Bisociation (Arthur Koestler)
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Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation (1964) is an attempt to develop a general theory of human creativity covering both the similarities and the differences between creativity in humor, science and the arts. It is a study of the processes of discovery, invention, imagination and creativity in humor, science, and the arts. From describing and comparing many different examples of invention and discovery, Koestler concludes that they all share a common pattern which he terms "bisociation" – a blending of elements drawn from two previously unrelated matrices of thought into a new matrix of meaning by way of a process involving comparison, abstraction and categorization, analogies and metaphors. Koestler views all three as "continuous domains of creativity."
Koestler argues that the essence of creativity lies in: "the perceiving of a situation or idea ... in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of references." He regards many different mental phenomena based on comparison (such as analogies, metaphors, parables, allegories, jokes, identification, role-playing, acting, personification, anthropomorphism etc.), as special cases of "bisociation". He also suggests that originality, emphasis and economy are universal features of creative thought.
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According to Koestler "the principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality (p.402). he argues that, while the emotional context changes, the psychological processes supported the generation of original results is ultimately the same in humour, science and art and involves the bisocation of previously unrelated matrices of thought. The importance of creative thought, and Koestler's ultimate motivation in studying it, is eloquently described:
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"Habits ... reduce man to the status of a conditioned automaton. The creative act, by connected previously unrelated dimensions of experience, enables him to attain a higher level of mental evolution. It is an act of liberation - the defeat of habit by originality" (p.96).
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Source: Notes on The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler by Marcus Pearce.
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