Oliver Sacks, the acclaimed author of "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat," spoke to an enthusiastic crowd in Moore Theater Wednesday.
The speech, entitled "Creativity and the Brain," was sponsored by the Montgomery Endowment.
"There are innumerable sorts of creativity," Sacks said as he listed perceptual, natural, individual and communal creativity, along with "creative driving" and "creative cooking," as examples.
Sacks emphasized that creativity provides inspiration to all people.
"Creativity is universal," Sacks said. "We all dream, and in dreams we have fantastic adventures unrestrained by reality."
Sacks said learning in general is essential to the formation of creativity. Experiences must be "digested" and internalized before they can be used effectively, but once a creative seed is planted virtuosity and genius can bloom.
Sacks listed a number of individuals whom he believes embodied creative genius, including the German composer Richard Wagner, the poet Alexander Pope, Alfred Hitchcock and Mozart, all of whom demonstrated virtuosity in their respective fields because of their unique originality.
But creativity, Sacks said, is not the sole determinant of success.
"It takes all sorts of things, including courage and good luck, to take that move from talented and original to virtuosity," Sacks said.
On this note, Sacks began to speak about creativity in patients with neurological diseases. Patients with autism or Tourette's syndrome can posses vast creativity but sometimes lack the knowledge of how to express it.
"Some essential qualities of creativity, including motivation, are not there," Sacks said.
Sacks continued that creativity can manifest itself in more than one way. He described that he himself was not a genius in the laboratory. After a disastrous internship in a New York laboratory, Sacks said he realized that he flourished with patients rather than with research.
While Sacks highlighted the importance of individual inspiration, he also emphasized the importance of originality in a broader context.
Society, Sacks said, can do much to oppress individual creativity. Noted authors Herman Melville and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were both restrained from achieving their potentials because the public found their best works "intolerable."
"Genius breaks existing conventions," Sacks said.
Sacks emphasized the importance of creativity to society.
"Creativity is the most precious commodity there is," he said.
Those unable to get into Moore Theater were able to watch on a big screen in Dartmouth Hall, which was so full that interested students and community members had to sit on the floor.
