Midst the flittering, there may be one or more good ideas that can lead us into the future. These ideas from our present situation can serve as “seeds” (or fertilizer) for creation of a new venture out of nothingness. Brainstorming provides us with the opportunity to upend our personal or collective globe so that everything is flittering around. The facilitators of the Synectic process (Gordon, 1961) go a step further. They propose that there is the seed of a good idea contained in any offering of an idea. One has only to spend a few minutes examining the proposed idea to find this seed.
Don Howard has something specifically to say about the holding of teddy bears and discovery of roses and seeds in our creation of something out of nothing. He is bringing in findings from scientific fields (Howard, 2025, p. 8):
“In many popular accounts of cosmology, we’re told that the universe arose from ‘nothing’—as if that were a tidy solution. But if you read closely, the nothing they describe is already loaded. It includes quantum fields, energy fluctuations, mathematical symmetries. In some versions, it’s a vacuum governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. In others, it’s a timeless equation from which space and time emerge. But in every case, there’s something there: a backdrop, a potential, a structure. Rules. Relations. Possibility.”
It seems that there are many ways in which we can bring something (being) out of nothingness. As Howard suggests, the world of nothingness is actually filled with many things and many forces. This world only awaits our access through processes such as paying attention to matters and strange attractors in our life, attending to symbols and dream content, acknowledging the value and messages conveyed by Teddy Bears, participating in brainstorming and Synectic processes, and simply appreciating the many ideas that flitter around our heads and hearts when engaging in a life transition.
From Being to Nothingness
We also should appreciate our capacity to move in the opposite direction. We can take something that exists in our world and deconstruct it to the point where nothing of this object or event seems still to be in existence. This deconstructive process is not a bad thing. Rather, it represents some of the most creative and insightful work that we do as scientists, artists, or critics.
Exoscopic Perspective vs. Intrascopic Perspective
At the heart of this deconstructive process is the distinction drawn between what I would call an Exoscopic and Intrascopic perspective.
Exoscopic perspective: this way of seeing the world represents a shift in viewpoint from outside (being) to inside. This shift involves construction of reality from a blank slate (nothingness) with perceptions arising from the external world that stimulate this construction. The Exoscopic perspective involves the Piagetian (Piaget, 2001) process of Assimilation. External stimuli are assimilated into existing cognitive structures and affective proclivities. Assimilation involves the deletion of anything new and different that is coming in from the outside (this deletion leaves the outside in a state of nothingness).
However, as I have noted throughout this essay, the nothingness of the pre-assimilated and pre-constructed external world has a powerful, if often unacknowledged, impact on the person assimilating the incoming information. For instance, in the preparation of an actor for a specific theatrical performance, attention often is drawn to the costume being worn by the actor and sets designed for this performance. Clothing produces character, and settings impact the way in which an actor enacts the script they are given. The nothingness (pre-processing) of the external world (represented by the costumes and sets) impinges on the “Being” of the actor’s performance.
