Let’s say you are thinking about a problem. Inspiration comes and now you have what you think is a meaningful solution. Yet, where did it come from? Lateral thinking expert De Bono reminds us that it’s a change in our neurons (or whatever) that produces the shift from one thought to the next. You can actually teach your brain to move between concepts laterally when you solve problems to different and better interpretations. We can use concepts to drive strategy. But often these kinds of synthesis are hard to navigate, I want to talk about the ways in which concepts begin. Why can I sit at this Macbook Pro and write this without considering the words I am going to type next. Because I don’t proofread? I don’t think so… because they are creative.
David Lynch said that he often would sit down and ideas would come and he would work hard to capture them, so that he could hold on to them. Isn’t that interesting. I often have my best thinking when I am driving, in the shower, on the throne or elsewhere. I don’t really care how it works or why it does but I find these times when ideas just come are often not synthesis. I am growing to dislike the way we use that word. It’s more like a description of a ‘product’ of something else. Think about Chemicals. We call the hybrid ‘synthesis’ (I hope) and use that as a way of describing a process. I would argue that synthesis is the outcome of creativity in some cases. Human beings are creative. We make stuff. A lot of stuff. So this presents two problems in my limited mind.
1. Stuff comes from somewhere
2. Not all stuff comes from somewhere, some stuff just comes.
I am often impressed by the word, ‘variegation’. It reminds that two things can be true at the same time and the other thing can also be true as well. What? Well we often frame our problems as thus: ‘It’s either this or that’. This invites synthesis. Combine the ideas and create a new perspective. But in design, we often make new ideas that other people engage with and this process of making ‘new’ ideas is not necessarily a process of combining old ideas. It’s something else. Inspiration, creativity and new ways of thinking are often hard to conceptualise for an academic, we follow the patterns and contribute to others. Our arguments don’t often synthesise the texts either, sometimes they contradict and refute. This process leads me to think that thinking and creativity are deep.
I am reminded of perspectives, how they shape and inform, how they create and divide logic. How interesting that we ever thought a rational process could explain irrational humans? What of rhetoric? Ok that last micro sentence was silly. Anyway, remember that combining things and looking for new interpretations leads to synthesis. Synthesis is not the combining of old ideas and new ones, it’s the emergent process of creativity which is beyond my intelligence to comprehend. We use words like inspiration too loosely.
Synthesis, leads us to new interpretations but sometimes new interpretations come because of some other reason. When I figure that out, I will more than likely be dead. Now there’s a concept.