The Power of Creative Intelligence: 10 ways to tap into your creative genius. Tony Buzan
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right sides of the brain were having ‘conversations’ with each other. The left brain would receive information and send it over to the right brain, which would process the information in its own way, and then send it back to the left side, and so on. By this process the brain was synergetically building up information, and adding to its own intellectual and creative power by combining the different elements. By the early 1980s, the left/right brain paradigm was becoming known around the globe, and books were beginning to be written about this extraordinary discovery.
Then came the difficulties.
problem number 1
You may have heard that the left-brain activities were generally labelled as ‘intellectual’, ‘academic’, or ‘business’ activities, and that the right-brain activities were correspondingly labelled the ‘artistic’, ‘creative’, and ‘emotional’ activities.
However, if all this research is true, and if by using both sides of our brains our overall intelligence and creativity rises, then by definition the great creative geniuses must have been using the same mental process – and their whole brains. But if the above labelling of the right and left activities of the brain is correct, then academics and intellectuals such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein would have been ‘left brained’, and musicians and artists such as Beethoven and Michelangelo would have been ‘right brained’ – in other words, they would not have been using all of their brains at all!
More research was obviously required to shed light on this growing controversy. I and a number of other passionately curious individuals began to gather data on the great creative geniuses, and to relate it to the left/right brain model.
What do you think we found? We discovered this about ‘left-brained’ Einstein:
Case History – Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was nominated as the greatest creative genius of the 20th century. However, he was a poor student, preferring daydreaming to studying, and was eventually expelled from school for being a ‘disruptive influence’.
As a teenager he became inspired by the imaginative side of mathematics and physics, and was equally interested by the work of Michelangelo, whom he studied in depth. These mutual interests encouraged him to play even further with his imagination, and he developed his now-famous ‘Creative Mind Games’ in which he posed himself an intriguing question, and then allowed his imagination to run riot.
In one of his most famous Creative Mind Games, Einstein imagined that he was on the surface of the sun, grabbing a sunbeam, and travelling directly away from the sun at the speed of light, to the very ends of the universe.
When he came to the ‘end’ of his journey, he noticed to his astonishment that he was roughly back where he had started. This was logically impossible: you don’t go in a straight line forever and end up where you started!
Einstein therefore took another imaginary sunbeam ride from another part of the sun’s surface, and again went on a straight-line journey to the end of the universe. Once again he ended up relatively near where he had started.
Slowly the truth dawned on him: his imagination had told him more truths than his logic. If you travel in straight lines ‘forever’ and continually return to the vicinity of where you started, then ‘forever’ must be at least two things: curved in some way, and possessing a boundary.
This was how Einstein came to one of his most profound insights: our universe is a curved and finite universe. He did not come to this giant creative realization by left-brain thinking alone, but by combining his knowledge of number, word, order, logic and analysis with his massive imagination, spatial awareness and ability to see the whole picture.
His insight was a perfect blending and conversation between both sides of his brain. It was a perfect ‘whole-brained’ creative realization.
The same turned out to be true, in reverse, for the ‘right-brained’ creative geniuses. Let us take, for example, the ‘ultimate’ right-brainer, Ludwig van Beethoven.
Case History – Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven is known for his turbulent, questioning and passionate spirit, for his desire for freedom from tyranny and censorship and for his ongoing fight for freedom of artistic expression. He is generally accepted as the ‘perfect’ example of the wild and untamed model of genius.
All of this is true, and fits in with the traditional interpretation of the right-brained creative genius. However, what has escaped most people’s attention is that Beethoven, like all other musicians, was also incredibly left-brained!
Consider the nature of music: it is written on lines, in sequence; it follows its own logic; and it is based on numbers. Music has often been described as the most pure form of mathematics there is (and it is interesting to note that many of the great mathematicians had music as their main hobby, and vice-versa).
As well as being passionately imaginative and rhythmical, Beethoven was also passionately meticulous. It was Beethoven who pioneered the use of the musical metronome, stating that it was a Godsend to him because it would now mean that every musician and conductor in the future would be able to play his music at precisely the right rhythm, with precisely the right emphasis, and at exactly the right mathematical tempo!
As with Einstein, Beethoven was neither right-brained or left-brained. He was completely and creatively whole-brained.
My research into the great creative geniuses confirmed that they all used the ‘whole brain’ – the full range of their cortical skills, where each skill supplemented and supported the others.
These findings shed light on the second big problem with the research and its assumptions.
problem number 2
The second problem was a major one. The left brain ‘intellectual’ activities tended to be labelled ‘male’ activities, and right brain ‘creative’, and ‘emotional’ activities came to be seen as ‘female’ activities. This was comprehensively and dangerously wrong!
These labels simply extended and ‘confirmed’ the centuries-old beliefs that:
academics, education and intellectuality involved only words, number and logic and not imagination, colour and rhythm
business was a place for strict order only
men were logical, rational individuals with no emotion, imagination or ‘colour’
women were irrational daydreamers
emotion was not based on associative logic
creativity and art were not ‘proper’ pursuits, and had no rationality or science behind them.
The tragedy of these misconceptions, which sadly are still common today and which The Power of Creative Intelligence will help to dispel, is that they blind the mind to the truth, and therefore diminish pleasure, experience and existence.
Unfortunately these misconceptions are especially prevalent in the arena of education. Because we assume that education has to be ‘left-brained’, we label those children who are energetic, imaginative, colourful, curious or given to excessive bouts of daydreaming as naughty, disruptive, hyperactive, slow or backward. We should instead be labelling them as potential creative geniuses just beginning to explore the range of their abilities!
Similarly many businesses have become stuck in the ‘left-brained’ rut, and as a result are destroying not only the synergy that comes from combining left-brain business practices with imagination and flair, but also their reputations and their bottom lines.
Consider also, in the context of this book, the global image of the artist. Surveys have shown that most people consider artists to be