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Creativity might be defined as the process of combining previously unassociated concepts to produce a new and better level of understanding.
The real world is a strange mix of events ranging from quantum interactions, to complex biological, sociological, and cosmological effects. However the limitations of the human mind force us to categorize reality by traditional disciplines: mathematics, physics, biology, art, literature, business, etc. Most of the time, these artificial "discipline" boundaries are useful, because they let us learn a relatively complete set of trade skills in a reasonable amount of time. But at the same time,these artificial discipline boundaries can act to separate one set of concepts from another set of concepts, and thus act to inhibit creativity.
Most of my career has been spent in attempting to integrate concepts from physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, and even business to invent new and useful medical devices, and bring them into actual real-world use. Here, I have found my undergraduate Creative Studies background to be highly useful.
It turns out that most of the real "meat" of a given discipline is actually taught at the undergraduate level. That is, undergraduate courses usually teach the broad outline of a discipline, and thus give you a broad overview of a field. By contrast, graduate courses usually teach narrower specifics. CCS gives undergraduates the freedom to experiment with combinations of undergraduate courses that might not otherwise be possible, and this can result in a unique set of perspectives.
In my case, in the early 1970?s, CCS enabled me to combine what was then a rather unusual mix of physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and math courses. As it turned out, this combination has since proven to be highly useful, and now, thirty years later, is much more commonly taught as biotechnology or bioengineering.
In the same way, CCS students of today can pioneer the interdisciplinary studies that may, in turn, prove to be highly valuable for the next generation.
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