Oh Say, Can You See?

What does a fish counter have in common with an experienced baseball player? A sighted choreographer with a blind conchologist? And what might they share with the people who clicked YouTube over 90 million times last month to see the unlikely Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle? Tease out the imaginative thinking tool that crops up again and again in each case, and you've got the beginnings of your answer-and a start on understanding the bases of human problem-solving and creativity.

Fish counting is a low tech job. All it takes is a mechanical clicker and a pair of eyes. Or, rather, a trained pair of eyes. For a good fish counter must learn to distinguish between dozens of species that look very much alike in the space of the few seconds it takes a spawning fish to flash past the observation window at the top of a dam on an Oregon river.

Similarly, baseball is a game where it pays to keep your eye on the ball. When the batter hits one, outfielders typically take about a second and a half to respond to the sight and start running to meet it. But really experienced outfielders pay attention to the crack-or clunk-of the bat, a sound cue that registers in 0.3 seconds. These players are off to meet the ball a step ahead of everyone else.

Two different esoteric skills, you might say: the first critical to the accurate assessment of salmon fisheries; the second to competitive edge in a demanding sport. But in both cases, the thinking skill is the same. Observing.

Observing is what we do when we pay heightened attention to things in an open-minded way. Sounds easy enough. Human beings are generally equipped to absorb information from the external environment with eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. We take in signals from our internal environment, too, by monitoring sensations of body balance, posture, tension and movement. But as our first two examples must make clear, observing well takes a little extra something. Call it sensitivity to the nuances in life. That means looking, not just recognizing; listening not just hearing. There's a difference between the crack and the clunk of a bat, a Chinook and a sockeye salmon, a difference that must be learned. And that learning takes time, patience, and practice.

Scientists know all about that kind of practice. Karl von Frisch, the man who first decoded the dance language of bees, wrote of the many hours he spent watching bees and other living things: "I discovered that miraculous worlds may reveal themselves to a patient observer where the casual passer-by sees nothing at all."

But simply looking is often not enough; you also have to know what to look for. The biologist Jared Diamond has said that in the field he and other experts on tropical birds must "learn to ... detect a bird just as a quick bit of motion that's different from the motion of a leaf in the treetops."

This means training oneself to see very fine differences between one thing and another - or to hear, smell, taste, feel or otherwise observe them. Ornithologists often identify birds by sound, not sight. And the blind conchologist Geerat Vermeij identifies seashells and other natural objects by touch. At times, his heightened awareness of shape and texture has allowed him to observe distinctions that sighted biologists overlook.

As must be clear by now, observing is all about the complex interaction between expectation and discovery. On the one hand, if we don't train ourselves in what to expect, it's hard for us to recognize the subtle signs of interesting phenomena. On the other, if we only look (or listen or feel) for what we expect, we also risk missing the new and remarkable.

The artist Jasper Johns explored this conundrum in a series of American flags, which he painted in strange colors, highly textured surfaces and ghost-like values. "What interested me is this," Johns says. "At a certain point I realized that certain things that were around me were things that I did not look at, but recognized. And recognized without looking at. So you recognize a flag is a flag, and it's very rare that you actually look at the surface of it to see what it is..."

Observe one of his flag paintings [Moratorium, 1969, to the left] and experience for yourself what he means: the uncanny sensation that what you recognize is not what you expect leads to the discovery that the new flag in green, black and orange is actually an afterimage of the old red, white and blue. When you really see what you usually only look at, it works like this: Stare at an American flag for 15 or 20 seconds without blinking, close your eyes, and you'll see Johns's flag. Conversely, stare at Johns's flag for 15 or 20 seconds without blinking and then close your eyes. You should see what most of us think of as the American flag, in its proper colors! (If you have trouble making this work with the small image here, check out Johns' piece, Flags, 1968, at http://www.wfu.edu/art/ac_johns_flags.htm).

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The Power of Ambiguity

There’s a Dark Side to Creativity

Observing-and observing well-plays a role in many of our daily activities, both professional and personal. We all experience important moments when we really see something for the first time; or we realize we are mistaken in what we thought we heard-or thought we understood about people, places and things.

Chances are, many of the millions of people who watched Susan Boyle sing had one of those moments. Driven by curiosity to observe a performance that confounded expectations...they discovered something quite remarkable. About Susan Boyle and others like her. About themselves. When you really pay attention, and look, listen, and feel deeply, miraculous worlds may be revealed.

What have you observed lately, with renewed wonder? How does observing figure in your profession or hobby? In upcoming posts, we'll go one by one through the imaginative skills we explored in our book Sparks of Genius, The 13 Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People. Let us know how each plays a part in your thinking and creating. Help us make the point that these imaginative tools for thinking belong to us all.

© Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein 2009

SOURCES:

Glanz, James. (June 26, 2001). The Crack of the Bat: Acoustics Takes on the Sounds of Baseball. Science Times section of The New York Times, D1.
Lyall, Sarah. (May 31, 2009). Unlikely Web Star Loses on a British Talent TV Show. The New York Times, p. 12.
Riha, Carol Ann. (May 3, 1998). It's no fish story: Computers can't replace human counters. Associated Press/Lansing State Journal, p. 8A.

For sources on Frish, Diamond, Vermeij and Johns, see Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. 1999. Sparks of Genius. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.