Book chapter summary - Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity, Chapter 5: Play and Irrelevance, by William J. J. Gordon

What I read

In Chapter Five, Gordon discusses the role of play and irrelevance in the creative process. First, Gordon describes what he means by play, citing examples from animals and children. Children do things that are purposeful deceptions of self; it can be both technical and imaginative, and “useless” in the sense of utility. Animals do the same, such as a dog pretending to “kill” the hand of the owner, making growling noises while being gentle. This is conscious play, in that the player knows what they are doing. Here, Gordon first introduces the idea of a hedonic response as being fundamental to why people play: that it feels good.

Gordon goes on to explain that play, for adults, is a way of purposefully trying things that are obviously not the way things actually are; it is an approach that often means having a willingness to act like a child. Synectics believes that this can be directed at will, often with a focus on and embracing of the irrelevant.

Gordon then explains that there are two different ways that playfulness in adults, in the context of creativity, is manifest; one is play with words, and the other is play with systems. Words, he describes, “go flat with use,” as once something is defined, it becomes immutable or familiar. Being playful with words means expanding metaphor, and involves an “oscillation between particulars and universals.” An example verbal protocol is provided, where inventors play with the word open in the context of designing a new way to open a can. But, the experience would not have been useful if they simply continued to play with the word; at some point, they latch on to a particular played-with-meaning and then revert back to being mature in their exploration. Gordon describes that a similar use of language play is present in Lobachevsky’s recasting of Euclidean geometry.

Synectics is not about the output of the playfulness; it’s about the process of examining the language in the pursuit of creativity; it’s about providing room for the “achievement of a coincidence of meaning and excitement which can be accepted as valid.”

Gordon compares playfulness with language with the rigidity of a syllogism, which doesn’t recognize alternative perspectives of the meaning of the context. “Socrates is a man” is different than “A sculpture of a man is a man”, but the traditional syllogism only works with the first, even though both are linguistically correct. This, along with computation of sifting for correctness, reinforces a continual push in culture and society to make meaningful order out of the chaos of the world by excluding and rejecting things.

Play is a type of irrelevance, and being playful is tolerating that irrelevance. A responsibility for embracing only the relevance is “laid by the educative process, depressing the child in us and rendering us practical dullards.” Gordon describes three types of this irrelevance: irrelevant perceptions, ideas and generalities; irrelevant emotions; and accidents.

The world is full of things that are irrelevant to a given situation or problem being solved. Gordon explains a case of an inventor working on a problem with military tanks, who—after pushing against the problem for three weeks—purposefully detached and went for a walk in the woods. He distracted himself with things that were obviously irrelevant, such as the movement of ants. Some of these continued to be irrelevant, but they prompted imagination, which then led to a breakthrough idea. He was subconsciously scanning and sifting through the irrelevance for something that had potential relevance.

Gordon describes that this sifting is driven by a hedonic, pleasure response. This is true in “big innovation” of solving a problem in its entirety, and also in small incremental and moment-to-moment forward movement. The selection of irrelevant data and experience is informed by a feeling of pleasure, and creative people have learned to seek and trust that feeling. This, Gordon explains, is similar to (and potentially the same as) intuition; a “warm feeling of ‘being right’ long before there is any pragmatic rationale.” Gordon shows that, with Synectics, this can be taught by having students listen to retrospective accounts of this happening. Blake, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Einstein are all referenced as having a vision of a solution, and having a thrust towards that vision rather than any other path forward.

Gordon describes that this focus on a hedonic response can be compared to a Pavlovian response—when a creative person feels pleasure in the process, they trust that pleasure and follow the path that lit it up. This comes before Autonomy of Object: the first view of a solution coming into play, where the solution takes on a life of its own. A concept can then survive. But the creator needs to let it survive. Authors Thackeray, Balzac, and Dreiser are all referenced as being subservient to the characters of their books, and doing what they are told, rather than telling the characters what to do. Gordon then introduces the word purposiveness in retrospect, where this momentum from hedonistic response to Autonomy of Object looks obvious, but only after the fact.

The third form of playfulness is an accident, which is the “irrelevant in motion.” These are, in daily life, considered a problem to be fixed and an inconvenience to be avoided, but creative people can leverage an accident in their work, purposefully. Goodyear’s discovery of vulcanization was an accident, but was given the breadth to then follow the process described above and take on its own Autonomy of Object. The intent is not to cause accidents, but to understand the role they play in the creative process.

Gordon ends the chapter by describing that creative people have become “addicted” to re-evoking the hedonic response in their work. It’s a feeling that something is become knowable or known, and it generates excitement, internally and in a group. Embracing irrelevancy (and play) enables an individual to distract themselves, but this distraction can be overly encompassing. So, a creative individual has learned when to let the distraction play its course, to look for when the distraction is leading towards something valuable, and to then let a logical filter intervene.

What I learned and what I think

Everything Gordon has written in this section rings true to me, particularly the idea of language play and the immutability of nouns, and the feeling of the solution coming soon.

I love free association that isn’t free—that has a continuity of words or phrases, such as “There is a bird is the word of god help us to avoid the winter is cold as ice willing to sacrifice.” I also love the use of homonyms, particularly when they are ridiculous; and the association of words to music or common colloquialisms. I don’t think my use of this language play is just for fun, either; I’ve been reinforcing the idea that nouns and naming isn’t fixed, and so when I’m making things, I can avoid containing them in an artificial container until I’m ready. This gives the idea room to move, because the name that would typically constrain it isn’t permitted or given the rigidity it wants.

This is also for me about anthropomorphizing ideas and the things I make, and the way I make them, which is also the way I think about my creations and playful use of words. I can squint and make anything come to life visually, and also semantically, and when I make a table talk or move or dance, it questions what a table is. It’s annoying to other people, too, maybe because they don’t see it, or as Gordon describes, it’s like a child constantly ignoring the requirements of real life in order to play. Sometimes, it’s not playtime (except I really think it always is, instead of taking the built world so seriously.)

The feeling of a “solution coming soon” resonates so well with me, although I’ve never thought of it as a hedonic response (it may be, and I need to think about that more, or if it even matters.) I think I’ve learned to game the idea of synthesis to the point that I can synthesize language and playfulness and potential so quickly, and leverage a pattern language of consulting so effectively, that I can see an end before a process starts. I’m 100% sure this is limiting, and probably stifles the “what if”, and this is extremely helpful in consulting, where we have a timeline and there’s only limited space for play. I can smush the play into the time box. At Blackboard, I had the ability to do this in an extended amount of time, but I only think it works for me over the four years is because it was chunked into tiny little problems with patterns. I’ve never had, and don’t think I ever will have, a “problem of a lifetime.”

Autonomy of Object is interesting. It’s related to the above, that an object or idea in process of being built is actually alive and contributing to its own creation. I think this is the give and take of making and looking and changing and making, of iteration and variation. This may be the missing element I was feeling uncomfortable with in some of the previous chapters. It also relates to craft, because as that autonomy is happening, the idea needs to become “grown up”. If it can’t grow because I can’t draw or write or think of it in enough fidelity, it’s extremely frustrating, and I think that plays out in early design students and really limits their ability to be successful, to the point that they may give up on the profession entirely. Even moving dumb Figma modules around may be giving an idea Autonomy of Object, but it’s a pretty stupid Autonomy, one that may not be worth giving freedom to.

I’m done with Gordon for now. I want to move away from a study of Synectics into something more focused on craft of making. I’ll poke around at more recent contributions from more academic papers.