Creativity + Computer Science

Computer science only became established as a field in the 1950s, growing out of theoretical and practical research begun in the previous two decades. The field has exhibited immense creativity, ranging from innovative hardware such as the early mainframes to software breakthroughs such as programming languages and the Internet. Martin Gardner worried that "it would be a sad day if human beings, adjusting to the Computer Revolution, became so intellectually lazy that they lost their power of creative thinking" (Gardner, 1978, p. vi-viii). On the contrary, computers and the theory of computation have provided great opportunities for creative work. This chapter examines several key aspects of creativity in computer science, beginning with the question of how problems arise in computer science. We then discuss the use of analogies in solving key problems in the history of computer science. Our discussion in these sections is based on historical examples, but the following sections discuss the nature of creativity using information from a contemporary source, a set of interviews with practicing computer scientists collected by the Association of Computing Machinery's on-line student magazine, Crossroads. We then provide a general comparison of creativity in computer science and in the natural sciences. Computer science is closely related to both mathematics and engineering. It resembles engineering in that it is often concerned with building machines and making design decisions about complex interactive systems. Brian K. Reid wrote: "Computer science is the first engineering discipline ever in which the complexity of the objects created is limited by the skill of the creator and not limited by the strength of the raw materials" (Frenkel, 1987, p. 823). Like engineers, computer scientists draw on a collection of techniques to construct a solution to a particular problem, with the creativity consisting in development of new techniques. For example, during the creation of the first large-scale electronic computer, Eckert and Mauchly solved numerous engineering problems, resulting in solutions which became important contributions to computer science (Goldstine, 1972). Computer science also has a strong mathematical component. An early example is Alan Turing's invention of an abstract, theoretical computing machine in 1935 to solve David Hilbert's decidability problem in the foundations of mathematics (Hodges, 1983). The Turing machine has proven to be a very powerful tool for studying the theoretical limitations of computers. The theory of the class of NP-Complete problems, which appear to be computationally intractable, is another result in both …

[1]  A. Isen,et al.  Positive affect and decision making. , 1993 .

[2]  Karen A. Frenkel,et al.  Profiles in computing: Brian K. Reid: a graphics tale of a hacker tracker , 1987, CACM.

[3]  Herman H. Goldstine.  The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann , 1972 .

[4]  R. Weisberg.  Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius , 1993 .

[5]  K. Holyoak,et al.  Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought , 1994 .

[6]  Dennis Shasha,et al.  Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists , 1995 .

[7]  Donald E. Knuth,et al.  Computer programming as an art , 1974, CACM.

[8]  Michael A. Hiltzik,et al.  Dealers of lightning : Xerox PARC and the dawn of the computer age , 1999 .

[9]  G. Lewis,et al.  Day in the life. , 2002, Nursing times.

[10]  Elting E. Morison,et al.  American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970 by Thomas P. Hughes (review) , 1989, Technology and Culture.

[11]  James H. Ellis,et al.  The History of Non-Secret Encryption , 1999, Cryptologia.

[12]  P. Kidwell,et al.  The mythical man-month: Essays on software engineering , 1996, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

[13]  Eric S. Raymond,et al.  The New Hacker's Dictionary , 1991 .

[14]  P. Thagard,et al.  The Cognitive Basis of Science: The passionate scientist: emotion in scientific cognition , 2002 .

[15]  Golda Eldridge,et al.  Alan Turing: The Enigma , 2015 .

[16]  K. Dunbar.  The analogical paradox: Why analogy is so easy in naturalistic settings yet so difficult in the psychological laboratory. , 2001 .

[17]  A. Mackintosh.  Dr. Atanasoff's computer. , 1988, Scientific American.

[18]  Larry Wall,et al.  Programming Perl , 1991 .

[19]  Stephen A. Cook,et al.  The complexity of theorem-proving procedures , 1971, STOC.

[20]  Alan C. Kay.  The early history of Smalltalk , 1993, HOPL-II.

[21]  Douglas K. Smith,et al.  Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer , 1988 .

[22]  D.B. Davidson,et al.  Dealers of lightning: xerox PARC and the dawn of the computer age [Book Review] , 2002, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.

[23]  Robert Slater,et al.  Portraits in silicon , 1987 .

[24]  J. Hadamard,et al.  The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. , 1945 .

[25]  P. Thagard,et al.  Computational Philosophy of Science , 1988 .

[26]  Christopher Lawrence,et al.  How scientists explain disease , 2001, Medical History.

[27]  Steven Levy,et al.  Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution , 1984 .

[28]  Paul Thagard,et al.  Scientific discovery and technological innovation: ulcers, dinosaur extinction, and the programming language java , 1999 .

[29]  Arthur L. Norberg,et al.  Credits for the Information Highway. (Book Reviews: Transforming Computer Technology. Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986.; Where Wizards Stay Up Late. The Origins of the Internet.) , 1996 .