ABSTRACT
Acts of "historical creativity," like celebrated works of art or influential theories, tend to stand out as mountain peaks, and their creativity is frequently taken for granted. This chapter attempts to integrate scientific and "commonsensical" notions of creativity. Empirical examples come from a research project that explores creativity in Easter egg decoration in a Romanian context. Novelty and originality can be said to represent the "essence" of creativity, and this is probably so for both scientific and lay understandings of the phenomenon. Creativity means, in the end, to bring something new into being, something that didn't exist before as such. Creativity test scoring systems themselves reflect this difficulty. Creative potential is usually measured using divergent thinking tests, which invite respondents to give as many answers as they can to an open-ended question and score responses for fluency, originality, and flexibility.
