Novelty and Utility: how the arts may advance question creation in contemporary research

This paper builds on research around novelty and utility to argue that arts thinking should be applied to the generation of scientific questions. Arts thinking is often playful, less goal oriented, and can lead to new modes of questioning. Scientific thinking often solves a question that is already given, serves a purpose of solving the question, and must be predictable. The “problem of the problem” is that asking creative questions is the linchpin of the quality of research across the sciences, just as the best of art “does things” that make us move and feel moved; yet we posit that it is useful to consider that what each teaches and celebrates typically tends more toward either utility or novelty as an entry point. A new theoretical basis is presented in identifying questions primarily based on novelty rather than utility, and a catalogue of methods proposed for creating questions to employ in education, practice, and project planning.