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From: MUKHOP%RCSJJ%gmr.com@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: Creativity and Analogy
Message-ID: <8606250658.AA08018@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 19-Jun-86 20:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8606250658.AA08018
Posted: Thu Jun 19 20:52:00 1986
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Gordon C Joly asks:
>  A friend described another friend as a potentially good novelist,
>because ``she always has a radically different view in the situation;
>she always has a new angle''. But is there analogy tucked away in her
>reasoning? ...

   The description suggests a person who makes interesting analyses 
(or abstractions) of situations, i.e. she "understands" situations in 
terms of unusual world models.  While this quality, by itself, might 
enable her to make good commentaries and write fine essays, there must 
be something more to make her a good novelist: the ability to find an
expression for (instantiate) this world model in the medium of language.
   To abstract and then instantiate is but one way to make transformations
(analogies) between domains. 

Uttam Mukhopadhyay
GM Research Labs