Generative Creativity - lecture 15:
Analogies

Introduction

Analogy-making is often seen as a key element of creative thought, particularly in scientific and intellectual activity.

Bongard problems provide a nice illustration.

Solving a Bongard problem involves finding a rule which fits all six images on the left page, but none of the images on the right page. Go to http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~hfoundal/res/bps/bpidx.htm and work through at least 10 such problems. Then write a list of the similarities and differences between Bongard problems and sequence-analogy problems.

Koestler's bisociation theory

In Koestler's `bisociation' theory (from Koestler's `The Act of Creation') the link with analogy becomes the central focus.

All creative activity is viewed as a kind of analogy-formation.

Koestler's triptych
`The three panels of the rounded triptych ... indicate three domains of creativity which shade into each other without sharp boudaries: Humour, Discovery, and Art... Each horizontal line across the triptych stands for a pattern of creative activity which is represented on all three panels; ... The first is intended to make us laugh; the second to make us understand; the third to make us marvel.' (Koestler, The Act of Creation, p. 27).

Bisociation

`I have coined the term `bisociation' in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single `plane', as it were, and the creative act, which, as I shall try to show, always operates on more than one plane.' (p. 35)

Bisociation is `the perceiving of a situation or idea ... in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference.' (p. 35)

Humour

This figure `is meant to indicate what happens when a humurous narrative oscillates between two frames of reference' (p. 38)

Discovery
The figure depicts Archimedes's discovery of immersive volume measurement.

`M1 is the [process of thought] governed by habitual rules of the game, by means of which Archimedes originally tried to solve the problem: M2 is the matrix of associations related to taking a bath. m2 represents the actual train of thought which effects the connection.' (p. 106)

Analogical systematicity

More recently, Dedre Gentner has formulated the `structure-mapping' theory of analogical thought.

This has features in common with Koestler's bisociation theory but relates specifically to analogy-making rather than to creativity in general.
Gentner's model of the Rutherford analogy, after (Gentner, 1983, p. 160).


Structure mapping
Structural correspondences in the water/heat flow analogy, from (adapted from Gentner, Mechanisms, 1989, p. 211).


Summary

Resources

Koestler, A. (1964). THE ACT OF CREATION. London: Hutchinson.

Koestler, A. (1967). THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE. London: Pan.

Koestler, A. (1979). JANUS: A SUMMING UP. London: Pan.

Page created on: Mon Mar 2 15:49:11 GMT 2009
Feedback to Chris Thornton