ABSTRACT
This final chapter is devoted to the third kind of creative phenomena that I have called creative movement. There are two essential features of such phenomena. The first is that it embraces multiple artificer–artifact–consumer complexes, some perhaps active contemporaneously (synchronically), others spread across historical time (diachronically). The second is that while individual artificers may be creating distinctive artifacts for distinctive groups of consumers, collectively they invent a shared mentality. This, we may claim, is the highest form of creativity manifested by a movement. If the different artificer–artifact–consumer complexes were engaged in activities that had nothing in common, they would not be engaged in a creative movement. It is by sharing a mentality that they collectively (and possibly unintendedly) invent that the movement comes into being. Moreover we can also claim that such a shared mentality may be expressed by a common cognitive style.
The question is: How does an original cognitive style characterizing a shared mentality come into being? We try to shed light on this question by way of three case studies extracted from the history of the creative tradition. One is the invention, in the 19th century, of a new monotheistic religion called Brahmoism, a “spin off” of Hinduism. The second is the invention, in the 1960s and 1970s, of a movement in computer programming called “structured programming.” The third is a craft movement in the making of a particular class of fishing boats in the 1970s and 1980s. The first occurred in the Eastern region of India called Bengal; the second was an international movement that occurred in Europe, U.K. and America; the third was located in a small region of South Louisiana.
