Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the common idea of a creative individual coming up with great insights, discoveries, works, or inventions in isolation is wrong. Creativity results from a complex interaction between a person and his or her environment or culture, and also depends on timing. For instance, if the great Renaissance artists like Ghiberti or Michelangelo had been born only 50 years before they were, the culture of artistic patronage would not have been in place to fund or shape their great achievements. Consider also individual astronomers: Their discoveries could not have happened unless centuries of technological development of the telescope and evolving knowledge of the universe had come before them. Csikszentmihalyi’s point is that we should devote as much attention to the development of a domain as we do to the people working within it, as only this can properly explain how advances are made. Individuals are only “ a link in a chain, a phase in a process ,” he notes.
* patronage: 보호, 후원, 찬조