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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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lchic - 06:58am Sep 5, 2002 EST (# 4194 of 4197)

Creativity (10)

MISHLOVE: I would think that when people really get in touch with their essential values, their essential desires, that creativity flows much more naturally than maybe when they get locked into trying to think it out logically. I know there are many ways to do that logically, but sometimes -- well, people talk about creative blocks all the time. Writer's block is a common issue. How do people deal with that?

MILLER: Well, there's a couple of things in that question, I think. The first is looking at that there really are two primary ways we even generate ideas, or generate that impulse to do something new, and part of it is actually through logic. The right brain/left brain and all that theory -- the right brain's gotten the good rap -- well, the right brain is the intuitive side, and that's where creativity comes from.

MISHLOVE: Spatial, musical.

MILLER: Right. And the left brain, well, that's the dull side.

MISHLOVE: Linear, logical, rational.

MILLER: Exactly.

MISHLOVE: Ugly left brain.

MILLER: Right. And yet both are absolutely essential to creativity.

................

MISHLOVE: What are some of the other styles of creativity that you've encountered in your research?

MILLER: Actually it's a combination of these four styles I mentioned -- the modifier, the experimenter, the explorer, the vision driver -- those four. But then being able to see that those actually come down to us as individuals, that we each personally have some combination of those styles that we're most comfortable with, and those come very close to our own values. When part of what we value is high achievement, for example -- the person who wants to get ahead, wants to perhaps make a lot of money or be highly esteemed and get promoted a lot, probably is vision-driven but still somewhat conservative in terms of wanting just to take what we have and modify it a little bit. But you have some other people who say, "You know, what I find most important is just what I feel. I like the challenge just for my own sake; I don't care what anybody else says." Those are the people who tend to kind of reach out and explore new territory.

MISHLOVE: So the trick in an organization is to get the right people doing the right task, and acknowledging the diversity of creativity.

http://www.intuition.org/txt/miller.htm

[Raises the point - where are the 'right people' to get Nukes down and really end the cold war ]

lchic - 08:04am Sep 5, 2002 EST (# 4195 of 4197)

Creative (11) Dasgupta model (based on computer program)

A. The problem and observations

1. The metaphrand: The cognitive structure of creativity in the (natural and artificial) sciences.
2. Relevant observations concerning the metaphrand:

a. A creative process involves the change and growth of knowledge structures (Gruber 1981; Holmes 1985).
b. Creativity involves the combination of known ideas or concept with the consequent production of novel or original ideas (Hadamard 1945; Koestler 1964; Gruber 1981).
c. The creative agent is purposeful and goal-seeking context (Gruber 1981; 1989; Perkins 1981; Root-Bernstein 1989).
d. The creative process involves small changes from moment to moment (Gruber 1981; Holmes 1989).
e. The creative process is protracted and evolving. It involves revision of earlier ideas or structures of ideas (ruber 1981; Ellman 1988; Holmes 1989; Jeffrey 1989).

4. The metaphor: Scientific creativity as a cognitive process is like a knowledge level computation.
5. The metaphier; Knowledge-level computation.

6. The body of knowledge known as the "AI paradigm"
(relates to model for computer program)

7. A theory of creativity, applicable to the natural and artificial sciences in which the process conducted by an agent with the resultant production of a psychologically original or historically original solution is described solely in terms of
(1) symbolic structures that represent goals, solutions, and knowledge and
(2)actions or operations that transform one symbolic structure to another such that
(3) each transformation that occurs is solely a function of facts, rules, and laws contained in the agent's knowledge body and the goal(s) to be achieved that particular time.

Reading Dasgupta in relation to 'truth' it seems that

Natural Creativity in the Sciences is a truth that is mined for and tested using Hypothesis.

In the Artificial Science sense, creativity relates to the utilisation of knowledge and tools to devise blueprints, process, law, treaty, methodology that is new and novel and seen as an advancement that moves the culture along. The hardcopy artefact represents 'evolved' truths, the evolved widget product is seen by society as of value for progress.

lchic - 08:20am Sep 5, 2002 EST (# 4196 of 4197)

Invention at Play is a highly interactive, engaging and surprising traveling exhibit that focuses on the similarities between the way children and adults play and the creative processes used by innovators in science and technology. It departs from traditional representations of inventors as extraordinary geniuses who are “not like us‚” to celebrate the creative skills and processes that are familiar and accessible to all people. Visitors of all ages will experience various playful habits of mind that underlie invention.

http://www.si.edu/lemelson/centerpieces/iap/resources.html

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