INSPIRATION & INSTINCT:- CAN INNOVATION EVER BE TAUGHT?

Can beauty ever be taught? Can creativity and innovation ever be institutionalized?

Can traits like curiosity, inventiveness or workmanship, ever be distilled into a neatly compiled playbook or manual, when in doubt?

The artists, sculptors, builders, and inventors of old never followed a template bounded by formal rules, principles, or instructions to craft their lifetime masterpieces. What drove them was in fact a combination of instinct, ancestral traditions, and experimentation vis-a-vis trial & error.

It was a spectacular blend of the indigenous & personal, steered by the thrust of instinct. No formal discipline or academic institution assisted their learning.

Classical Roman Engineering & Architecture provide a close illustration of this phenomena. For starters “ Roman Concrete” (behind iconic structures such as the Colosseum, Pantheon, Bridges & Aqueducts), actually developed out of experimentation with local substances in the Italian Peninsula such as Volcanic Ash, & Quick lime). For all its robustness, never left any archival traces of its composition. Roman Builders were dynamic, neither completely original nor adhering themselves to set architectural tendencies. Instead, they, acknowledged the importance of classical builders such as the Greeks & Etruscans, and adapted such styles to their own societies based on evolving priorities of an expanding empire, and the need for substantive public and civil engineering works such amphitheatres, aqueducts, baths, bridges, circuses, dams, domes, harbors, temples, and theatres. Artisans and builders from different parts of the empire, instinctively adapted and blended different architectural styles to suit the needs of the empire and ensure aesthetic harmony.

Art just provides an even more vivid example. Most works of art, be it classical, renaissance occidental or oriental have a certain cultural or ancestral context, the ability of which to stun viewers through their beauty and symmetry cannot always be synthesized through theoretical or academic principles. Back at home in my ancestral home Chennai, India my grandma continues to make “Kollams”, ritualistic fractal and geometric patterns made by women with finely ground rice powder /paste. Patterns are drawn deftly by women with the tips of their fingers using pinches of flour held between the thumb and the first finger and letting the powder fall in a continuous line. These designs vary daily, from a simple star pattern of opposing, interlocking triangles to highly complex labyrinthine designs, floral patterns, and animals. Such patterns dazzle Art theorists & Mathematicians till this day…….what human impulse could produce patterns of such perfection? Interestingly enough, such work is in fact driven by a deeply profound bout of religious inspiration, that of inviting “Auspiciousness” in one’s household by pleasing the Indian female Goddess “Lakshmi” through the beauty of such patterns. Religious inspiration in turn evolves into an almost personal inspiration to achieve artistic excellence, then culminating in such Art forms. Interestingly enough Indian Temple Building is inspired by a similar dynamic, a devotion to the divine finds expression in the form of symmetrically and mathematically perfect structures. It should be mentioned here, that many temples were also, in fact, big civic projects where people congregated to sell wares and household items, and where massive temple “reservoirs”, provided water for irrigation. Such reservoirs also have ritualistic importance in Hinduism.

The implications are very clear. In a world where information and knowledge have become so formalized, and solutions to complex problems, distorted through the excessive congregation and collation of generalized knowledge, the spontaneity of instinctive problem-solving and experimentation, under conditions of uncertainty and knowledge incompleteness has been either forgotten or marginalized. This leads to a global culture of jadedness and reticence towards innovation and growth (often dangerous in conditions of uncertainty).

Formalization of knowledge may be at times necessary but not at the expense of muddled problem-solving. A hilarious and iconic caricature of this problem is the “ Rube Goldberg Machine”, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg whose cartoons often featured devices that performed simple tasks in indirect convoluted ways, is a machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way. This analogy is often compared to global affairs, International Relations, and Art, where complex theorization and academicization of knowledge is more often than not, unsuccessful at inculcating skills and solving problems the same way practical performance and reflections on problem-solving are.

It also should come across as no surprise that the best performing economies are those who have made vocational training and job skills intrinsic to education, then relying on outmoded models, and some of the most successful pioneers and inventors were in fact those whose inspiration became instinctive. After all, hasn’t this all shown in a way that some things are in fact better learned than taught?