Four Mental Operations in Creative Cognition: The Importance of Abstraction

In reviewing existing theories of creativity, 4 mental operations seem to account for creative cognition: application, analogy, combination, and abstraction. The defining characteristics and the resulting products of these 4 operations are discussed and broad implications for understanding cultural movements, such as surrealism and renaissance, and scientific revolutions, such relativity theory, are explored. These operations form an ordinal scale of innovation, but are not predictive of the impact or success of the creative product. The abstraction operation is stressed, having been relatively neglected in the literature on creative cognition. Careful distinction between these 4 operations may shed new light on the sudden-gradual and special–ordinary controversies that exist in the field. Further, the often-used insight problem methodology is insufficient for studying the full range of creative operations. Examples of a more adequate methodology are provided. Among several people who know they helped me, I want to thank especially Max Welling for our ongoing discussions and António Branco Vasco for his careful review. Notes 1This is one of several competing explanations of where and when the Renaissance started, but these differences are not relevant for the point made here. 2Confusingly in the context of this article, Scott et al. refer to this as an analogical approach. This comes from the "analogical reasoning mechanisms" (p. 80) that are involved in discovering new combinations, specifically mapping features from one category onto another. This is different from analogical transfer I refer to, which leads directly to the creative end product. One thing are operations involved in procedures, strategies or heuristics that prepare for and lead (or not) to a creative solution. Another thing are the operations that are involved in the final creative step: the discovery of an innovative structure. I propose that operations involved in procedures towards creativity are many, but those that constitute the creative step itself, are few.