Nobel Prize winners, Charles Darwin relations and world famous novelists

I had the good fortune to be able to attend the panel debate on Creative Energy: what drives writers and scientists which was a joint event between the Medical Research Council and PEN (www.englishpen.org) held at the Royal Geographic Society in London.

The speakers were
- Ruth Padel, poet, chair of the UK Poetry Society and great great granddaughter of none other than Charles Darwin.
- Sir Aaron Klug, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Nobel Prize winner
- Dr Sheena McCormack, HIV researcher at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit
- Ian McEwan, who has written many fabulous books, including Atonement and On Chesil Beach

They were all very interesting and entertaining people, each one of whom could have entertained the whole room for some hours on their own.

Sir Aaron defined creativity as both a flash of imagination as well as being assembled over long periods of separate studies. He stated that it is more important for an idea to be fruitful than true. Science has progressed through people going down wrong tracks, and there isn’t always a direct route to the solution.

Ruth Padel compared poetry to experimenting, and both use metaphors. Creativity is a process of recognition and realisation and goes forward in stages. The metaphor is crucial in both science and in writing. Creativity also relies on being able to bear muddle and mess and cope with the knowledge that there are a lot of details. Ruth herself said that she can only work in a “creative muddle” – she has to have lots of things around her and goes through a process of gathering things until she starts creative. She also thought there is an element of paring away in creativity as well.

Dr Sheena McCormack is involved in HIV prevention work, talked about how she always wanted to be a doctor. She attributed this to coming from a family of doctors and seeing how much they enjoyed their roles. She also discussed creativity from a team perspective, and how it is an organic process where people must have “can do” attitudes. She also discussed the things that cramp creativity, especially the paperwork involved in science proving that you did a good job! As to there being one truth, Dr McCormack stated that the important thing she has learnt is to make the message right for that person and that there is not one truth for everyone, its all about perception (lovely postmodernism themes coming through here, reminding me of my Massey studies!!).

Ian McEwan was a very entertaining speaker as well. He talked about the commonalities between the two different domains of science and art. Imagination is the obvious one but then said that if you look at similarities, you are forced into generalities. Creativity needs persistence, tolerance, drudgery, luck, playfulness, ambition and ruthlessness.

“To float in a determined stupor is crucial” for both scientists and artists.

He also talked about scientists going into “novelists domains” citing an example of a lecture he recently attended where a neuroscientist talked about Revenge. Scientists are increasingly experimenting in emotions, and emotions are no longer the reserve of poets and novelists.

As to the eternal question of how you get to being creative, he said there is no one answer but that creativity does become a habit and once you have been doing it for a while, it just becomes “what you do.”

Vanity is also a common trait between artists and scientists. There’s passion around precedence and status anxiety for both of them.

There were lots of questions and comments from the floor. One of my favourite responses was Ian McEwan’s when asked about the responsibilities artists have. “Listing your responsibilities is like knitting a rope to hang yourself” but then he went on to say that novelists are responsible for coherence.

The only issue with these sorts of events is that there is so much material covered in so short a time and while it did last well over two hours, it was very much “once over lightly.” Still, I felt very privileged to have the opportunity to attend.