Making new ideas: a theoretical proposal and a mixed methods demonstration

We extend Latour's (1987) distinction between "science already made" and "science in the making" to the realm of creativity. The "made" perspective emphasizes a linear, retrospective narrative, prioritizing pre-existing ideas, typically separating the creator from the created object. Conversely, the "in-the-making" perspective highlights the dynamic, iterative nature of creativity, emphasizing the active role of materials and tools in shaping the outcome. In this theoretical paper, we critically reflect on traditional laboratory-based research on insight problem solving, noting a preference for second-order procedures that restrict interaction with physical objects. We propose that a first-order insight problem solving procedure, which involves thinking with and through the world, is better positioned to capture the fundamental importance of physical prototyping in creative problem solving. We champion concurrent embedded mixed methods designs for insight problem-solving research where the qualitative data help us understand the process by which a new idea is constructed to complement quantitative measures of solution rates and latencies. We illustrate how a first order procedure can be instrumentalized to permit the granular capture of three data streams: (i) participants' verbalizations; (ii) participants' actions; and (iii) resulting changes to the physical model of the solution. We introduce creativity researchers to ELAN, a coding software that allows the exact temporal juxtaposition of these data streams, providing clear evidence for the role of prototyping in creative problem solving and revealing a phenomenon we call ‘outsight’. Using examples from various types of insight problems, we demonstrate how new ideas that unlock solutions are enacted.

Some time ago now, as the field of science and technology studies was taking shape, Latour (1987) alerted us to the dangers of confounding science already made with science in the making, using the faces of Janus speaking different prescriptions on epistemology (how we know things) and ontology (what the world is made of). Made science locks ontology (for the time being) revealed through certain epistemological practices that ‘guarantee’ access to the world and the stuff it is made of. Latour argues that received science promotes misleading hindsights for science in the making, however. In the messy atelier of science in the making, epistemological practices—our ways of investigating and knowing—are enacted rather than being rigidly prescribed a priori, confronted as they are by an uncertain and hence fluid ontology—an ever-changing understanding of what actually exists. The received science face of Janus forcefully proclaims the separation of epistemology and ontology, whereas the other, speaking on behalf of science in the making, offers a narrative that problematizes this separation as it witnesses how methods of knowing perform certain explanations of the world—how our research methods actually shape what we discover about reality.

Latour’s Janus can also be used to illustrate the narratives associated with art made and art in the making (March, 2023). Art made invites a story about its production in terms of ideas—an artist’s inner vision—implemented and realized with different objects, through different media; objects and media are secondary characters in this scenography, the passive substrate on which ideas are imprinted. This narrative enforces a strict distinction between the artist and the object qua artwork being instaured. Afterall, it is the artist who has beliefs and intentions, paint and clay do not. Once completed, the artist, gallerist, and art critic in equal measure, will promote a conceptual narrative, as if art was made by ideas rather than by hands, brushes, gesso primed canvases, clay and kiln. The Janus face that narrates art in the making offers a different story. It is not that artists are bereft of ideas, in fact they are typically disciplined diarists, curating the development of their ideas and artwork in written form and sketches. A close inspection of these stages of curation, however, reveals a dialogue with materials and the artwork as it is taking shape, and the countless micro-decisions that are guided in large part by the material, tools, and the artwork itself at a given stage of instauration (Latour, 2013). The humidity of the clay or its fibrous composition permit certain gestures (March & Glăveanu, 2023) that enact certain shapes; a large sculptural installation collapses and the artist must contemplate either external scaffolding (March & Malafouris, 2023) or a different inner structure (Vallée-Tourangeau, 2023) to solidify its core, which in turn influence how the artwork is taking shape and how it will eventually look. The art-in-the-making Janus is less certain about the separation between artist and artwork; there is a co-mingling here, a double process of becoming. The artist and the artwork co-evolve, their development co-determined. The artwork, still mute and without intentions or desires (of course), is nonetheless an actant in guiding the artist in transforming it along its different stages of becoming the finished artwork. Art in the making reveals an intimate conversation with materials; of course it is the artist who speaks on their behalf, but the object qua artwork is an active interlocutor, nonetheless. The art-made Janus is prone to hindsight narratives that champion ideas at inception, removing the unpredictability of a process unfolding in real time shaped by an equally unpredictable cast of many. These narratives are the balm that soothes the sting of contingency and promote the inevitability to an outcome. A better explanation for the production of the artwork is found in the dialogue with objects, not in terms of the immutable force of ideas against which reality yields passively.

Our paper is largely a theoretical one that champions mixed methods in the service of understanding how new ideas are enacted in the process of solving problems. The paper is structured in four parts. First, we introduce readers to insight problems and the benefits of employing these problems to study how people come up with new ideas in problem solving. Insight problems are designed to create an impasse, a problem-solving cul-de-sac, the resolution of which involves coming up with a new interpretation of the problem—a new idea—to unlock the solution. Psychologists are fond of speaking in terms of mental restructuring to explain the process by which a new interpretation is conjured up. We offer some critical reflections on the nature of such an explanation and the underwhelming progress made to develop and test it in the past 40 years (primarily as a result of a quantitative research strategy that can only circumstantially address how new ideas are created). In a second part, we argue that a much more fruitful research strategy involves employing mixed methods, particularly concurrent embedded designs, where qualitative data complement the quantitative data to elucidate the process by which a new idea is constructed. We review an influential study that employs such a design, namely Fleck and Weisberg (2013) to illustrate how well this methodology is suited for creative problem solving. Yet, the qualitative data analysis offered by Fleck and Weisberg is indifferent to the role of object in thinking something new. In a third section, we invite the reader to consider objects as a source of knowledge. We review a recent study (Vallée-Tourangeau, 2025) that employs a concurrent embedded mixed methods design, and a data analysis strategy that leverages the granularity of the coding platform ELAN to better register the agency of objects in shaping new ideas. The paper concludes with an illustration of how this qualitative analysis can be applied to a broader range of insight problems in the service of unveiling how solutions are discovered through interacting with objects.