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Taxonomy of Methods |
Obtaining solutions from resources external to the problem-solver "Many men," said Winston Churchill while language was still male-bound, "stumble over discoveries. Most of them pick themselves up and walk away." In truth, everyone is often in the right place at the right time, but very few have practiced enough observation to notice it when it happens. Fleming's penicillin antibiotic response was apologetically shrugged off by at least 27 previous researchers in print (and Fleming himself got around to examining the odd effect only after 15 years, at the urging of a student who didn't know any better!). Reportedly, the breakthrough on discovering a plasma test for effects of Dioxin (Agent Orange) was made by similar "accident" at the Center for Communicable Diseases in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the research team, who liked to hunt, noticed how clean his bullets were. Investigating how, and why, led to a new method of hyper-cleaning the parts to a mass spectrometer, using ammunition casing brass and dried corn cobs. The extra cleanliness, in turn, enabled the mass spectrometer to operate far more sensitively, a discovery ranging far beyond the Dioxin project. (As reported by insiders to this writer, but not part of the personal first-hand knowledge and experience of this writer. We have not run down original published sources in this matter. Yet, the quality of the insiders' reporting renders this secondary-sourced information somewhat better than apocryphal.) Similarly, tens of thousands of researchers, teachers and students have had the same experience as did Dr. Michael Zaslov in his 1987 discovery of a new antibiotic at the National Institutes of Health, as reported by A.P. in most major newspapers. His case, too, was cited as "another instance of Serendipity." But being observant was the critical variable here, not luck. Millions have partially dissected frogs, then returned them still living to their highly septic medium overnight, and gone on with them the next morning, and thought nothing of the fact that they were still alive and uninfected. Millions with that experience, and only one Michael Zaslov. The most potent technique presently known for building powers of observation is the simple practice of Image Streaming, online at Project Renaissance and taught in the book, Discovering the Obvious.
![]() B. External Expertise Today this strategy is relatively overinvested, but can still often be useful, not least of all because the outsider has not yet learned all the places where s/he should not look, and moreover has not yet neuronally habituated on the matter in question. Thus, we (the "we" includes you) can often solve one another's problems more easily than we can our own.
2. Consultant experts mostly overinvested, relative to other ways of finding solutions, but still productive at times. 3. Charisma "rally the troops" en masse to the task so that some of them, at least, will manage to solve the problem(s). 4. Train more people to be effective problem-solvers the avowed purpose of our own programs and publications.
![]() C. External Power, external leverage The effectiveness of this category of techniques can be argued but is uneven. Strong cases have on occasion been made for each of the various following approaches:
2. Call on the Godfather to do it. 3. Magic some way to manipulate the territory from the map, however necessarily the one differs from the other. 4. Call on God to do it some way to manipulate the Owner of the territory, commonly called "the power of prayer," but "prayer" in the sense of telling God what to do instead of "prayer" in the sense of listening (which form we think is far more powerful). 5. Depend upon Luck, the passage of time, or for the problem to somehow solve itself.
![]() Reinvestment in creating better methods Reinvest whatever are your best methods for solving problems into the problem of how to create new and better problem-solving methods! Pursuit of this principle of reinvestment can build and has built phenomenal methodological capital over time. Extending this "Sector Three" into a concluding comment: Traditionally, each main school or proponent of creative problem-solving, developed (or borrowed!) one or a few good techniques and practices, and offered these as "The Way" to effectively solve problems. Any of the existing schools, systems, and/or other corporate or embodied proponents of particular ways could evolve and proliferate new generations of methods fully a match with those of Project Renaissance. Sid Parnes' Visionizing is an example of an excellent start on this road by the world's best recognized name in creativity. Any such program, if imbued with a glimmer of curiosity and scientific attitude, can and should begin following this same simple principle of re-investment. We are in a world where problems are accumulating far more rapidly than solutions, to the point that our main institutions are staggering and threatening to collapse under the burden. We therefore strongly urge more programs to begin applying this principle of re-investing methods into better methods, building effective problem-solving into an even better science than it has recently become. And ways to make it more accessible to general public use, as we are doing with this exhibit we are now creating, of one hundred of the world's best current techniques for discovering answers and solutions, free to anyone and everyone on the planet who can get to the Web.... One way you can start yourself to re-investing your current best methods into creating better such methods, if brainstorming is the method you are most familiar with and comfortable with, is to start brainstorming out, sorting out, and taxonomizing everything that you know about creativity and answer-finding. You may have a lot more of this than you yet realize. This is a great point for you to do some Freenoting .... or simply Freenote on everything that comes to mind for you in a 10- to 20-minute "brainstorm" intensive on everything about effective/creative ways to solve problems and discover answers. As it occurs to you, write it regardless of whether or not it at first seems to fit or make sense..... Another way you can be doing this is to keep hopping over the garden wall as in Over-the-Wall (free online) or riding the elevator up (as in Beachhead or in Toolbuilder) to where our future or some advanced civilizations have already come up with far better methods, including surprising new principles on creativity. All you need to do is copy what you observe there and re-create these back here as your invention...... (Toolbuilder is where most of our present methods in Project Renaissance come from.) Hey the whole universe is yours to draw upon. The resources available to your mind truly appear to be without limit. Having read this far, how can you not put at least some of all this to legitimate test? And having tested these matters and found something of what truly is at stake, how can any living human being not go forward with this, without apparent limits? And look at all that wonderful scenery you get to take in along the way!!!
Indeed, we concur in yet one more regard with Dr. Jean
Houston, who in her recent lectures has been saying that
"for the uses we put our remarkably developed brain to,
we are obscenely over-endowed!" You, for instance, have
brains enough to run a galaxy. Up until now or recently,
what have you been doing with them? ![]() Comments to Win Wenger copyright notice to share freely with others. |
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