This is the page that presents a hypothesis, which will serve as the basis of discussion for the spring 2007 version of J. B. Owens's upper-division undergraduate and graduate course, History 453/553, Renaissance Creativity. The sole purpose of this page and all of the pages linked to it is to provide an orientation for those students enrolled in History 453/553.
You may return to the course main page or to the J. B. Owens Main Page.

Renaissance Creativity: Viewpoint

This page states a hypothesis, which will serve as the viewpoint for discussions in J. B. Owens's spring 2007 upper-division undergraduate and graduate course Renaissance Creativity.

If you have any questions or comments, please mail them to J. B. Owens at OWENJACK _ at _ ISU.EDU or if your system will support sending the message, you may send a message now. Please include your name and e-mail address in the body of your message.

In accounting for creative innovation, modification, and adaptation within a particular human community, there are certain factors that appear to be necessary, although even the presence of all of them in a specific social environment may not be sufficient to produce creative endeavors. Some group of people must have (1) perceived economic, political, social, aesthetic, and/or spiritual needs that make ACTION important within a particular creative field, and (2) institutional means should exist for the satisfaction of these needs. At least some members of the group must have (3) sufficient leisure and the (4) proper education to become a critical audience able to hold creative producers to (5) high standards. Both audience and producers must have sufficient "time, energy, and knowledge" to act in ways that enhance the possibilities for creativity. Further, there needs to exist means to (6a) reward those who meet audience expectations [and perhaps to (6b) reprimand those who fail in this regard]. Both audience and producers, which need not be separate sets, require adequate (7) means of frequent communication to both shape and apply high critical standards. The community must be able to (8) tolerate diversity, at least within the area characterized by creativity, and to permit (9) relative freedom of expression. Moreover, the examined community should exist in an (10) environment containing other diverse groups with which it competes in fields requiring cultural production; such competition is necessary to motivate the allocation of scarce resources to these types of production.

Comparison

In class and during our discussions of your projects, we will be evaluating this hypothesis through comparative study. For the most part, we will be using what is known as an "individualizing comparison" in which one selects a particular aspect of some community and compares that aspect to the same thing in one or more other communities. Your contributions may take on the characteristics of an "encompassing comparison." This type of comparison may become involved if the compared cases are part of some larger system, as will often occur because we will mostly deal with a single world region. This is potentially the most valuable type of comparative study.

There are two other major types of comparison, neither of them particularly relevant to this course and both frequently subject to unacknowledged or unrecognized bias. In a "universalizing comparison," one looks for a "standard sequence" in various cases. For example, one might use this sort of comparison to generate a theory of economic development applicable to any country or world region. In a "variation-finding comparison," one examines a large number of cases to isolate the crucial variables that account for differences. One might employ this type of comparison to understand how parliamentary institutions develop or fail to develop in all nation-states. Of course, during a particular piece of research, these four types of comparison can overlap. If you want to read more about doing comparative history, turn to the following book and works in its bibliography:
Tilly, Charles. (1984) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

"The soul is pleased by the comparison of one thing with another, since placing one thing in conjunction with another has an innate affinity with the way the mind acts."
-- Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274], Summa Theologiae I-II 32:8

Revised: 6 January 2007

URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/rencr/viewpoint.html