Synchronization of Mental Abilities

Synchronization of Mental Abilities

Guney, A.

Architecture and The Built Environment

Urbanism

2008-06-05

I think it is better to summarize some cognitive issues in relation to this subject; how we learn, how we should organize learning (instructions), knowledge, etc. before treating creativity and rationality. Is it, really, possible to consider creativity without any kind of involvement of the ability of problem solving? Do designers not solve a kind of problem while they ‘create’ an (conceptual) artifact? What kind of mental process is creativity? Is it a mental ability of physical nature only, or is it also a kind of constructed form what we might have built up through our lives because of our tendencies ever since our childhood? Have not we built up our present knowledge by experience, by intuition and by many other learning instructions? Do we use our rationality only to solve algorithmic problems or is creativity also, somehow, a quick, well constructed rationality? Maybe both are of the same the same type of intelligence but creativity is more mystical to explain and the other seems to be easier to clarify. What is it to be creative or rational in terms of mental process? What do a creative and a rational mental behavior look like? Do not we use (creative) methods that are rational as well as creative behavior? What might a creative method mean to us? I would like to give some examples from my teaching experience by hoping that it gives some hint about this issue. When I ask my students to make some analysis or design for a given task, actually, they use declarative, procedural and tacit knowledge as well as their intuition while trying to reach their creative design solutions. Every semester they produce mostly similar results in many ways but also somehow different from each other. Each student has a different background in some ways as well as similar ones since the media gives them the chance of immediate communication besides that of local experience. I would like to present some examples of my students’ work during the conference, which will reflect some of their rational and intuitive thinking within the global and regional effect. One of the human cognitive faculties is intuition, as we all know. Students are more successful when we set them free to use their intuition besides using declarative, procedural and tacit knowledge. In all fruitful creative design process, teachers should rationally, motivate them to activate all their mental abilities to employ but then by helping them to find out the constraints of the issues at hand, since otherwise students can be lost in the sea of chaotic trivial and indirect relevant variables. Finally, education should be rational enough to stimulate students to get trained in using mental leaps, which goes with the analogical reasoning, for a creative learning process in the widest sense including how to achieve creative design solutions. They should learn to use all their abilities simultaneously to enjoy the synchronic effect of it.

intuitive
thinking
rationality
creativity
problem solving

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e0d089c0-4dad-4729-b333-46123a99372c

Designing Design Education - Design Train Congress, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 5-7 June 2008

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2008 Guney, A.