Professor Berys Gaut, of the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies,
will deliver his Inaugural Lecture, "Educating for Creativity” in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 14 November 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.In this talk Professor Gaut examines whether it is possible to teach people to be creative. We often feel hesitant to say that we can do so, talking instead of 'nurturing' or 'fostering' creativity. A source of this reluctance is traced to two seminal 18th century works on creativity: Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition and Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement. Two arguments against the view that creativity can be taught, concerning the role of imitation and rules in learning, are extracted from these works, but both arguments are shown to be unsound. Professor Gaut then develops a positive argument for the claim that creativity can be taught, and illustrates how to do so with examples drawn from mathematics, philosophy and creative writing.
