ROUGHDRAFT V CREATIVE INSTABILITY WHY CREATIVE I NSTABI LITYT A dissonance in tbe tsalence of Uranium led to tbe discouery Dissonance (if you're interested) leads to discoaery W. C. Williams, Paterson IV (On tbe Curies) Historians seem to have been parricuiarly intrigued by the dissonant moments in history-those moments when things can go either way, the nearly magical moments of instability and creativity that make all the difference. Hippolyte Taine, the French historian, saw in Napoleon,s life the perfect example of what it means to seize and to live such great moments. In other instances, crucial discoveries and insights seem to occur in a much less dramatic context: while daydreaming, for instance, the mind wandering in and out of an open window, to rhe brighr day and the green world. is the Chinese character for "crisis," the moment of crearive instability which, taking many forms, often precedes grear insight, as well as disaster. This ambiguity is expressed in the Confucian Book of Changes, the I Cbing,by the concept of "moving lines.', pushed to its limits, the broken line [- -] changes to a solid line [ ] . Similarly, the solid line changes to the broken. Thomas Kuhn claims that throughout the history of science great discoveries are precipitated by crisis; old theories, proving inadequare, give birth, under stress, to new theories. The phrase "creative instability" here connotes, rather than defines, the condition under which social and instirutional changes are likely to occur, and the condition in which some moments distinguish themselves from the countless undistinguished moments of history. Roughdraft V is concerned with the advantages of the untuned spheres; the ways in which dissonance creates opportunities for the evolution of ideas as well as society.
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