Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Finding the source of creativity has long been an obsession of scientists and philosophers. An orderly and predictable structure is suggested by the brain's role as monitor and manager of our bodies. But the efforts of human consciousness to study itself have been frustrated by the multiple layers our brains have accumulated over our long evolution from primitive early ancestors.

The chaotic complexity of our brains' multilevel processes forms an amorphous backdrop to consciousness - a seemingly impenetrable barrier without apparent structure because the weave of its fabric is too fine to perceive. It's possible for consciousness to understand, and even control, some portion of the chaos we perceive around us. But such efforts can only tap knowledge that already exists somewhere in our minds. Studying our inner chaos can only discover what already exists within that chaos, what is already known to the part of our subconscious minds involved in the threads of chaos we've chosen to study.

We can mimic some of our brains' monitoring and control processes in digital computers, and perform impressive manipulations of information that already exists within a computer system. But the mystery of creativity remains. Creativity often involves information that didn't previously exist. Where does the brain find what doesn't exist to be found, know what has been unknowable until that first instant of knowing?

Conventional wisdom places a high value on the orderly and disciplined mental processes that are so useful within the routine day to day operation of our modern world. Order and disciplined predictability have also been the cornerstones of our efforts to turn calculators into thinking machines. But while we've managed to build impressive digital and biological systems, we've made little progress on creating creativity.

There are strong indications that creativity, and the ability to form previously unsuspected connections and associations, are the result of electrochemical faults - leakage across inadequately insulated circuits. It appears increasingly likely that the kind of innovative thinking that has most benefited mankind over the long term, which has been most responsible for creating our modern world, and on which we hang our hopes for a better world in the future, has not been the result of ordered and disciplined thinking, but rather the result of random malfunctions and breakdowns in the chaos of normal human thought patterns.

It's the aberration in the amorphous backdrop of chaotic complexity that has the potential to become new knowledge - knowledge that did not previously exist even within those portions of the mind that are outside of the awareness of consciousness. It's the exception that can become the rule, as awareness of its existence alters the patterns of chaos. It's the ability to think what has never been thought before that can turn aberration into accommodation, exception into expectation.