Destruction and Creativity

In a thought experiment to understand the nature of creative thinking, military strategist John Boyd presented the “Destruction and Creativity Theory” as an exercise to break things down and re-create something new.

Boyd expressed that there are two ways to manipulate information collected from your observations: analysis and synthesis. We can analyze whatever process or event we are observing by breaking it down into individual components and interactions. From this state, we can make deductions that lead to understanding. Or we can synthesize by taking various sometimes unrelated components and putting them together to form a new whole.

“Imagine four separate images. Let’s call them domains. Each domain can be easily understood by looking at its parts and at the relation among the parts.”

Using sports domains as an example, how many different hybrid sports could we create? What can we take away from individual components of a sport to help us analyze and create learning opportunities?

In an exercise, let's break down soccer, tennis, football, and basketball by their parts. We would get something like: Soccer has a goal, offside rules, penalty kicks, and the use of feet only. Tennis has rackets, a net, two sides, scoring systems, and a yellow tennis ball. Football has defensive/offensive lines, pads, football, touchdown zones, and a quarterback. Finally, basketball has a hoop, the basketball, five players, and free throws.

All in all, the holistic view of components taken from these different sports domains are known as the sea of anarchy.

This sea of anarchy is where we can create learning models or entirely new domains. We can synthesize techniques and lessons from different sports and bring them to the sport we are actively trying to learn.

The separate ingredients make sense when collected under the respective headings. But then Boyd shattered the relationship between the parts and their respective domains. He called breaking the domains apart a “destructive deduction” (or thinking outside the box). The deduction was destructive in that the relationship between the parts and the whole was destroyed. Uncertainty and disorder took the place of meaning and order.

Boyd showed how synthesis was the basis of creativity. He asked, “From some of the ingredients in this sea of anarchy, how do we find common qualities and connecting threads to synthesize a new and altogether different domain?”

The mismatches are inevitable and unexpected because, as Boyd said, “One cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself. Moreover, attempts to do so lead to confusion and disorder.” This never-ending cycle of mismatches, destruction, and creation is the “natural manifestation of a dialectic engine.” This “engine” is the relationship between the observer and whatever is being observed.

If our mental processes become focused on our internal dogmas and isolated from the unfolding, constantly dynamic outside world, we experience mismatches between our mental images and reality.

“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever.”