Do creative people have “messy minds”?

Scientific American Beautiful Minds blog “Creative People Are…”

This is an interesting little summary for someone like myself who teaches future creative professionals. Anecdotally, the “messy mind” idea makes a lot of sense: my students probably do worst when asked to regurgitate orthodox hierarchies of information. They do far better when asked to make connections between different things that they have learned, and between what they have learned and some facet of their outside world. Allowing students to make these connections can be a valuable approach to teaching ecology and evolution, but it can also invite students to trivialize the unique contributions of these fields.