Graham Wallas is one of the most renowned thinkers of the twentieth century as evident in his work Art of Thought. The work describes the creative process, in which creativity manifests and comes to completion. There are four stages of creativity according to his exposition. These are preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. The four stages are attributed to interplay of conscious and unconscious work. These phases work in linear manner (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

Preparation which is the first is involved in an inquisitive or rather investigative involvement with the problems in a dynamic approach that explores all possibilities to resolving a problem. As an individual readies one self to a mental process, one soils the ground for planting the seeds of thought. The individual accumulates a pool of intellectual resources from which to build new concept and ideas in resolving a problem. This stage is wholly conscious and involves partial planning, partial research and partial mental analysis in a frame of well coordinated thought processing attentively. An elite individual lets the learning process overwhelms him, voluntarily and habitually adapts the rules of investigation in successful exploration (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

Incubation, the second stage in Graham Wallas’ stages of creativity is ideally a period of unconscious processing that involves no direct effort made from the conscious mind. The problem at hand is synthesized from the intellectual ground built at the preparation level to a combinatory play that marks combination of divergent elements; these are negative facts and positive facts. In actual fact, the negative facts and the positive facts refer to accumulation of intellectual basis at the preparation period and the incubation period. The negative facts are formed at the preparation period that is, deficits in problem-solving that arise form the lack of conscious deliberation to tackle a distinct problem whereas the positive facts, are a series of subconscious or rather involuntary mental events which take place in the formation of the actual resolve to the problem at hand. There is an element of voluntary abstention from mindful thought on the problem at hand may it be in various forms or not. First, the period of abstention may involve conscious mental events on different problems or relaxation from mental work. The first form of incubation is less time consuming and definitely the better. It acts as a form of necessary distraction from the concentrated involvement of mental process in efforts of a workflow aimed at resolving a particular problem. This affirms that the problem-solving process is effective by induction of problems in succession and tackling them by use of distractions, which is starting to solve and deliberately keeping them on hold as we focus our attention on other problems rather than working them right away full time and resolving them at once (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

The third stage, which is illumination comes after incubation with a conscious effort that is welcome after all elements are gathered from preparation to incubation and combine as an entity ready to “click” hence offering a new formation of intellectual picture pertaining to the problem at hand. The new information is what steers us to a breakthrough hence fuels some kind of discovery. The culmination of this formation comes from the successful linkage of the elements that arise from a series of tentative trains of mental processing that last variable periods of time in a psychological dimension (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

Verification which is last stage in Graham Wallas’ four stages of creativity comes forth from a conscious deliberate effort. It offers a way of testing and ascertaining an idea and reducing it to an exact from extracted from ambiguity of the various elements resulting from the mental processes of prior stages. This stage is descriptive of the unconscious work which supplies results to a complex problem. It defines the deficit of a direct one way of problem resolving of arriving at a ready-made solution to resolve a problem. All there is in this stage is a basis from prior stages, that is preparation, incubation and illumination in order to obtain a profound, concrete perspective that lead to the result being sought. This process follows a guideline of discipline, will, attention and consistent conscious work. This happens in a systematic interplay of these four stages given that they do not work independently from each other, but in combination such that is a web of innumerable series of partial elements of creativity that are perpetually active altogether (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

The four stages of creativity work hand in hand with instances of overlapping to explore the problem at hand. For instance, the daily activities of reading news articles lead to accumulation of new information that and consequently build on incubation of a prior problem that one had prior to the new knowledge and serve as preparation to a second problem. In actual fact, during exploration of a problem as such, this serves as an elementary period of verifying further problem may be third in a problem-solving series. However, in the exploration of a problem the mind is subconsciously involved in the formation of one aspect of a problem in the incubation perspective whilst consciously exploring the solution to a current problem whether verifying or seeking illumination on it. Thinking is an art of exploring various aspects of concern in different fields either in solving a problem or arriving at a creative achievement such as creating a poem, a song or weighing an inspiration to cultivate a composition from it. The success of such creative attempts depends on the application of the four stages of creation by producing a blend from combination of their consequent results ad not the prescription of solutions to them (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

As a dedicated doctor in the medical practice, he finds himself overwhelmed by a major medical problem he had not encountered in there before as a physician.  He first works extensively with survivors of the epidemics enhancing their survival until he discovers the stimuli that are possibly the closest to a solution in attempts of curing them. The catatonic patients get cognitive of the stimuli and experience senses of touch and hearing. This gives him light or rather illumination of the medical problem at hand. Thereafter, he seeks and gets approval to try the possible cure on his patients. Thus, from the film awakening, it is clear that he employed the four stages of creativity that is preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. His first experience with the patients prepares him as he explores the problem by supporting their survival hence gathering information about the catatonic infection. Second, he uses the information he has gathered from caring from the patients to investigate a probable stimuli which they can respond to. Afterwards, he uses this knowledge to test which is influenced by the illumination he gets from learning the effect of the stimuli on the catatonic patients. The testing stage actually serves to verify his discovery that is from the first instances of the patients who get awakened. He verifies his knowledge by attempting to cure more patients and sustaining their awakening hence he learns of the defects of the cure because it does not cure the catatonic illness permanently (Maria, “The Art of Thought”).

The creative process is traditionally an overlooked element of our daily lives yet we tend to be jumpy about solving problems all at once. In most cases we do not approach life problems may they be social or academic in a systematic way as per the four stages. It is unrealistic to solve a problem without a preparation of the desired result and disastrous since it is problematic to arrive at a conclusion without a background and a preliminary of it thereof. The creative process that informs our creativity requires a form of incubation to build new knowledge, find evidence and supporting evidence. This is the time during which churn around threshold of perception. Our intention to solve problems comes from the linear processing of information that demands a logical application of ideas and knowledge. It is from such a perspective that we arrive at a glimpse of a conclusion that gives us a concrete result to evaluate and measure its effectiveness on the problem at hand (Maria, “The art of Thought”).