The sense of control that is provided by the conscious effort to plan each step of a creative process in its relation to the already envisioned whole causes a loss of any chance at accidental brilliance. Ehrenzweig's ideal concerned the unconscious, low-level efforts by the mind that allowed for the utilization of "or-or" decision making. In other words, by allowing the mind to lose it's pinpoint focus and instead work on a project from multiple possible viewpoints, the attainment of a unique product is within one's grasp, and that is the essence of Ehrenzweig's creativity. One must allow for this imprecision in both planning and process, with decisions made as ideas arrive, in order to create the most creative product as possible. Only through this unconscious visualization can one successfully achieve their goal, for the conscious mind is not capable of such a multi-pronged thinking effort. However, once one does grasp the concept of simultaneously judging and weighing mutually exclusive choices in their work, then they have opened the door to a truly creative process.
From Galileo... to Galileo....
The utilization of this anti-Gestalt process is not limited to any single field. While the use in art forms is at once clear, the allowance for variation in scientific principles is less obvious. However, when one considers that equations and theories often allow for unknown constants or variables, the process becomes a constant refinishing done by multiple creative persons over a period of time, which would surely be appreciated by Ehrenzweig.
Much like the process that was undertaken to determine the structure of DNA, Ehrenzweig's unconscious scanning leads to remarkable breakthroughs. With more knowledge of the structure of our own minds, in the near future we hopefully will be able to gain a biological understanding of Ehrenzweig's quantitative postulations.
