beeman offers an example. Imagine someone who has never used or seen apaperclip and is struggling to keep a bunch of papers together. Then the person comes up with a newway of bending a stiff wire to hold the papers in place. "That was very creative," Beeman says. Onthe flip side, if someone works in a new field--Beeman gives the example of nanotechnology--anything that he produces may be considered inherently "creative." But was the act of producing itactually creative As Beeman put it,"Not all artists are creative. And some accountants are verycreative."
Insight, however, has proved less difficult to define and to study. Because it arrives at a specificmoment in time, you can isolate it, examine it, and analyze its characteristics. "Insight is only onepart of creativity," Beeman says."But we can measure it. We have a temporal marker thatsomething just happened in the brain. I′d never say that′s all of creativity, but it′s a central,identifiable component." When scientists examine insight in the lab, they are looking at what typesof attention and thought processes lead to that moment of synthesis: If you are trying to facilitate abreakthrough, are there methods you c
A.Bending the stiffwire
B.Holding papers in place
C.The idea of making a paperclip
D.The process of making a paperclip