The Act of Creation

by Arthur Koestler

  The reason for this paradoxical behaviour is evident. Koko had to combine two skills; the reaching-jumping-climbing skill M1, and displacing the box to serve as a platform, M2. But M2 is not part of the chimp's habit-repertory; in all Köhler's experiments with manipulating boxes and putting them on top of each other, his chimps proved surprisingly stupid.* Thus the skill of manipulating boxes is not a well-exercised, 'ready-made' item in Koko's repertory; and Koko is not really ripe for the task set for him, because M2 is still too tentative and unstable to become firmly attached to M1; linking did occur in a lucky moment, but the link broke again. This description presupposes that the box-manipulating skill was developing independently from banana-collecting, as a purely playful occupation -- as it did in fact when Koko was made to play with the box before the experiment started. And it further presupposes that if Koko had been given sufficient time to become proficient in that playful skill, then he would have become ripe for a true bisociative act. Instead of this, however, he was led to form a 'premature linkage' between boxes and bananas (cf. Book One, IX).

  This interpretation differs from Köhler's 'appearance of a complete solution with reference to the whole layout of the field'; or rather, it specifies the condition under which such a 'complete solution' has a chance to occur. But our interpretation is borne out by later experiments by others, in which chimpanzees were given the same raking task as set by Köhler. One chimpanzee out of six had previously used sticks in play; this animal was the only one which had the 'insight' to rake in the food placed outside the cage; the other five failed, although the stick was lying in plain view. For the next three days all six chimps were given sticks to play with. They used the sticks, as usual, to push and poke, but never as a rake. Then the experiment was repeated -- and all six sticks turned into rakes instantly. [15] Experiments with dogs reared in isolation and then set 'insight situation' tasks, gave similar results. [16]

  It may seem pedantic to lay so much stress on the independent primary development of skills which are later combined' in the 'moment of truth'. But the point does become relevant on higher levels. The experimental sciences of electricity and magnetism developed independently, and the discovery of electro-magnetic induction was a truly bisociative act; in comparison to it the subsequent improvements of electromagnets were a pedestrian procedure. The previous independence of the cognitive structures which are made to fuse in the creative act is, as we saw before, one of the criteria of originality; I shall return to the subject in the final chapter.

  The Ambiguities of Gestalt

  The Gestalt theory was developed in Germany, before Wertheimer, Köhler, and Koffka settled in America; and the original German term for insight was 'Einsicht'. In a footnote on page 291 of the English translation of The Mentality of Apes we read (my italics): 'The German word Einsicht is rendered by both "intelligence" and "insight" throughout this book. The lack of an adjective derived from the noun "insight", apart from other considerations, makes this procedure necessary.

  In this casual footnote we find the clue to the sad confusion which has bedevilled the controversy from its beginning: Gestalt theorists used the word 'insight' indiscriminately to mean either (A) intelligence, understanding, judgement, knowledge in general, or (B) specifically the acquisition of new understanding and knowledge under the sudden and dramatic circumstances specified in the previous section. By equating (A) with (B), the Gestaltists were led to regard (B) as the only type of 'intelligent' learning, everything else as 'blind' learning; and their explanations of why and how learning of type (B) occurs become unavoidably tautological. Thus Köhler writes:

  We can, in our own experience, distinguish sharply between the kind of behaviour which from the very beginning arises out of a consideration of the structure of a situation, and one that does not. Only in the former case do we speak of insight, and only that behaviour of animals definitely appears to us intelligent which takes account from the beginning of the lay of the land, and proceeds to deal with it in a single, continuous, and definite course. Hence follows this 'criterion of insight: the appearance of a complete solution with refrence to the whole layout of the field. [17] (Köhler's italics).

  But a few pages further we read: 'trying around consists in attempts at solution in the half-understood situation; and the real solution may easily arise by some chance outcome of it, i.e. it will not arise from chance impulses, but from actions, which, because they are au fond sensible, are great aids to chance'. [18] Köhler further speaks of the 'dawning' of the solution and of 'good errors' -- that is, tries in the right direction vaguely sensed. Thus Köhler admits that insight in the sense (B) is a matter of approximation, and may be achieved in several steps, consisting of more or less 'sensible' hypotheses and tries; yet in other passages he asserted the exact opposite, namely that the criterion of insight was 'the appearance of a complete solution . . . in a single continuous and definite course'.

  To get out of this confusion, let me distinguish between two problems; firstly, what constitutes understanding or Insight A; and in the second place, how new understanding or Insight B is acquired. Regarding the second problem, we have seen that the dramatic Eureka process is not the rule, but rather an exceptional limit case; and that understanding or Insight A enters to varying degrees into all forms of learning.

  Let us examine for a moment the Gestalt school's answer to the first problem: the nature of understanding or Insight A. On page 219 of The Mentality of Apes we read that it is based 'on the grasp of a material, inner relation of two things to each other . . .'; 'relation' being further defined as an 'interconnection based on the properties of these things themselves, not a frequent following each other or occurring together'. The meaning of these formulations becomes clearer in Köhler's later book (1949). There this 'material' 'inner' relation between two things is expressed as 'our feeling of something naturally depending on something else'. [19] 'Between the attitude and its sensory basis we experience what in German is called ihr sachlicher Zusammenhang . . .'; and sachlicher Zusammenhang is translated, with some hesitation, as 'intrinsic connection'. This again is used synonymously with 'experienced determination' such as that prevailing 'between a disease and its germ'. [20] Again: 'Here not only the result is experienced, but also very much of its why and how is felt in just the actual context. Wherever this is the case we apply the term insight.' But 'very much' is a relative term, and its use as an all-or-none criterion -- 'wherever this is the case' -- again confuses the issue. Turning to Koffka, we find that he explains the difficulties confronting the cat in the problem-box by the fact that the actions which it must perform to gain release are to the cat 'objectively meaningless', that they have 'no sort of internal connection with release', that they have no 'material relation' or 'intrinsic relation' with the opening of doors, and so on.

  It should be clear by now that all these somewhat obscure terms are shamefaced references to physical causality, and that the position of the Gestalt school boils down to the tautology that the animal's behaviour is the more intelligent the more insight it has into causal relations. Nobody will quarrel with this statement; but it entirely begs the central question of learning theory: namely, by what processes and methods that insight into causal relations is acquired. The loop in the puzzle-box, at the beginning of its training, means nothing to the cat; at the end of its training it means escape. How is this meaning acquired? Through trial-and-error learning, hypotheses, etc. The problem can now be re-formulated as follows: can learning by trial and error result in 'genuine' solutions, can it provide a correct, or true, or meaningful representation of the causal connection between loop and door? We can even go one step further and ask the same question with regard to classical conditioning. If the dog could express itself in Köhler's terminology, it would no doubt answer that the sound of the gong 'signals' or 'means' food, that an 'objectively meaningful connection', an 'intrinsic connection' or sachlicher Zusammenhang, exists between the two. And this statement would entirely corresp
ond to fact, because in the laboratory universe this sequence is natural law. Of course some connecting links are missing in the dog's inner model of that law: the intentions of God Pavlov who has decreed it are unknown to the dog. But such gaps occur on all levels of cognitive processes. When the average citizen turns on his radio he has about as much insight into the 'intrinsic connections' between the knob and the sound, the 'whys' and 'hows', the 'interconnections based on the properties of the things themselves', the 'total layout of the field' as Pavlov's dogs have.

  Understanding is a matter of approximation. If we hold, with Craik, that the basic achievement of the nervous system is derived from its power to parallel or model external events [21], then the cat which has learned to open the door by tugging at the loop can be said to have made a correct, if crude, model of a causal sequence. The crudeness of the model is mainly due to the fact that the rope connecting the loop and the door is hidden from the cat's sight -- whereas under normal conditions the cat can 'see what it is doing'. But this difference is one of degree not of kind; and it is not justifiable to argue -- as Gestalt theorists have occasionally done -- that because the cat cannot see the connection, it has no 'insight'. Because sight is our main sense organ, we have come to use the words 'I see' as synonymous with 'I understand'. The Gestalt school with its strong emphasis on visual perception has carried this tendency to extremes, and thus came to believe that to have all relevant facts of a situation or problem laid out before one's eyes is both necessary and sufficient for its understanding. [22] In fact, of course, it is neither. Rats learn to know a maze, and to form a mental map of it -- which amounts to as complete an understanding of the situation as one could wish for -- without having been offered a bird's eye view of it. Nor is seeing a sufficient condition for knowing in chimpanzees or humans, even if the 'whole field' containing all the necessary clues is laid out in full view. Thus Sultan establishes a visual connection with the banana outside the cage by pushing one stick towards it with a second stick, but that procedure does not testify to much insight. In other experiments, where a string is attached to the banana and one or more strings are laid out in the vicinity, Sultan will pull at random at any of the strings, although he can clearly see which string is connected to the banana, which is not.* The young child behaves in similar ways; Piaget has called this phenomenon 'optical realism'. It 'consists in considering things as being what they appear to be in immediate perception and not what they will become once they have been inserted in a system of rational relations transcending the visual field. Thus the child imagines that a stick can draw an object because it is beside it or touches it, as though optical contact were equivalent to a causal link. [22]

  Adults are also quite often unable to understand how a simple mechanism works although it is laid bare before their eyes. The visual concurrence of all elements which belong to the problem facilitates understanding (in various degrees according to species, see previous note), but does not guarantee or imply it; it does not provide a 'direct and complete' insight into the causal connections of the situation, nor, except in certain cases, does it occasion a 'complete answer according to the total layout of the field'. Even in relatively simple situations there are always gaps in understanding the 'intrinsic material relations' between things. Why can I pull but not push an object with a string? What are the whys and hows of rigidity, flexibility, cohesion, etc.? Why is a hemp-cord stronger than a paper-cord, and less elastic than a rubber-cord? Our insight into the 'inner material relation of phenomena' is full of missing links, so to speak; the model of the outside world which we form in the matrix of our minds represents, by the very nature of that matrix, not a point-to-point correspondence but a point-to-blur correspondence, a more or less rough approximation. Not only this blurred microstructure, but even the macrostructure of the universe, and the laws which govern it, put us into much the same perplexed condition as the cat which has to infer, by empirical induction, the laws which Thorndike made in his wisdom. And the cat's behaviour in the box is, in fact, a first approximation to the methodology of exact science as formulated by Craik: 'induction supported by experiments to test hypotheses'. [24]

  It is necessary to remind ourselves of these truisms, because the controversies in learning theory have almost made us lose them from sight. The extreme wing of the Behaviourists has tried to banish the concepts of understanding, memory, purpose, consciousness, hypothesis, from the groves of Academe, to interpret trial and error as a random process, and human induction as an equally mechanical affair. Classical Gestalt theory sinned in the opposite direction; its attitude is epitomized, e.g. in the passages from Köhler already quoted: according to which true understanding can be derived only from 'an interconnection based on the properties of the things themselves, not a frequent following each other or occurring together.' To pay attention to the 'frequent following each other' or 'occurring together' of two events, which is so contemptuously dismissed here is the very essence of inductive inference. To quote Russell again: 'Let there be two kinds of events, (a) and (b) (e.g. lightning and thunder), and let many instances be known in which an event of the kind (a) has been quickly followed by one of the kind (b), and no instances of the contrary. Then either a sufficient number of instances of this sequence, or instances of suitable kinds, will make it increasingly probable that (a) is always followed by (b), and in times the probability can be made to approach certainty without limit. . . .' [25] Instances of a very suitable, clear-cut kind -- that is to say, situations for which the animal is 'ripe', may then lead to inductive certainty derived from a single occurrence -- the chick inferring that all caterpillars of appearance (a) are accompanied by a disgusting taste (b).

  The mistake of the classical Gestalt school was to identify trial-and-error learning with chain-reflex theory -- a historically understandable mistake since the two were lumped together in the S.-R. schemata of Thorndike, Pavlov, Watson, Guthrie, etc. Yet the history of science abounds with examples of brilliant discoveries which were preceded by long periods of more or less fumbling tries in half-understood situations. To try is to adventure; and to quote Russell once more: 'If an induction is worth making, it may be wrong.' [26]

  The same kind of bias led to the Gestalt school's uncompromising rejection of any associationist theory of learning. Again this radical attitude is historically understandable as a reaction against mechanistic interpretations of associations as rigid neural connections, fixed pathways, conditioned reflex arcs and the rest. But the Gestalt school did not succeed in offering any valid alternative of its own for associative memory. Köhler's trace theory, elaborated by Koffka, does not give even a remote clue as to how a visual percept -- say a caricature of Nelson, which is 'pictured' by an electrolytic field-current in the optical cortex -- will activate, 'by similarity' the auditory trace of the word 'Trafalgar'. The influence of past experience on the present is minimized by Köhler wherever possible, and learning is virtually reduced to spontaneous 'Insight B', where new knowledge emerges all in a piece like Minerva in full armour from Jupiter's head.

  According to Köhler, association has to be 'given up as a special and independent theoretical concept. It is not more than a name for the fact that organized processes leave a trace picturing their organization and that in consequence of it reproductions are possible. . . . Our conclusion is, that association depends upon organization because association is just an after-effect of an organized process.' [27] 'Organization' in this context means perceptual organization -- that is to say, the animal's innate faculty to order its perceptions into Gestalt-configurations which arise spontaneously as the 'experienced direct determination' of 'objectively meaningful intrinsic connections' based on the 'whys and hows of the interaction of the properties of the things themselves' -- and so on. Gestalt has become the ultimate panacea. As one critic remarked: 'The Gestalten thus become primary realities, existential ultimates, in terms of which all events should be comprehended.' [28]

  As so frequently in the histo
ry of science, a school of outstanding achievements has succumbed to the magic power of a unifying formula. That formula, in its turn, is based on a metaphysical assumption: the existence of an a priori correspondence, or coordination, between the physico-chemical processes in the nervous system and the events in the outside world. Owing to Köhler's theory of 'psycho-physical isomorphism', the sight of a square gives rise to a field current in the cortex, and 'this cortical process must have the structural characteristics of the square.' [29] The 'intrinsic', 'material', or causal relations in the outer world are automatically mirrored by isomorph electro-chemical Gestalt processes in the brain, and 'insight' turns out to mean the spontaneous operation of the isomorph faculty. Thus the organism does not have to build a symbolic model of reality in the nervous system by the processes of learning -- such as scanning, coding, abstraction, gradual approximation through inductive hypotheses; the isomorph model in the head is prefigured, potentially given in its native perceptual organization, and need only be activated by 'spontaneous insight'. To quote Polànyi:

  From this principle (isomorphism) it would follow that the whole of mathematics -- whether known or yet to be discovered -- is latent in the neural traces arising in a man's brain when he looks at the axioms of Principia Mathematica, and that the physico-chemical equilibration of these traces should be capable of producing a cerebral counterpart (a coded script) comprising the entire body of mathematics. [30]