Creativity in Oil and Gas Exploration - A quotation approach

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Creativity in Exploration

A Quotation Database Approach
compiled by

Walter H. Pierce

2nd Edition 2007

Walter H. Pierce StartExp walterhpierce@startexp.com


A Database Quotation Approach
to Creativity in Exploration
Objective:
I created this report and compilation for two reasons.
• I found it to be extraordinarily interesting.
• I hoped that it would help others.
The following 2007 compilation of quotations was initiated while working at Amoco as an exploration
geologist. As I began to collect the quotes, I began to see value in them as a sort of remote
interview of other workers, perhaps more creative than you and I, who had made observations on
their attempts or success in creative work. This work represents a database analysis and
classification of these quotations into a series of phases of the creative process, which I have
interpreted from the quotations. I make no claim that the phases are precisely sequential. The
sequence in actual cases may differ, sometimes skipping phase, sometimes overlapping and
reversing sequence. My attempt at sequencing phases has only been used to organize the quotations
into a compilation that can be useful to those seeking a way through creative problem solving.
Eventually I began putting the quotations in an Access database. From there I developed a “Form” in
Microsoft Access which enabled me to begin classifying the quotes.

Figure 1, Access Form designed to aid the classification process. Working with this form is
a little like spinning two Rolodex files simultaneously. The main difference is that the two
tables are joined in the database so one can classify the quotations on the right with the
categories on the left.



The Access “Form” works like two stacks of cards. Imagine that you have over 700 3 by 5 cards in
one stack. In the second stack you begin a classification system. You study each quotation and you
attempt to judge what phase in the creative process the quotation represents. So, inherent in the
classification system is the concept that creativity is step by step process and that the steps are
different from one another. Working with both stacks you begin by adding to the second stack of
cards categories which you believe may be natural and progressive groupings of the quotations in the
first stack. By using the Access “Form” one gradually builds a sequential set of quotations in the first
stack, classified by a sequential set of categories in the second stack. After a bit of practice I found
that working with he “Form” which I had created made the task a bit easier, especially because I
would often change my mind about the categories and have to redo the classification. I know it is
probably a bit difficult to picture the process without working with the data and “Form” yourself. If
this sort of process interests you, I would be happy to send you the database of quotations and the
“Form”. You will find my email address in the footer of this report. I would only ask one thing in
return, and that is a promise on your part to search for and provide to me a new quotation that you
believe augments the value of what your receive from me.

As I went through this exercise, I found that there were quotes that did not fit my preconceived
notions of what typical creative steps would be. As a consequence I was led to invent new steps (at
least new for me). I feel that actually applying words to these new steps may help some of us in our
own creative endeavors. The outcome of this process is a classification system portrayed by the title
page of this compilation. On the title page you see a list of quote classes. In general as one moves
down the classification one goes from quotations that represent the creative process as more
advanced stages. I have made a symbolic line to the right of the quotation categories on the front
page with “wiggles” to make the point that the step wise treatment should not be thought of as a
rigid process. My hope is that the user of this compilation could attempt to place themselves in the
context of their creative work, choose the category that most nearly matches their position and then
read the quotations which in my interpretation may be helpful.

The compilation is set up in pdf format with book marks so you can jump from one position in the
creative process to another. The following list (Table 1) is a set of “type” examples of quotations
which illustrate the steps or phases that the quotations have led me to interpret. It is a personal
classification that hopefully can help others. Several steps or phases will be familiar to workers in the
field of psychology. Forgive me for changing nomenclature, but these are the words which seem to
help me.

There are some additional new steps or phases that I believe are important to recognize. For
example “problem observation”, “muddle”, and “obvious now” are phases that in my opinion are
extremely important to recognize by managers.

After you read through the type quotations use the bookmarks to pick a group of quotations that
interests you. For example, pick “block busting” to study what other workers have said about this
phase of the creative process.

The Scientific Method requires creativity. In Figure two below I have attempted to correlate the
creative steps or phases to the scientific method. In this figure lines suggesting where in the steps
of the Scientific Method each of the Creativity steps or phases is important can be represented for
one cycle of the Scientific Method. In actuality each scientific cycle is unique and the importance and
duration through the cycle of the creative phases changes for each cycle. The Diagram is only a
model.

The meat of his short report is the compilation of quotations. My hope is that by attempting to find a
large number of respected workers this body of text could be helpful. I do not want to claim
anything special about the classification system. I have tried to make it useful to me in hopes it
would be useful to others. Someone else would not doubt have differed in classification and choice
of terminology. There is an active “Access” database behind this report. I would welcome the
opportunity to send the database to interested workers. I would only ask in exchange for the



database that the individual requesting the database provide in advance a quotation which they
believe in not included here, and which the individual genuinely believes can be helpful to workers in
their endeavors at creative problem solving.

Figure 2. Schematic diagram which attempts to relate or correlate sequentially how
phases or steps in the creative process relate to the Scientific Method. Lines represent the
timing of the creative phases and durational importance. Time moves forward to the
bottom of the diagram.

My request is particularly directed toward geoscientists and specifically petroleum geologists to find
quotations, perhaps not in the literature, from respected hydrocarbon finders.



Table 1
Type Quotations of Creative Phases

Desire
To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great dream.”
Dr. Hans Selye

Problem Observation
Tranio is advising his master Lucentio on the best was to go about his programme of self
improvement The jewel that we find, we stoop and take't Because we see it: but what we do not see
We tread upon, and never think of it,
Shakespeare

Problem Recognition
As subsurface explorationists, we are always keying off someone's dry hole. It should not make the
prospect any less attractive because it happens to be your own dry hole.
Jack Elam (Geologist)

Problem Definition
“A problem well stated is half solved.”
John Dewey

Preparation
In the field of observation, chance only favors those minds which have been prepared.
Louis Pasteur

Investigation
Oil and gas are not found by flashes of genius but are a product of rigorous observations and
tenacious, dogged, often dreary intensive work and study.
B. W. Beebe (Geologist)

Judgement
Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful
combinations which are in the infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to chose.
Jules Henri Poincare (l854-l912)

Synthesis
“Everything of importance has already been seen by someone who did not discover it.”
Whitehead

Hypothesis Formation
If therefore there are any advantages in any field in being armed with a full panoply of working
hypotheses and in habitually employing them, it is doubtless the field of the geologist.
T. C. Chamberlin (Geologist/Astronomer)

Fear / Risk Adversive
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its
success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has
for enemies all those who have done well under the old condition, and lukewarm defenders in those
who may do well under the new.
N. Machiavelli, Il. Principe (l513)



Blockbusting
“The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.”
Antistenes

Muddle
The state of Imaginative muddled suspense which precedes successful inductive generalization.
Alfred North Whitehead

Eureka Moment
I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution
occurred to me.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, l887

Obvious Now
It is characteristic of insight solutions and new ideas, that they should be obvious after they have
been found. In itself this shows how insufficient logic is in practice, otherwise such simple solutions
must have occurred much earlier.
Edward De Bono

Clear Communication
Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking.
Warren F. Buffett

Testing and Verification
The demolition of hypotheses, instead to testifying to the futility of research, is the method and
condition of progress.”
G. K.Gilbert (Geologist/Astronomer)

Utilization
The oil finders do something else. They sell themselves on their interpretations and in turn sell their
ideas to others capable of completing the discovery process. The loss of a good idea through poor
salesmanship may postpone indefinitely the discovery of an important oil or gas field or new
producing province. Salesmanship is the all-important follow-through.
Ira Cram, l945

Problem Finding or Failing (Restarting)
Biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently.
Charles Kettering
GM Research Director



Database of Quotations relating to Creativity in Exploration
compiled and arranged by
Walter H. Pierce



Desire To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great
dream.quot;

Dr. Hans Selye

Desire I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not
reason and compare; My business is to create.

William Blake

Desire Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the
quality that most frequently makes for success

. -Dale Carnegie

Desire The thing that gives people courage is an idea.

George Clemenceau

Desire I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up
every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my
life.

Miles Davis

Desire What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not
new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already
been said is still not enough.

Eugene Delacroix



Desire The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly
this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is
constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

Charles Dickens

Desire Human beings have been and remain uniquely creative because they
are able to integrate the pessimism of intelligence with the optimism
of will

Rene Dubos

Desire Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.
Lawrence Durrell

Desire Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist.
They are wrong: it is the character.

Albert Einstein

Desire To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream:
not only plan, but also believe.

Anatole France

Desire Whatever you can do
or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Goethe



Desire It seems safe to say that significant discovery, really creative
thinking, does not occur with regard to problems about which the
thinker is lukewarm.

Mary Henle

Desire quot;Work usually follows will.quot;

William James

Desire quot;the transistor, the laser, the magnetic disk, the PC were not
demands articulated by the customer.

Rolf Landauer,
an IBM Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center

Desire All men dream,
but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the
dusty recesses of their minds
Awake to find that it was vanity,
But the dreamers of day are
dangerous men,
That they may act their dreams
with open eyes to make it possible.

T. E. Lawrence

Desire There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to
conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the
introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for
enemies all those who have done well under the old condition, and
lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

N. Machiavelli, Il. Principe (l513)



Desire The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to
create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

W. Somerset Maugham

Desire Better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Herman Melville

Desire Creativity is what cannot wait, cannot stop, cannot backstep: faster
or slower, it always goes ahead -- through, alongside, above,
regardless of crises or systems.

Joese Roderigues Miguels

Desire For I really do not study or aim at any originality.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Desire Anybody who aspires to be creative should consciously seek to be
creative. The best way to become more creative is to practice
creativity--actually to reach out for creative problems, rather than to
deal only with those which are thrust upon us.

Alex Osborn
Applied Imagination

Desire I believe that the architects of science are simply more curious, more
iconoclastic, more persistent, readier to make detours, and more
willing to tackle bigger and more fundamental problems. More
important, they possess intellectual courage, daring. They work at
the edge of their competence; their reach exceeds their grasp. They
stretch themselves, they stretch science.

Root-Bernstein's character Imp in
Discovering



Desire Salk's advice: quot;Do what makes your heart leap!quot;

Coined by Root-Bernstein's character: Imp in Discovering. From

Jonas Salk

Desire No profit grows where there is no pleasure taken, in short, study
what thou dost affect.quot;

William Shakespeare

Desire The love people feel for their work has a great deal to do with the
creativity of their performances.

Robert J. Sternberg

Desire To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming,
is the only end in life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Desire quot;If one advances in the direction of his dreams, one will meet with
success unexpected in common hours.quot;

Henry David Thoreau
The Creative Spirit
Goldman, Kaufman, Ray

Desire Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it
right, or better.

John Updike



Desire Most forms of human creativity have one aspect in common: the
attempt to give some sense to the various impressions, emotions,
experiences, and actions that fill our lives, and thereby to give some
meaning and value to our existence..... The crisis of our time in the
Western world is that the search for meaning has become
meaningless for many of us.

Victor Weisskopf
The Privilege of Being a Physicist, l989

Problem Observation Tranio is advising his master Lucentio on the best was to go about
his programme of self-improvement

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take't
Because we see it: but what we do not see
We tread upon, and never think of it,

Shakespeare
Measure for Measure

Problem Observation I think almost everybody has it in his or her capacity to do something
creative, without necessarily being able to explain how it's done.
Society just doesn't give most people the chance to do this......What
we have to do, generally (for a living), is not the sort of thing the
utilizes our brain function to the fullest.

Isaac Asimov

Problem Observation The true worth or a researcher lies in pursuing what he did not seek
in his experiment as well as what he sought.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878)

Problem Observation You can observe a lot by watching.

Yogi Berra

Problem Observation Like much play, creativity is often open-ended, with no particular goal
or aim.

Margaret A. Boden
The Creative Mind,



Problem Observation Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of
great creative people.

--Leo Burnett

Problem Observation quot;Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then,
if we listen attentively,
we shall hear among the uproar of empires and nations a faint
fluttering of wings, the gentle
stirrings of life and hope.quot;
-- Albert Camus

Problem Observation Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
- Charles F. Kettering

Problem Observation I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not
understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains. How the
various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck
by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions
and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my
life.

Leonardo da Vinci

Problem Observation I had, ... during many years, followed a golden rule, namely that
whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came
across me, which was opposed by my general results, to make a
memorandum of it without fail and a once; for I had found by
experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape
from memory than favorable ones.

Charles Darwin

Problem Observation In the course of my seminars I often ask the participants to write
down an area or problem to which they would like to apply lateral
thinking. The response is always poor. These executives are trained
to solve problems as they arise. They are not trained to pick out
areas in which the generation of ideas could be useful.

Edward De Bono Opportunities, 1978



Problem Observation Problem-finding is just as important as problem-solving but much
more difficult and much more rare.

Edward De Bono
Opportunities, l978

Problem Observation Like a new born baby a new idea must, at first, be nourished by care
and indulgent attention.quot;

Edward De Bono
Opportunities, 1978

Problem Observation Look sharply after your thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a
new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task,
disappear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Problem Observation Some men go through a forest and see no firewood.

English proverb

Problem Observation While working with staphylococcus variants a number of culture
plates were set aside on the laboratory bench and examined from
time to time. In the examinations these plates were necessarily
exposed to the air and they became contaminated with various
microorganisms. It was noticed that around a large colony of
contaminating mold the staphylococcus colonies became transparent
and were obviously undergoing lysis.

Alexander Fleming

Problem Observation Never neglect any appearance or any happening which seems to be
out of the ordinary: more often than not is a false alarm, but it may
be an important truth.

Alexander Fleming



Problem observation quot;... the great Appalachian mountains show in many places, near the
highest parts of them, strata of sea-shell, in some places the marks
of them are in solid rock. It is certainly the wreck of a world we live
on!quot;
--Benjamin Franklin (1755)

Problem Observation I Look for what needs to be done.....After all, that's how the universe
designs itself.

R. Buckminster Fuller
Christian Science Monitor
November 3, l964

Problem Observation The ultimate solutions to problems are rational; the process of finding
them is not.

W. Gordon

Problem Observation On two different kinds of inventions:
One consists, a goal being given, in finding the means to reach it, so
that the mind goes from the goal to the means, from the question to
the solution. The other consists, on the contrary, in discovering a
fact, then imagining what it could be useful for, so that, this time,
mind goes from the means to the goal; the answer appears to us
before the question. Now, paradoxical as it seems, that second kind
of invention is the more general one and becomes more and more so
as science advances.quot;

Jacques Hadamard

Problem Observation There is more to seeing than meets the eyeball.

Norwood Russell Hanson
Patterns of Discovery 1958
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press



Problem Observation If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard
to be sought out, and difficult.

Heraclitus [of Ephesus]

Problem Observation Incredibility escapes recognition.

Heraclitus [of Ephesus]
in C H Khan the art and Thought of Heraclitus 1979
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Problem Observation There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very
little in the same things.

T. H. Huxley
advise written to his grandson

Problem Observation We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of
creation, but does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is
not lord of himself.

- Jose Ortega y Gasset
The Revolt of the Masses

Problem Observation quot;...action creates surprises.quot;

Charles F. Kettering
great General Motors Inventor

Problem Observation quot;Questions are the creative acts of intelligence.quot;

Frank Kingdomy



Problem Observation ..most scientists spend their life articulating existing discoveries,
invention, and theories.

Kuhn

Problem Observation ..all important shifts in theory begin with anomalies. ..

Kuhn

Problem Observation Langmuir emphasized the futility of making formal plans in an effort
to obtain new ideas. He stressed the importance of developing a
receptive mind which could accept a new idea engendered by a
fortunate accident, an unexpected occurrence, or some other set of
circumstances beyond the immediate control of the individual.

Vincent J. Schafer in quot;Can We Do it Better?quot;,
Bull. American Meteorological Soc., Feb. l968

Problem Observation Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart.
- Mencius (Meng-Tse), 4th century BCE

Problem Observation It is only doubt that creates.

H. L. Mencken

Problem Observation I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a
prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.

Sir Isacc Newton
(1642-1727)



Problem Observation Begin by conditioning yourself to be restless and uneasy about the
status quo. Don't overlook the familiar just because you've seen it so
often

Jack Oliver
Geophysicist

Problem Observation To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
- George Orwell

Problem Observation Je ne cherche pas, je trouve.

Picasso

Problem Observation [Science] advances by leaps; and the impulse for each leap is either
some new observational resource, or some novel way or reasoning
about the observations. Such novel way of reasoning might,
perhaps, be considered as a new observational means, since it draws
attention to relations between facts which would previously have
been passed by unperceived.

Charles Santiago Sanders Pierce

Problem Observation They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape
those who dream only by night.

~Edgar Allan Poe, quot;Eleonoraquot;

Problem Observation Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape
those who dream only by night.

Edgar Allen Poe



Problem Observation Camille Jordan wrote of Henri Poincares's work: quot;It is beyond
ordinary praise, and forcefully recalls what Jacobi wrote of Abel; that
he solved problems which before him nobody would even dared to
pose.quot;

Rene Taton, historian of science, l957

Problem Observation Curiosity is idle only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very
rare and indispensable thing. Even occasionally and fitfully idle
curiosity leads to creative thought.quot;

James Harvey Robinson

Problem Observation People learn more from observation that they do from conversation.

Will Rogers

Problem Observation Aim to keep an open mind. Be on the alert to hunches, and
whenever you find one hovering on the threshold of our
consciousness, welcome it with open arms. doing these things won't
transform you into a genius overnight. But they're guaranteed to
help you locate the treasure chest of ideas which lies hidden in the
back of you own brain.

Doctor Suits
General Electric

Problem observation quot;Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.quot;
-- Jonathon Swift

Problem Observation Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

Jonathon Swift



Problem Observation Every now and then, something turns up in the course of exploration
that's worth--as the quidebooks say about restaurants---a detour. I
think that's when really important observation are made.

Lewis Thomas

Problem Observation
quot;The artist's whole business is to make something out of nothing.quot;

Paul Valéry
c. 1930
The Creators, Boorstin

Problem Observation Having retreated in 1666 to the countryside near Cambridge, one day
he [Newton] was walking in the garden and saw the fruit falling
from a tree and he indulged himself in deep mediation on gravity,
about which philosophers have so long searched in vain, and in which
the common people do not even suspect a mystery....

Voltaire[Francois Marie Arouet]
[it is thus Voltaire who has preserved this story which he had from
Newton's niece, Mrs Conduitt
Lettres Philosophique

Problem Observation Data from a discovery well, and from subsequent wells, should be
evaluated by a geologist, not a petroleum engineer.

Robert J. Weimer
Professor of Geology
Colorado School of Mines

Problem Recognition As subsurface explorationists, we are always keying off someone's
dry hole. It should not make the prospect any less attractive
because it happens to be your own dry hole.

Jack Elam
Geologist
Creativity in Oil Exploration

Problem Recognition quot;How wonderful that we have met with paradox. Now we have some
hope of making progress.quot;

Niels Bohr
quoted in Root-Bernstein's Discovering



Problem Recognition Emotion, conviction, intensity--all show that one cares about the
business, not that one lacks team spirit. Teamwork doesn't mean
compliant submission to harmonious, bureaucratic mediocrity. some
of the most creatively productive meetings I've ever participated in
gave birth to new ideas amidst raised voices, table pounding, and
displays of naked emotion. We need not fight to progress, but we
must avoid avoidance.

Donald W. Blohowiak
author of Mavericks!

Problem Recognition When I want your opinion, Edith, I'll give it to you
.
Archie Bunker

Problem Recognition It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the
problem.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Problem Recognition No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a
searching but at the same time steady eye.

Winston Churchill

Problem Recognition quot;Behold the turtle, He makes progress only when his neck is out.quot;

Motto on Office Wall
during Dr. James Bryant Conant's tenure as
President of Harvard University

Problem Recognition To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to
knowledge.

Disraeli



Problem Recognition But they have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and,
indeed, their blindness is marvellous.

Dostoevski 1880

Problem Recognition The recognition and understanding of the need was the primary
condition of the creative act. When people feel they had to express
themselves for originality for its own sake, that tends not to be
creativity. Only when you get into the problem and the problem
becomes clear, can creativity take over.

Charles Eames

Problem Recognition quot;The formulation of a problem,quot; said Albert Einstein, quot;is often more
essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of
mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new
possibilities, to regard old questions from a new angle, requires
creative imagination and marks real advances in science.quot;

A. Einstein and L. Infeld
The Evolution of Physics, l938

Problem Recognition A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

Duke Ellington

Problem Recognition A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across this mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our
own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us
than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression
with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of
voices is on the other side.
Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely
what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to
take with shame our opinion from another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance, l844



Problem Recognition quot;What good is it.quot; a man asked Benjamin Franklin of one of his new
ideas. quot;What good is a Baby? Franklin retorted.

Benjamin Franklin

Problem Recognition The problem of fostering science is of the greatest unsolved problems
of our day. T. H. Huxley once remarked that the new truths of
science begin as heresy, advance to orthodoxy, and end up as
superstition. It is not science in its last two phases that we are
interested in promoting: such kinds of science can take care of
themselves only too well. It is young science, new science, science
that is heretical that is our problem. How do we encourage that?

Garrett Hardin, biologist and historian of science,

Problem Recognition shut my eyes in order to see.
- Paul Gauguin

Problem Recognition Getzels pointed out that creativity is not just solving problems of the
kind that already exist or that continually arise in human life.
Creative individuals often actively search out and discover problems
to solve that no one else has perceived.

Jacob Getzels, in
Drawing on the Artist Within by Betty Edwards

Problem Recognition Science is the topography of ignorance.

Oliver Wendel Holmes

Problem Recognition quot;...any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries
must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull
or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem be
'interesting'--almost any problem is interesting....quot;

Peter Medawar



Problem Recognition Evaluation can stimulate rather than stifle creativity by asking the
right questions.

William Miller

Problem Recognition Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get
one's meaning as one can through pictures or sensations

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

Problem Recognition An ingenious method of memo-making is used by a New York lawyer.
He always carries a pack of government postal cards, addressed to
himself, Whenever an idea hits him--whether on the subway or in
the bathroom--he jots it down on one of the cards and sticks it in the
mail.

Alex F. Osborn

Problem Recognition Creative people always tackle impossibly big problems and then let
their goal guide them through a process of filling in the gap between
what they already know and what they need to know. My artist
friend, Tom van Sant, calls this the quot;leap and fillquot; method. That's
how these creative types push beyond the limits of the known. They
have an amazing ability to handle the ambiguities involved. To most
other people, however, they look crazy, because the initial leap is
based on nothing more than stochastic aiming into the unknown
guided by one or more themata. Some simply has to have faith in
such people and give them a chance to succeed.

Robert Scott Root-Bernstein's character: Ariana
in Discovering.

Problem Recognition The principle of problem choice: Think Big.

Coined by Root-Bernstein's character: Imp in Discovering. From
several scientists.

Root-Bernstein



Problem Recognition Thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words.

Schopenhauer

Problem Recognition Creativity and innovation done democratically tends to sink to a very
low common denominator. If you're going to get somewhere, it's
because some wide-eyed radical jumps up and says, quot;I'm going to do
that.quot;

Mark Sebell

Problem Recognition Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made
an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a
week.

George Bernard Shaw

Problem Recognition The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice
of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in
the scientific world.

C. P. Snow
A postscript to Science and Government.

Problem Recognition It is much more exciting not to catch a big fish than not to catch a
little fish.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Nobel Laureate in biochemistry

Problem Recognition And the more important the idea or the observation to which you an
find a paradox, contradiction, or anomaly, the greater your chance of
having identified an important problem.

The character Imp in Robert Scott Root-Bernstein's book quot;Discoveringquot;



Problem Recognition It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

~Henry David Thoreau

Problem Recognition It isn't answers that make a scientist it's questions.

George Wald

Problem Definition quot;A problem well stated is half solved.quot;

John Dewey

Problem Definition Any problem can be solved as long as it is stated properly
.
- Dr Edwin Land

Problem Definition quot;Knowing what you are looking for helps you to recognize it when you
see it. But in the case of innovation, how do you know what you are
looking for? You don't unless you state your problem so broadly, so
basically, so all-inclusively and generically, that you do not preclude
even the remotest possibility--so that you do not pre-condition your
mind to a narrow range of acceptable answers.quot;

John Arnold
Stanford Professor

Problem Definition Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution.

Stanley Arnold



Problem Definition Specify your problem consciously, coin it at the beginning into a
perfectly definite question.quot;

Brand Blanshard
Yale

Problem Definition 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
quot;That depends a good deal on where you want to get to', said the Cat.
quot; I don't much care where...', said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter
which way you go' said the Cat. 'So long as I get somewhere', Alice
added as a explanation 'Oh, you're sure to do that', said the Cat, 'If
you only walk long enough.'

Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland p.64.

Problem Definition quot;always the beautiful answer who ask a more beautiful questionquot;

e. e. cummings

Problem Definition Creativity in geology is the ability to ask the right question
....geological mysteries are all around us but you have to recognize
them to be creative.

Jack Elam

Geologist

Problem Definition The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is
to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

George Elliot

Problem Definition The more you think, the more time you have.

- Henry Ford



Problem Definition quot;Take care of the means, and the end will take care of itself.quot;

Gandhi

Problem Definition He who seeks for methods without having a definite problem in mind
seeks for the most part in vain.

David Hilbert

Problem Definition Science is the topography of ignorance.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Problem Definition quot;It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to
recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which
vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated
instead of concentrated.quot;

Sherlock Holmes

Problem Definition The process of research is to pull the problem apart into its different
elements, a great many of which you already know about. When
you get it pulled apart, you can work on the things you don't know
about.quot;


Problem Definition Any problem can be solved as long as it is stated properly.

- Dr Edwin Land



Problem Definition The fundamental point is simple: language matters. Language is the
means by which any perception, discovery, or hypothesis acquires a
solid and communicable reality. What this means, in turn, is that
technical knowledge and its advance are never wholly separable from
the forms used to give them an existence.

Scott L. Montgomery
Geologist and Writer

Problem Definition The fundamental point is simple: language matters. Language is the
means by which any perception, discovery, or hypothesis acquires a
solid and communicable reality. What this means, in turn, is that
technical knowledge and its advance are never wholly separable from
the forms used to give them an existence. Language and images can
work upon the mind in many quiet, subtle ways—they can seem like
part of the wallpaper, something we pass by every day without much
notice, while actually comprising a crucial part of the architecture of
our very ability to speak and conceive.

Thus, becoming more conscious of this architecture, its strengths
and weaknesses, can be one avenue to enhanced creativity. Taking
hold of the images that dominate in certain areas of science and
engineering is one possible way to help understand, perhaps even to
discover, new directions for thought and research.

by Scott L. Montgomery
geologist

Problem Definition ...quot;part of all research---must be directed at finding out whether the
questions, are valid, and, if so, answering them in a useful way.quot;

Root-Benrstein's character, Imp in
Discovering. p. 53

Problem Definition The reasonable person adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable
one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

Problem Definition There are two parts to solving any problem: What you want to
accomplish, and how you want to do it. Even the most creative
people attack issues by leaping over what they want to do and going
on to how they will do it. There are many 'hows' but only one
'what'.... You must always ask the question, 'What is?' before you
ask the question, 'How to?'

Richard Saul Wurman



Preparation In the field of observation, chance only favors those minds which
have been prepared.

Louis Pasteur
Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 edn, vol 20

Preparation quot;As a young, unknown man, I went to Washington to talk with
Professor Henry, an authority on electricity, about an idea I had
conceived for transmitting speech by wires. He told me he thought I
had the germ of a great invention. I told him, however, that I had
not the electrical knowledge necessary to bring it into existence. He
replied. quot;Get it.quot;

Alexander Graham Bell

Preparation Disraeli's principle: Court serendipity by being eccentric.

(Your probability of discovering or inventing something different
increases as our experiences, hobbies, skills, knowledge, philosophy,
and goals become increasingly unusual)

Coined by Root-Bernstein's character Imp in Discovering by
interpretation of

Disraeli

Preparation The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is
to get a definite outline of our ignorance.
George Elliot

Preparation We know the value of water when the well runs dry.

Benjamin Franklin

Preparation The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest of
navigators.

Edward Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire



Preparation He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

- Joseph Joubert

Preparation He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

- Joseph Joubert

Preparation We are apt to think that our ideas are the creation of our own
wisdom but the truth is that they are the result of the experience
through outside contact.

Konosuke Matsushita

Preparation I never stop studying. There's always lots to learn. When you stop
learning, that's about the end of you.

John Morton-Finney

Preparation quot;The object of planning for research must be to optimize the ability of
the investigator to recognize and solve some problem, not to
predetermine who will reach particular conclusions by specified
methods.quot;

Root-Bernstein character: Hunter in
Discovering

Preparation Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Darrell Royal



Preparation “Look at me, look at me, look at me now. It’s fun to have fun but you
have to know how.”

Dr. Suess
The Cat in the Hat

Preparation Young's principle: One can not possess a useless talent or skill.

Coined from by Root-Bernstein's character Imp in Discovering, from quot;
..it is impossible to possess an qualification which one may not
want, and capabilities are but light burdens.quot;

Thomas Young

Investigation Oil and gas are not found by flashes of genius but are a product of
rigorous observations and tenacious, dogged, often dreary intensive
work and study.

B. W. Beebe
Geologist

Investigation The important thing is not to stop questioning.
- Albert Einstein

Investigation In those great two years he (Newton) had to the full two priceless
gifts which no one enjoys today, full leisure and quiet. Leisure and
quiet do not produce a newton, but without them even a Newton is
unlikely to bring to ripeness the fruits of his genius.

E. N. daC. Andrade,
in Newton Tercentenary Celebrations,
Royal Society of London (l947).

Investigation quot;He who sees things grow from the beginning will have the best view
of them.quot;
--Aristotle.



Investigation ...quot;hunt for the next in the series, starting our train of thought from
what is now present or from something else, and from something
similar or contrary or contiguous to it.quot;

Aristotle

Investigation Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of
the true scholar.

Nnamdi Azikiwe

Investigation Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data
at all. -Charles Babbage

Investigation Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was
invented.

Sir Francis Bacon [Lord Verulam] 1561-1626

Investigation Science advances, not by the accumulation of new facts, .... but by
the continuous development of new concepts.

James Bryant Conant



Investigation Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men
without talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

Investigation The presence of a body of well-instructed men, who have not to labor
for their daily bread, is important to a degree which cannot be
overestimated; as all high intellectual work is carried on by them, and
on such work material progress of all kinds mainly depends, not to
mention other and higher advantages.

Charles Robert Darwin The Descent of Man (l871)

Investigation What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not
new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already
been said is still not enough.

Eugene Delacroix

Investigation quot;Patience is a necessary ingredient of geniusquot;

-- Benjamin Disraeli

Investigation Above all, innovation is work rather than genius. It requires
knowledge. It often requires ingenuity. And it requires focus. There
are clearly people who are more talented as innovators than others
but their talents lie in well-defined areas. Indeed, innovators rarely
work in more than one area. For all his systematic innovative
accomplishments, Edison worked only in the electrical field. An
innovator in financial areas, Citibank for example, is not likely to
embark on innovations in health care.

Peter F. Drucker
The Discipline of Innovation, HBR



Investigation I'll try anything--I'll even try Limburger cheese!

Thomas Edison

Investigation Many people think of inventions as coming on a man all in one piece.
Things don't happen that way, much. The phonograph, for example,
was a long time coming, and it came step by step. For my own part,
it started way back in the days of the Civil War, when I was a young
telegrapher in Indianapolis.

Thomas Edison

Investigation ...science as something existing and complete is the most objective
thing known to man. But, science in the making, science as an end
to be pursued is as subjective and psychologically conditioned as any
branch of human endeavor.

Einstein

Investigation No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes
or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there
must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Epictetus, Discourses
Book I, Chapter 2.

Investigation To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced,
requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not
calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking.
Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it
is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this
path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on
how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it
in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic
diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions
which are continually being thrust upon them.

George Spencer Brown



Investigation Persistence is the hard work that you do after you are tired of doing
the hard work you already did.

Newt Gingrich

Investigation quot;Science is always an interaction of prevailing culture, individual
eccentricity and empirical restraintquot;

Steven J. Gould

Investigation Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa
painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as
a conference report? creative ideas do not spring from groups. They
spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of
God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of
physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, sonata or a
mechanical computer.

A. Whitney Griswold Speech
Yale University,

Investigation As to words, they remain absolutely absent from my mind until I
come to the moment of communicating the results in written or oral
form....quot;

Jacque Hadamard
The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, l945.

Investigation When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.

Sherlock Holmes

Investigation Deduction is science, not speculation and there is no substitute for
creative thinking.

Kenneth J. Hsu
Physical Principles of Sedimentology



Investigation
Next to undue precipitation in anticipating the results of pending
investigations, the intellectual sin which is commonest and most
hurtful to those who devote themselves to the increase of knowledge
is the omission to profit by the experience of their predecessors
recorded in the history of science and philosophy.quot;

T. H. Huxley

Investigation Kettering's principle: Action creates results.

Coined by Root-Bernstein's character Imp from Kettering's
statement: quot;I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something
sitting down.quot;


Investigation The difference between the impossible and possible lies in a person's
determination.

- Tommy Lasorda

Investigation There are many geological discovery tools rusting away in our kit for
want of use. The need is for quot;creativequot; geology as compared with
what may be called quot;routinequot; geology.

A. I. Levorsen, l943

Investigation It is often said that what the oil industry really needs is a new
exploration tool. Just as the fisherman needs some new tackle. But,
like the fisherman analogy, when it is remembered that the new
fishing tackle is generally designed to catch the eye of the fisherman
and not necessarily the eye of the fish, it gives cause to wonder
whether or not some of the new gadgets or devices continually
coming into the discovery picture may be more of the nature to catch
the eye of the contour-minded executive rather than the illusive oil
field which it is hoped to find. Some of the most successful fisherman
are those who use only the old-fashioned hook and line with a little
bait, and maybe we can learn from them.

A. I. Levorsen (l943)



Investigation An opportunity must be provided for those men with the capacity and
with the ability for doing creative geology to actually do geology, and
in addition, to be able to spend a part of their time with their feet on a
desk looking out of the window where they can generate ideas and
where they can reconstruct in their mind the conditions and
environments of past geologic ages.

A. I. Levorsen, l943

Investigation You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

~Jack London

Investigation Excellence and learning are not commodities to be bought at the
corner store. Rather they dwell among rocks hardly accessible. and
we must almost wear our hearts out in search of them.

H. F. Lowry.

Investigation Although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet,
chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time,
the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the
unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite
ages before the creation of our race, and is not even withheld from
penetrating into the dark secrets of the ocean, or the interior of the
solid globe; free, like the spirit which the poet described as animating
the universe.

- Sir Charles Lyell, 1830

Investigation quot;Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination.quot;

Somerset Maugham



Investigation Consider the value of writing a summary report or abstract of current
work in simpler language than is ordinarily the case, language
intended for an educated lay reader for instance. Note what types of
abridgment need to be made, what terms require explanation or
non-use, what kinds of details become necessary and what kinds
expendable. This will help reveal the more central metaphors or
images that currently dominate your work.

Scott L. Montgomery
Geologist and Writer

Investigation If you see a man walking down the street with oil on his shoes,
where it shouldn't be, and no oil on his hair, where it should be,
that's an oil man. If he has a faraway look in his eye and seems to
be contemplating the depth of the first Jurassic sandstone in Persia,
that's a geologist.

Nebraska Telegraph, circa l900's

Investigation How wonderful that we have met with paradox. Now we have some
hope of making progress.

Niels Bohr

Investigation Creative thinking thrives on enthusiasm, and this tends to lag when
we force our minds beyond a certain point. By letting up a while, we
tend to regenerate our emotional urge.

Alex Osborn
Applied Imagination

Investigation Creativity comes from minds full of concepts, full of carefully observed
facts.

John M. Parker
AAPG President, l983

Investigation It takes facts to be able to derive a concept just as it takes concepts
to be creative
.
John M. Parker
AAPG President, l983



Investigation Perfect as is the wing of a bird, it never could raise the bird up
without resting on air. Facts are the air of a scientist. Without them
you never can fly.

Iran Pavlov
Nobel Prize winner

Investigation If arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing be taken away from any
art, that which remains will not be much.

Plato

Investigation This unconscious work is not possible, or in any case not fruitful,
unless it is first preceded and then followed by a period of conscious
work.

Henri Poincare

Investigation To foresee the future of mathematics, the true method is to study its
history and its present state.quot;

Poincare

Investigation On Creative Thought:

For this kind of meditation begets knowledge, and knowledge is really
creative inasmuch as it makes things look different from what they
seemed before and may indeed work for their reconstruction.

James Harvey Robinson
The Mind in the Making

Investigation We haven't the money, so we've got to think.

Lord Ernest Rutherford
In R. V. Jones Bulletin of the Institute of Physics, 1962



Investigation Go, my sons, buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search...the
deep recesses of the earth...In this way and in no other will you
arrive at a knowledge of the nature and properties of things.

Severinus
7th Century

Investigation It is two hundred years since Newton talked of our being in the
search for knowledge like children who picked up pebbles on the
beach. This man who spoke of quot;finished sciences; was Newton's
successor. As I heard his clipped, impersonal voice, saying what was
to him an evident fact, I realized for the first time how far science
had gone. We were not picking up pebbles from the beach any
more; instead we knew how many pebbles there were, how many we
had picked up, how many we should be able to pick up. They had
found the boundary to our knowledge.

C. P. Snow

Investigation
quot;Whenever you can hear laughter and somebody saying, 'But that's
preposterous'--you can tell that things are going well and that
something worth looking at has begun to happen in the lab.'quot;

Lewis Thomas

Investigation Researchers have already cast much darkness on the subject, and if
they continue their investigations, we shall soon know nothing at all
about it.

Mark Twain

Investigation The point I wish to make in this stage of the description of field
methods is that thinking is appropriate to field work. Facts are to be
scrutinized and classified. Gaps in the chain of facts are to be
discovered and noted, that they may be filled when opportunity
occurs. Groups of facts are to be examined as to their meaning and
are to be placed in relation to one another as elements of an
hypothesis. Hypotheses that will explain all the known facts and
suggest lines of investigation are to be thought out.

Baily Willis and Robin Willis, l934



Judgement Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless
combinations and in constructing the useful combinations which are
in the infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to chose.

Jules Henri Poincare (l854-l912)

Judgement I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so
many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

Raoul Dufy

Judgement The judgment of ideas, unfortunately, is an extremely popular and
rewarding pastime. One finds more newspaper space devoted to
judgment (critic columns, political analyses, editorials, etc.) than t
the creation of ideas. In the university, much scholarship is devoted
to judgment, rather than creativity. One finds that people who heap
negative criticism upon all ideas they encounter are often heralded for
their practical sense and sophistication. Bad-mouthing everyones
else's concepts is in fact a cheap way to attempt to demonstrate your
own mental superiority.

James L.Adams
Chair: Values, Technology, Science and Society Department at Stanford
University
Conceptual Blockbusting

Judgement Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which
ones to keep.

Scott Raymond Adams

Judgement Thinking is...in part imagination, in part judgment: We must
therefore first mark off the sphere of imagination and then speak of
judgment.

Aristotle



Judgement It takes little talent to see what is under one's nose, a good deal of it
to know in what direction to point that organ.

-W.H. Auden

Judgement Every geologist knows that information sufficient to solve any
sizable geologic problem is seldom, if ever, available. There are gaps
between the geologic facts that can be spanned only by the
imagination. Failure to bridge these gaps means failure to draw
conclusions of a tentative nature. These tentative conclusions, or
geologic ideas, grease the gears of the exploratory machine.... to
bridge the gaps between geologic data by leaps of an imagination
under control is to be resourceful. Controlled imagination is not
guesswork. It is imagination tempered by experience, knowledge and
sound reasoning. Like a muscle it grows through exercise.quot;

I.H. Cram, l945

Judgement While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be
a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use
simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research.

Francis Harry Compton Crick

Judgement Imagination, as well as reason is necessary to perfection in the
philosophical mind. A rapidity of combination, a power of perceiving
analogies, and of comparing them by facts, in the creative source of
discovery. Discrimination and delicacy of sensation, so important in
physical research, are other words for taste; and the love of nature
is the same passion, as the love of the magnificent, the sublime and
the beautiful.

Sir Humphry Davy 1778-1829

Judgement It is not enough to just do your best or work hard. You must know
what to work on.

W. Edwards Deming



Judgement A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model
has the third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

Manfred Eigen

Judgement quot; Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition.quot;

Jacques Hadamard

Judgement The art of becoming wise is the art of knowing where to overlook.

William James

Judgement Facts may swamp imagination'

John Livingston Lowes

Judgement Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and
make a choice of the least harmful.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Judgement Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned--not to see
what is not.

Maria Mitchell
19th -century American astronomer



Judgement Use judgement and intuition to choose the best ideas ...the selection
is also a creative process.

Hanley Norins
ad man

Judgement Pauling's principle: Try many things.

coined by Root-Bernstein's character Imp in Discovering. From the
word of Linus Pauling: quot;Just have lots of ideas and throw away the
bad ones.quot;

Linus Pauling

Judgement Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited
energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense
of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.

~Norman Podhoretz

Judgement He would often begin with an idea which after he had worked at it for
some time, turned out to be wrong; he would start off on some
other idea which had occurred to him while working on the previous
one, and if this turned out to be wrong he would start another, and
so on until he found one which satisfied him, and this was pretty
sure to be right. He often started out in the wrong direction but he
got to his goal in the end.

J. J. Thompson, physicist, writing about his mentor, Osborne
Reynolds (l937)



Judgement The stress placed on logical analysis in this discussion has perhaps
obscured a parallel need for creative, constructive, innovative
thought. Such thought does not in itself conflict with logic, but it
can be impaired by standardization of methods no matter how
logical the standardization appears to be. Innovative thought
seeks to break from prior experience and gain insight, as often by
forming new associations among familiar materials in nonstandard
ways as by acquiring new data. We must prize the ability to
recognize and use new relations among elements of knowledge,
to form classifications that in the words of Wadell (1938) are not
only broad and close but also so flexible and elastic that they can
serve effectively to organize the novel or strange. This human
attribute is essential to cope with a
future whose only certain character is accelerating
change.

David J. Varnes
From quot;The Logic of Geologic Maps, With Reference to their
Interpretation for Engineering Purposesquot;

Judgement quot;We must beware of what I call 'inert ideas'--ideas that are merely
received into the mind without being utilized or tested, or thrown into
fresh combinations.quot;

Alfred North Whitehead
The Aims of Education

Synthesis quot;Everything of importance has already been seen by someone who
did not discover it.quot;

Whitehead

Synthesis He who sees things grow from the beginning will have the best view
of them.

Aristotle

Synthesis In the university, the specialist and analyst is king. But resolution of
problems in society generally is not to be found in a single discipline
... In society the non-specialist and synthesiser is king.

Lord Eric Ashby
The Sociology of Science ed P Halmers, 1972, Sociology Review
Monographs no 18



Synthesis Creativity comes from our brains. It involves making connections -
connections between concepts and facts we have learned and
remembered. Creativity occurs because we overcome obstacles -
because we dare.

Ted Bear, l985
Petroleum Geologist

Synthesis The individual geologist will have two options. He can choose the
necessary and important role of specialist, a contributor of knowledge
to decision process, or he can pursue his traditional role of facilitator
and integrator, but to do this he will have to be able to handle an
additional order of magnitude of information and know how to use it.

J. F. Bookout (l988)
President and CEO of Shell Oil Company

Synthesis Genius is the ability is the ability to reduce the complicated to the
simple.

C. W. Ceram

Synthesis Go some distance away because the work appears smaller and more
of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony of proportion
is rapidly seen.

Leonardo da Vinci

Synthesis My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts.

Charles Darwin

Synthesis Ideas awaken each other....because they have always been related.quot;

Diderot



Synthesis But they have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and,

Dostoevski 1880

Synthesis But they have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and,

(Dostoevski 1880)

Synthesis A creative thinker evolves no new ideas. He actually evolves new
combinations of ideas that are already in his mind.

Doctor Easton

Synthesis It is inevitable that you are indebted to the past. You are fed and
formed by it. The old forest is decomposed for the composition of the
new forest.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Synthesis In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it
were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which
is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal
experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

- E. M. Forster

Synthesis Goethe frankly said, What would remain to me if this art of
appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings
has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a
thousand things. . . . My work is an aggregation of beings taken from
the whole of nature; it bears the name of Goethe.



Synthesis Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in
the one where they sprang up.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Synthesis Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and
animates.

Synthesis ...The way the spiders weave, you see, is none the better because
they produce the threads from their own body, nor is ours the worse
because like bees we cull from the work of others.

Justus Lipsius
Quotation carried by numbers of the first volume of the Philosophical
Magazine, 1798.

Synthesis Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the
complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Charles Mingus

Synthesis Bare bones ideas are plentiful, but the trick is to identify the good
ones. Ideas derive their importance and durability in relation to data,
problems and other ideas. In other words, ideas must be tested
against reality. Good ideas will have two effects. They will be useful
in their original context and they will create surprising, intriguing
connections among things that once seemed to exist in separate
contexts.

Jack Oliver
Geophysicist

Synthesis It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the
seemingly unconnected.

William Plommer



Synthesis So part of discovering is linking up solution to right problems.
Doesn't always happen immediately. Solution and problem can both
exist prior to their meeting.

Root-Bernsteins's character: Imp in
Discovering

Synthesis From the mouth of Lord Peter Wimsey:
quot;If ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you've got to do is
prevent people from asociatin' their ideas. Most people don't associate
anything'--their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray,
making' a lot noise and goin' nowhere, but once you begin lettin' em
string their peas into a necklace, it's goin' to be strong enough to
hang you, what?quot;

Dorothy Sayers
writer of mysteries

Synthesis quot;The best ideas are common property.quot;

Seneca
c. 4 BC AD 65

Synthesis [Only a very small part of any ordinary person's knowledge has been
the produce of his own observation or reflection] all the rest has been
the purchased, in the same manner as his shoes or his stockings,
from those whose business is to make up and prepare for market
that particular species of goods.

Adam Smith
In W R Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Professor, 1937

Synthesis Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and
thinking something different.

Albert Szent Györgyi
Nobel Prize winner

Synthesis Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, Simplify

- Henry David Thoreau


Creativity in Oil and Gas Exploration - A quotation approach

Creativity in Oil and Gas Exploration - A quotation approach

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