Science v. Imagination

Liberal arts majors on campus, and in later life, too, often get a grating impression that physical science majors consider the choice of "hard" sciences an automatic proof of intellectual superiority. But is it? Definitely not in Britain, anyway, says Psychologist Liam Hudson of Cambridge University--not if the criterion is a capacity for imaginative thinking.

In the British magazine Nature, Hudson reports on results he got from tests based on the creativity theories of University of Chicago Psychologists Jacob W. Getzels and Philip W. Jackson (TIME, Oct. 31, 1960). They put forward the now respected idea that a high IQ is not a reliable sign of "giftedness." may simply indicate "convergent" thinking, or mental grey-flannelism. Truly creative children, they say, are "divergent" types who tend to find IQ tests boring, do not readily accept the "right" answer as the right one. Seeking a better gauge than IQ, the Chicago team devised various tests to spot divergents. Instead of asking students to pick "right" answers, the tests ask them to make up alternate endings for fables, write stories suggested by "stimulus" pictures, supply "as many different uses as you can" for everyday objects.

Psychologist Hudson gave Getzels-Jackson tests to 95 schoolboys, aged 15 to 17. To his own surprise, the top scores came from those specializing in history and English literature. The least creative, according to Hudson's findings: physical science students. Young scientists, says Hudson, "tend to be less intellectually flexible than young arts specialists, and more restricted emotionally."

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