You can make the case that all creative endeavors are about pushing against constraints. In the words of physicist Richard Feynman, “Creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.” Take the sonnet, whose tight formal restrictions—Follow this rhythm! Adhere to this length! Make sure these words rhyme! Okay… now express your love, lil’ Shakespeare!—don’t undercut the artistry but heighten it. Or look at sports. Humans strain to achieve goals (kick the ball in the net) while obeying rigid limitations (don’t use your hands). In the process, they create bicycle kicks and diving headers. If you ditch the rulebook, you lose the grace. Even the wacky, avant-garde, convention-defying arts—experimental film, expressionist painting, professional wrestling—draw their power from playing against the limitations of the chosen medium.
Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It’s the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity.
But mathematics takes this concept one step further. In math, we don’t just follow rules. We invent them. We tweak them. We propose a possible constraint, play out its logical consequences, and then, if that way leads to oblivion—or worse, to boredom—we seek a new and more fruitful path.
