Creative behavior

Since creativity involves the coordination of things into new structures, every creative thought or action draws on synoptic thinking.

Creative behavior occurs in the process of becoming aware of problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, bringing together in new relationships available information; identifying the missing elements; searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses. 
                                             - E Paul Torrance

Creativity is the marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition - Max Ernst


A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before - Jacob Bronowski

Buckminster Fuller summed up the essence of Synaptic when he said all things regardless of their dissimilarity can somehow be linked together, either in a physical, psychological or symbolic way.

Synaptic thinking is the process of discovering the links that unite seemingly disconnected elements. It is a way of mentally taking things apart and putting them together to furnish new insight for all types of problems.


William Gordon set forth three fundamental precepts of synoptic theory:

1.     Creative output increases when people become aware of the psychological processes that control their behavior

2.     the emotional component of creative behaviour is more important than the intellectual component; the irrational is more important than the intellectual component

3.     The emotional and irrational components must be understood and used as "precision: tools in order to increase creative output.