He described The Act of Creation in the arts and humor as "
bisociation" and the "collision of matrices." His concept of matrix is compatible with the behavioral definition of concept (Sections 2.1 - 2.4), and he defined
bisociation as "synthesis, collision, amalgamation, integration, blending, or juxtaposition of matrices." Fauconnier and Turner (2008) developed Koestler's work into a cognitive theory of "conceptual blending.
For Koestler, these moments of cognitive "
bisociation" can lead, as well, to a person's transcending life's trivial plane to enter the tragic or historic realm of existence and ethical obligation.
"
Bisociation, Discovery and the Role of Entrepreneurial Action." In Strategic Entrepreneurship: Creating a New Mindset.
Arthur Koestler's (1989) theory of '
bisociation' suggests humour is a creative process that allows a person to mentally hold two seemingly incompatible ideas at once, which links to Malecka's (2011), idea that humour and 'the multi-sidedness of its approaches to given phenomena, or, to be more precise, their complex and ambivalent perception, allows for more comprehensive outlook on things.' (p 499).
(18) Arthur Koestler termed this "
bisociation." Albert Rothenberg, The Creative Process in Art, Science, and Other Fields (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 12 [Anzaldtia's note],
They build on the ideas of simultaneous loose and tight elements in management and
bisociation in creativity to present a holistic approach to management and creativity that views both as needing oppositional elements ascribed to the other and creative management as management that develops or promotes ideas and other products or services that are new and value-adding over time.
"Yes, it's a study in what author Arthur Koestler calls '
bisociation' -- putting unrelated things together [in a way] to create a connection," Antonini explains.
Koestler's idea of
bisociation characterized entrepreneurial activity rather well, but it was largely ignored in the scientific community, and his own examples did not come from business (Ko & Butler, 2007).
Incongruity theories of humor bear a remarkable similarity, in concept, to Arthur Koestler's mechanism of "
bisociation," a process by which scientists, writers, and artists combine unrelated objects, characters, or ideas to generate new and perhaps valuable syntheses.
Similarly, Arthur Koestler (1964) coined the term
bisociation to describe the process that brings together and combines seemingly unrelated ideas unlike the logic of everyday thinking.