thinking creatively about creative thinking

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J. Socid Bid. S~ucf. 1988 II, 165-175 Thinking Creatively About Creative Thinking C. Scott Findlay* and Charles J. Lumsden** *Departments of Zoology and Medicine University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S IA8 **Department of Medicine Room 7313, Medical Sciences Building University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario Canada A45S IA8 Introduction Investigators from all walks of life share a common interest in creativity. While each discipline brings a different orientation to the problem, all recognize the fundamental importance of creative activity to the human condition. As’Ibmer aptly points out, it is the making of the world, or, better still, worlds. Yet being true “informavores” we are not content merely to describe this world construction. In addition, we seek understanding: from conception to blueprint through model to (perhaps yet unfinished) theoretical structure. Consequently one is tempted to seek a theory (or better still a set of competing theories) by which such knowledge potentially can be acquired. It is to this end that the target article is devoted. In what follows we will be concerned chiefly with several themes that run through the various commentaries. Many important issues were raised, but the limitations on space(regrettably) and the forebearance of readers (understandably) have obliged us to restrict our comments to a few major points. We should also say that despite the inevitable differences of opinion and perspective, all commentators have made constructive and salient contributions to the debate. We suspect that this is due in no small part to an almost universal feeling that the creative process may well be a key to the mind’s hidden secrets. Formal Theories and the Creative Mind A number of commentators raised issuesrelated to the status of any prospective theory of the creative mind. Rosen suggeststhat such a theory, if constructed according to currently accepted cannons of causality, will be at best insufficient, at worst inappropriate. Rose views the creative mind as perhaps an “ineluctable problem facing efforts to develop a mathematical theory for human behavior.” Gardner, Stemberg, and D.S. Wilson are concerned less with such metatheoretical issues and more with the nuts and bolts of the approach we outline, raising important questions about falsifiability, specificity, empirical validity and implications for testing and instruction. firmer intimates that even if the approach we advocate is successful, it may nonetheless prove unsatisfying because the results will simply endorse what common sense has already indicated must be true. 014(r1750/88/0l0165+11 %03.00/O 0 1988 Academic Press Limited

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Page 1: Thinking creatively about creative thinking

J. Socid Bid. S~ucf. 1988 II, 165-175

Thinking Creatively About Creative Thinking C. Scott Findlay* and Charles J. Lumsden**

*Departments of Zoology and Medicine University of Toronto

Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S IA8

**Department of Medicine Room 7313, Medical Sciences Building

University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario Canada A45S IA8

Introduction Investigators from all walks of life share a common interest in creativity. While each discipline brings a different orientation to the problem, all recognize the fundamental importance of creative activity to the human condition. As’Ibmer aptly points out, it is the making of the world, or, better still, worlds. Yet being true “informavores” we are not content merely to describe this world construction. In addition, we seek understanding: from conception to blueprint through model to (perhaps yet unfinished) theoretical structure. Consequently one is tempted to seek a theory (or better still a set of competing theories) by which such knowledge potentially can be acquired. It is to this end that the target article is devoted.

In what follows we will be concerned chiefly with several themes that run through the various commentaries. Many important issues were raised, but the limitations on space (regrettably) and the forebearance of readers (understandably) have obliged us to restrict our comments to a few major points. We should also say that despite the inevitable differences of opinion and perspective, all commentators have made constructive and salient contributions to the debate. We suspect that this is due in no small part to an almost universal feeling that the creative process may well be a key to the mind’s hidden secrets.

Formal Theories and the Creative Mind A number of commentators raised issues related to the status of any prospective theory of the creative mind. Rosen suggests that such a theory, if constructed according to currently accepted cannons of causality, will be at best insufficient, at worst inappropriate. Rose views the creative mind as perhaps an “ineluctable problem facing efforts to develop a mathematical theory for human behavior.” Gardner, Stemberg, and D.S. Wilson are concerned less with such metatheoretical issues and more with the nuts and bolts of the approach we outline, raising important questions about falsifiability, specificity, empirical validity and implications for testing and instruction. firmer intimates that even if the approach we advocate is successful, it may nonetheless prove unsatisfying because the results will simply endorse what common sense has already indicated must be true.

014(r1750/88/0l0165+11 %03.00/O 0 1988 Academic Press Limited

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These points seem to us of central interest. Rosen is quite right to suggest that the construction of a useful theory of the creative mind will require more than conventional notions of physical causality. If the creative process is indeed goal-directed with heterarchical (or in West and Salk’s terms, “distributed”) functional organization, explanation will necessarily take the form of what Hofstadter (1979) has termed “strange loops”, with “causes” having the capacity to act recursively and perhaps even retroactively. The last half century has witnessed a systematic attempt by the physical sciences to purge any remnants of teleology from scientific explanation (see, for example, Barrow and Tipler, 1986), with, we might add, evolutionary biology leading the crusade. Although one might perhaps make the case that notions such as anticipation are not desirable in explanations of most things physicists deal with, we share with Rosen the conviction that they are desirable - perhaps even necessary - in theories of mind. We would suggest, however, that because a productive formal notion of “consciousness” is still lacking, the creative process may be a somewhat betterjumping-off point for a program that aspires to transcend the boundaries of traditional theory construction. We also note that the capacity of Rosen’s “anticipatory” method to solve such problems remains to be established.

Rose correctly points out that formal theories which rewrite themselves may not be amenable to conventional mathematical methods. This, of course, is part of the fun. The superspace framework is a step in a right direction, but still unsatisfying because without something like rewriting, the set of all possible innovations arising in a cultural history must be specified from the outset. We feel that a deep characterization of the creative process may well require new -and as yet undeveloped - mathematics. Indeed, it is exactly problems of this richly challenging nature that we would expect to stimulate interest on the part of mathematicians. The demonstration that there is a viable market out there will, we hope, help get the ball rolling.

To our minds then, any theory of creativity will necessarily be “strange”. Because of the fundamentally heterarchical structure of its subject matter, it may well incorporate “strange” notions of causality that extend beyond conventional wisdom. In all likelihood it will require “strange” mathematical characterizations, perhaps in the form of axioms and notations that rewrite themselves. This strangeness is a challenge but not an obstacle. It is not a revelling in complexity (D.S. Wilson) but a meeting of hard issues straight on: as Rosen points out, there is a tendency to shy away and revert to the conventional, however unproductive. We wish to suggest that the creative mind must be met with new conventions.

Several commentators showed that our intent in the target article runs on various levels: it is part metatheory, developing criteria according to which theories can be judged useful or not; part theory, specifying structures that begin to satisfy these criteria; and part modeling, in which theoretical tenets are applied to specific problems such as the relation between creative potential and social heterogeneity. Within a substantive metatheory it appears possible to develop specific evolutionary theories about the creative mind and indicate the sorts ofphenomena such theories should address. Like Fagen and Marshack, we see as crucial the question of interspecific and phylogenetic variation in creative potential and innovation. With Hodder and Marshack we noted that theory should provide insight into the workings of human cultural evolution, predicting for example the sociocultural conditions under which innovations are most likely to occur, and how they are transmitted. At the cognitive level, it should be able to generate predictions about individual intellectual development (Bomstein, Case, Gardner), including the waxing and waning of creative thought over the course of a lifetime (Simonton) and the determinants of variation among individuals (Rushton). In particular, it should consider specific developmental mechanisms, refining and extending the important preliminary taxonomies that organize creative development into broad general categories (e.g. Bomstein). It should provide some insight into the cognitive mechanisms involved in creative thought (Martindale, Simonton, Rothenberg) and creative output (Striven, Hausman). And it should address the potentially

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noncognitive aspects of the creative process, including the relationship between various personality traits and creativity (Amabile and Cheek; Rushton) and the role oftbe unconscious or subconscious (Harris).

It is our belief that such phenomena can be considered within the approach outlined in the target article. Unlike many workers in artificial intelligence and symbolic anthropology (and apparently at least one in evolutionary biology - see D.S. Wilson), we are persuaded that understanding the creative mind will involve biology in a fundamental way - but emphatically not one that reduces all phenomena to the purely physical. The issue is not whether brain functions sustain an emergent level of symbolic dynamics (although we have little sympathy for “strong skimmability”), but the converse: given what is known about human thought, how can the phenomenon exist in real brains? No single level of description (be it physical, syntactical or symbolic) is likely to provide all the clues. This being the case, new vocabularies for holism and emergence may be helpful, with “heterarchy” and the like used in a positive, clarifying manner, rather than negatively (Amheim). Our suggested answer involves not only a “reading forward” from genetic information to the cognitive phenotype and thence to the products of the creative mind, but also a “reading back” from the sociocultural environment (construed as a set of creative products) to the genome (Maxwell). This collection of readings constitutes the gene- culture coevolutionary circuit, in which the driving forces of biological and cultural evolution are linked through gene-culture transmission.

An obvious question is what we consider legitimate criteria for discarding the tendered approach in favor of some alternative. Again, these criteria subsume metatheoretic, theoretic and modeling considerations. In the target article we outline what a theory of discovery and innovation should look like. However, it is entirely possible that these criteria are neither necessary nor sufficient. For example, it might turn out that a potent theory of innovation can be derived without recourse to the cognitive features of the creative process. Similarly, it is possible that any theory satisfying our criteria may prove logically inconsistent, formally non- constructable, or both. Any of these situations would pose serious -indeed insurmountable - problems to our approach.

At the theoretical level we make a number ofspecific assertions, the most important being that the evolution of the creative process and the creative mind is a fundamentally heterarchical activity of the gene-culture circuit. If this is not the case - if, for example, the creative mind is a truly emergent entity explanatorily divorced from its biological instantiation, or if the structure of the system turns out to be purely hierarchical -the theory is wrong. We are also in trouble if creativity turns out not to be an activity sustained by gene-culture transmission, as would, for example, be the case if none of the variation in creative development and abilities among individuals were attributable to genetic factors. And we are in trouble if the evolution of the creative mind is not at least a superspace dynamic, i.e., can be modeled as a smooth, continuous transformation proceeding independently of changes in the sociocultural environment and biological structure.

Finally, we have proposed and exemplified specific applications of our approach, such as the semantic network and neuronal group models. It is important to note that the theory’s central postulates do not stand or fall on the validity of these models, since the models generally must incorporate axioms ancillary to the metatheoretic and theoretic principles summarized above. For example, although substantial data do favor the neuronal group hypothesis (Finkel and references therein), neuroscience is rich with alternative mechanisms that might provide competing theoretical models. The same can be said for cognitive psychology and semantic networks. These models do generate specific relevant predictions such as a positive correlation between the entropy of a semantic network and the individual’s creative potential, and between creativity and cultural heterogeneity, all of which are subject to empirical testing. For model-

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generated predictions to be clear tests of key theoretical propositions, there must in addition be rejection criteria that show how model behavior is related to truth value of the propositions. One can then begin to unpack the effects of these propositions from the consequences of ancillary assumptions.

In constructing our approach we deliberately excluded some rather deeply entrenched sociobiological principles, and in so doing elicited dismay on the part of one commentator (although the expected enthusiasm on the part ofschubert was, alas, not forthcoming). Lopreato digs deep in the hopes of uncovering the classical evolutionary principles of behavioral optimization and fitness maximization - all in vain. The reason is simple: there is growing evidence that such principles may be entirely inappropriate for gene-culture systems due to the consequences of the interaction between biological and cultural evolution (Lumsden and Wilson, 1981; Boyd and Richerson, 1985). In biocultural systems, behaviors that are maladaptive (in the sense of conferring reduced fitness) may nonetheless attain high frequencies in populations even if genetic information exerts some influence on the adaptation process, in part because of frequency-dependent effects (Lumsden and Wilson, 1981) and the vastly different time scales over which biological and cultural evolution often proceed (see e.g. Geertz, 1973). So it is not the case that “behavior must constitute a net adaptive advantage to appear and persist”. Principles of optimization may well apply, but until we ascertain what (if anything) is being optimized and how, it is inappropriate to construct an approach based on such tenets.

Classical sociobiology has, in the past, been justifiably subjected to criticism concerning its strict adherence to the adaptionist program and the so-called Panglossian paradigm of the “just-so” story (e.g. Gould and Lewontin, 1979). Marshack objects to our reluctance to address such issues as the species-specific nature of creativity and discovery and the evolution of the human creative capacity. In our essay we deliberately confine ourselves to aspects of the creative process for which there is (in our view) enough cognitive science, social psychology, cultural anthropological or neurobiological data to warrant a start on theory construction in the first place. It may very well be that the shift to bipedalism saw a concurrent increase in the complexity of the “phenomenological reality” that had to be handled (through creative problem solving) by our evolving ancestors. And perhaps it was these novel selection pressures that led to a new “adaptive realm”, in which only those with an advanced two-handed problem-solving capacity could survive. But who’s to say? In the absence of a robust general evolutionary theory of creativity there is nothing to recommend this reconstruction over any competing alternative. De Kerckhove shows a similar tendency in his essay on language and the creative process: a correlation between rates of innovation and degree of alphabetization is not of itself sufficient to demonstrate a causal link or “adaptive” connection between the two. Similar caveats apply to over-ready functional explanations wherever they crop up: students of human culture and history (e.g. Amhelm) are, it seems, just as susceptible as the most enthusiastic sociobiologist. Adaptationist stories are the kind of “models” we currently need least in this area. We cannot see the creative capacities of early hominids in action; we must infer them from the products left behind. Such inference requires strong new theories of the creative mind and its population biology. If one can construct such theories by reference to contemporary human behavior, and then carefully combine them with the database of cultural anthropology and paleoarchaeology, we maximize the chances of producing reconstructions that are both testable and meaningful. As an added bonus, we keep the story-telling to a minimum.

Wherefore Mutation? A number of commentators (Blute, D.S. Wilson, Hausman) looked askance at our dismissal of the mutation concept, leading us to suspect that there was some confusion over which mutation concept was being rejected. The mutation concept we had in mind was that implicit to many

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formal models in population biology. There, a mutation per se is considered a purely stochastic event whose appearance is independent of the current state of the system, and enters into the (dynamical) picture solely as an extrinsic parameter. Now according to the heterarchical approach we advocate, creativity, discovery and innovation are emphatically not independent of the (genetic, epigenetic, phenotypic and sociocultural) state of the system. Striven, for example, correctly argues that evaluation is a critical part of the creative process, with the required information accessed largely through the sociocultural environment. On these grounds then, it is reasonable to reject the concept of mutation qua population biology as a good metaphor for innovation.

This is not to say that some of the structural characteristics of mutation at the genomic level are notuseful analogies to elements of the creative process. In discussing the linking hypothesis (see also Mac Cormac, Martindale, and Simonton) we suggest that creative potential in a particular domain is maximized when the entropy of the associated semantic network is at a maximum. This occurs when all links have equal strength, or equivalently when spread of activation is expected to result in an apparently random distribution of node activations. Thus, as Blute notes, relinking is reminiscent of recurrent mutation in that both nodes and links can be added or deleted, producing subgraphs of different topologies.

Our dismissal of the mutation concept also does not imply that innovation cannot be acted upon by various selective forces just as natural selection acts on mutation. D.S. Wilson, Simonton and Martindale suggest that insofar as cultural tradition functions as a homeostatic mechanism, selection (both biological and cultural) should tend to decrease rates of innovation in much the same manner as natural selection will, under certain circumstances, tend to reduce mutation rates. Note, however, that in this context mutation rate (but not mutation) is regarded as an intrinsic variable, not an extrinsic parameter. One also notes that the time-honored view of homeostasis as necessarily adaptive has recently been called into question (e.g. Orzack, 1985, p. 570). This characteristic of the innovation process might legitimately be treated as a mutation analogue, but in a sense different from ours.

The Radical and the Mundane A number of commentators (e.g. Hodder, Rothenberg, Hausman) are concerned in one way or another with the difference between what Hodder refers to as “tinkering” and “reconstructing” creativity, or “weak” and “strong” novelty (Hausman), or “change and difference” versus “newness and creation” (Rothenberg). Inevitably, these commentators do not agree among themselves what the problem is. Hausman argues that our “emergent” perspective implies a commitment to “strong” novelty, i.e. a creative process whose outcomes make sense independently of their antecedents. On the other hand both Hodder andRothenberg suggest that the linking thesis is not of itself sufficient to generate radical novelty because of its apparently additive properties. For similar reasons Rothenberg argues that neuronal group theory is unlikely to be of much use in understanding the neurophysiological foundations of creative thought.

An obvious problem in the evaluation of such comments involves the definition of terms like “de nova”, “radical”, “mundane” and “tinkering”. Rothenberg suggests that true creations are both “new” and “valuable”. Hausman argues that strong novelty implies “unpredictable intel- ligibility”, while Hodder submits that some creations derive from “radical restructuring based on imaginative leaps”. In some respects these definitions pose more problems than they solve: “new” and “unpredictability intelligible” to whom and as judged by what? A radical restructuring of what? How are “newness” and “radicalness” measured? Yet despite these problems there do appear to be several common themes, namely, that there are “radical” discoveries qualitatively different or “disconnected” from their antecedents, and moreover that assessment of this difference derives from an evaluational metric of sociocultural origin. In other

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words, every so often the creative process comes up with something whose sociocultural consequences are far-reaching. These somewhat ‘vague characterizations can be made more concrete by noting that “radical” creations typically lay seige to an existing convention. These events mark a shift in scientific paradigms (e.g. Kuhn, 1962). in artistic schemata (e.g. Gombrich, 1960), or in style (e.g. Goodman, 1984), and it is partly by virtue of their unconventionality that they are judged “qualitatively” different or “disconnected”. By contrast, “mundane” creative works are novel but stay within current conventions. ’ Clearly, unconventionality is not a sufficient condition for a creation to qualify as radical. The news must spread, and the work legitimated by recognition, critique and possibly adoption. In this crucial transition the role of power groups may be especially important. Of course, legitimation need not imply acceptance: the likes of Dante Rossetti and Philip Hamerton heaped invective on the early Impressionists, while Einstein steadfastly refused to acknowledge quantum theory. But it is the recognition itself that legitimizes the creation as a new work of specific pedigree, with supreme disinterest sounding the death knell. Indeed, it is tempting to quantify both the “radicalness” of the creation and its potential merit by the volume of the ensuing debate.

If we accept such characterizations of radical versus mundane creations, an obvious question is whether there are underlying radical and mundane creative processes. Hodder and Rothenberg intimate there are, insofar as both suggest that our semantic network model is insufficient to generate radical creations. The error in their arguments is the implicit view that the functional characteristics of networks are isomorphic with their relational (structural) features. Forming a new link may perhaps be considered an “additive” process (at least metaphorically) at the structural level insofar as the resulting graph is decomposable. But functionally the highly nonlinear nature of propositional networks implies that even minor “additive” changes may induce large changes in meaning, significance and so on. For example, vertical chunking (see Simon, 1974) is a process of semantic reorganization that appears to occur only after some critical density of propositional links among the to-be-chunked objects has been attained.

The same principle applies to the neuronal group model. To take Rothenberg’s telephone example, consider two towns A and B, each with their own local network but disconnected from each other. The medical establishment in A comprises entirely faith-healers, that of B entirely M.D.%. Addition of a new user from A to the A network or from B to the B network is not likely to produce any qualitative change in the information transmitted over either. But suppose the telephone company decides to lay a cable between A and B. Now we have a potential qualitative change in the information transmitted, and what subsequently transpires in each town. Townspeople in A now have access to the medical affairs of B and vice versa, and thereby enjoy the opportunity of reworking their health-care systems given input from the folks down (or up) the line. Granted the structural features of the new system can be decomposed into A, B and the A-B link. But the functional characteristics of the system have changed radically.

At present there are insufficient data to judge whether or not radical and mundane creations reflect different creative processes. It is tempting to ascribe the difference solely to rules for assessing merit, rules operating independently of the mental process underlying the creation. However, there may also be characteristics of semantic networks that render unconventional creations more or less likely. If for example node-link structures embodying information about conventions have a low semantic entropy and, by virtue of their high connectivity to other portions of the network, enjoy a large degree of semantic dominance, then creative acts might be expected to occur within established conventions. On the other hand a high entropy and low semantic dominance increases the probability of “unconventional” links being established. For this to occur, conventions need not be encoded explicitly or set in form of recallable declarative knowledge in the network. The creative worker need not be consciously aware of the conventional content, or able to talk about it. It is sufficient for the conventions to be there in

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implicit or procedural form, subject to the relinking events that also affect what is done within the conventions. These are the sorts of questions that theories of the creative mind are expected to address.

The ‘llvo Cultures Revisited A question of considerable importance is the extent to which the creative process differs between art and science. Judging from the remarks of our commentators, this concern is widely shared. In the target article we indicate several lines of enquiry that might prove useful in bringing the problem to solution. We suggest that it may be possible to distinguish among creative products along such dimensions as the principal motivating factors (e.g. solution-generation or problem- generation), the nature of the symbol domain (e.g. dense versus nondense), and whether or not the products engender the qualities of additivity or emergence. The point of this exercise is twofold: first, to suggest that it is - at least in principle - possible to construct a framework in which creative activity involving different symbol systems (including those relevant to the arts and the sciences) can be compared; and second, to suggest that although there are dimensions along which the two may well diverge, there are also dimensions along which a certain degree of convergence is indicated. There may be, for example, no a priori reason (except perhaps that of superficial resemblance) for believing that the creative process(es) involved in, say, music and architecture, share any greater (or less, for that matter) common ground than those pertaining to music and mathematics, or painting and physics.

A number of commentators seized on these themes with differing degrees of enthusiasm. Hodder suggests that while we do acknowledge the importance of problem-generation, most of the discussion involves the problem solving view of creativity. In developing his theme of strong versus weak novelty, Hausman suggests that creativity in science involves the generation of synthetic symbols, whereas the foundations of artistic creativity are anchored in integrative symbols. Mac Cormac suggests that the key may lie in the interaction between metasemantic noncomputational control processes of mental imaging and sound, and more conventional computational subroutines. Rothenberg echoes the sentiments of Hodder, suggesting not only that we concentrate largely on problem solving, but also that it may not be possible to understand the creative process on the basis of creative products.

Our concept of problem solving is rather different from standard convention. In our view the distinction between problem solution and problem formulation lies in whether or not one begins with a measure of appropriateness which can be used to assess progress toward a goal. (Note that in making this distinction we restrict our discussion to creative processes that are at some level goal-oriented). Thus, composing a woodwind quartet, rendering a watercolor and arriving at a mathematical theorem or a cosmological theory are to us all instances of problem solving. Moreover, problem solution and problem formulation are likely to share many common elements; for example, goal formation, relinking and evaluation as well as the nuances of reverie and dreams (Harris).

Both problem solution and problem formulation can take place in dense and nondense symbol systems. The node-link structure of semantic networks may be best suited to syntactically nondense symbol systems. For dense symbol systems the analogue may be some kind of gradient field, in which the field itself serves as a (dense) set of links, and nodes are identified as attracting regions. At this stage the extent to which one can approximate semantic dynamics in dense systems by means of a discrete node-link model is unclear. However, unless there is a correlation between the density of a symbol system and the symbolic density of the operations over the system, any intrinsic restrictions may apply only to the type of symbol systems that can be

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accommodated, and not necessarily to the creative processes operating on the system. Arnheim makes the mistake of inferring that by our distinctions art/science and dense/-

nondense we are favoring the association of art with dense and science with nondense. Not so. As our final section indicates, we suspect that each type of symbol system is likely to be crucial for understanding both art and science, but that the central issue encompasses far more than what happens in some positivistic world of subject-free objects. We suggest that mental operations involving dense and nondense symbols will figure prominently in the creative process wherever it bccurs. Furthermore, we note here that appealing to feature detectors and categories does not automatically restrict one to nondense systems. For example, categories can overlap to form fuzzy continua and features can feed forward into operations (mental imagery?) sustained by dense symbols.

Several commentators including Mac Cormac, Amabile and Cheek, and Rushton have drawn attention to our neglect of the roles played by the qualia and styles of personal being, including personality, the emotions and mental imaging. Our suspicion is that creativity in the arts and science will be found to converge strongly along these dimensions. Rushton and Amabile and Cheek cite a number of personality traits, including shyness, social independence, self-sufficiency and the need for achievement, which Rushton suggests characterize the successful research scientist. Interestingly, biographies of successful and creative artists reveal similarities in many of these personality characteristics. Mental imaging and dreaming form another important component of creativity in both the arts and science (Harris). Moreover, recent work (see e.g. Finke, 1986; Pinker, 1986) suggests that perception and visual imagery share neural mechanisms in the human visual system, so that - at least in principle - imagery may well facilitate the perceptual processes these mechanisms support. Irrespective of how cognitively penetrable perception is, such data help put the creative process on biological bedrock and lend direct support to our approach.

Rothenberg’s point concerning product and process is well-taken. Convergence or divergence of products along any given dimension need not imply a similar convergence (or divergence) of the processes involved in the generation of the products. This is particularly true of artistic and scientific products, insofar as their apparent differences might lead us to suspect even greater differences in the underlying processes. However, much of our discussion dealt with both creative processes and their products, e.g. computational versus noncomputational, additive versus non-additive, and the like. Our principal interest is in comparison, not just in measurements of differences. The latter may proceed given a comparative framework but make little sense without it. Our discussion encourages us to suggest that such frameworks can be achieved and applied to help coordinate findings from across this diverse field. We also note that identification of the relationship between product and process is of critical importance to such fields as archaeology and evolutionary reconstruction, since here the available data base contains almost exclusively creative products.

Assessing and Improving Creative Performance Sternberg correctly notes that the target article contains little in the way of recommendations for the assessment and improvement of creative performance. At the present time such proposals would be premature. We should point out, however, that from an assessment and educational perspective the major element of our essay (though just one component of several suggested by the overall approach) is that of creative potential. This entity (equation 2 in the target article), its measurement and its response to the environment may directly address Sternberg’s concerns. We define this concept quantitatively, in terms of the entropy of the semantic network. If we and others such as Martindale and Simonton are on the right track, measuring individual creative

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potential amounts, at least in part, to determining the topological entropy of the relevant portions of the networks. In the target article we identified variables that influence network entropy, including the number of different nodes, the absolute strengths of the internode connections and the distribution of relative strengths. It strikes us that all these variables can be measured by means of psychological techniques currently available, or modifications thereof.

We view creative potential as the product of gene-culture transmission. This assertion carries with it several implications for assessment and improvement. First, it raises the distinct possibility that creative potential is domain-specific. There are many different neurobiological instantiations (including neuronal group theory) in which the pattern of neurological responses depends explicitly on the type of input received. For example, activation dynamics under an auditory input may be very different from those initiated by visual input. Insofar as these processes map into semantic network dynamics, the entropy of the associated networks may also be quite different. It follows that the armory of the investigators should include tests designed to assess creative potential in different domains, and that part of the task is to ascertain to what degree creative potential correlates across domains.

Domain specificity also poses problems to the educator. If there are innate biases toward the development of high entropy networks in some domains versus others, little may be gained from attempting to increase “generic” creative potential. Rather, the attempt to increase creative potentials will be most successful in those domains for which there are innate biases. Hence before educational programs are initiated, educators should identify these biases and structur: the programs accordingly. If for example an individual shows a high creative potential in analytical problem solving, placing them in an environment designed to improve creative potential in the visual arts may prove relatively ineffective unless these domains are correlated.

Second, we propose that creative potential is a developmental phenomenon involving the continuous interplay of gene and environment over the course of a lifetime. The implications are twofold: it suggests that creative potential (whether domain-specific or not) is not develop mentally static (see Bornstein), and that creative capacities probably begin to develop early on -possibly from birth or before. The former in turn implies that while some qualitative features of creative potential (such as domain specificity) may be relatively invariant, creative potential within domains may show little correlation across ages. Hence, assessment of creative potential constitutes an ongoing task not limited to some particular age group. The latter implies that assessment should begin as soon as possible so that innate biases can be identified and steps taken to provide an optimal developmental environment.

Third, formalization of the concept of creative potential begins to address educational concerns, such as the environments expected to enhance creative accomplishments. For example, we suggest that creative potential increases in environments characterized by a diversity of symbolic forms and objects, but in which knowledge acquisition is unstructured in a well-defined sense: the individual is free to establish semantic links and add new nodes unconstrained by institutionalized rules. The social aspects of the environment are also predicted to play an important role in creative development. Because of heterarchical couplings, the creative process is in many respects an autocatalytic social phenomenon feeding back on itself. Although extrinsic rewards may have little effect on creative potential (see e.g. Amabile, 1983a), active social discouragement in the form of a regulated status quo are expected to have negative effects. Conducive social environments include individuals of similar creative bent, which in industry might take the form of small informal research and development groups enjoying freedom from conventional regulations (see Jones and Page).

Several other points deserve brief mention. It is our view that a deeper understanding of creativity will come from close study of the creative process, rather than the products thereof. In suggesting twenty different uses for a paper clip, the subject is providing only the products of

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creative thought. On the other hand, retrospective accounts of creative thought as it unfolds (as in verbatim reporting of problem solving) may provide more information than inferences based on the final product. Moreover, it is unlikely that tasks of the paper-clip variety will be of particular use in assessing creative potential, because the demands of everyday life are expected to promote low-entropy node-link structures involving common objects even in creative individuals. Better assessments of creative potential may be had using symbols and objects unfamiliar to the subject. These sorts of protocols will also tend to reduce the influence of differences among subjects due to other elements of the creative process, including memory and learning.

Finally, our approach suggests that much can be learned from comparative studies of creativity. We share with Case, Fagen, Fetzer and Marshack the conviction that both creativity and the creative process are not uniquely human attributes. Comparative studies of creative play behavior will serve two purposes. They will generate the behavioral data for the construction of the types of theories required by paleoarchaeologists such as Hodder and Marshack, and evolutionary biologists such as ourselves and Fagen. But perhaps even more importantly, such studies can provide investigators with new clues relating behavior to mind. It is possible, for example, that the modes of communicative expression used by young animals during play are also those best suited to the assesment of creative potential in young children.

Prospectus The value of a scientific theory lies not only in its explanatory power, but also in its generative capacity. Throughout the essay we indicated areas where our approach can potentially yield fresh insight. But irrespective of one’s theoretical orientation, there is a need for researchers as a community to identify major questions and mount a concerted effort. Many commentators have taken this opportunity to express their views on what constitutes the outstanding issues. We would like to conclude by highlighting these in relation to our own.

Our inclination is toward formal models - in particular to models suited to mathematical treatment. While this perspective has definite limitations, they appear to pale against the potential advantages. At least four sorts of data are sufficiently rich to warrant a rigorous modeling approach based on formal theories. First, there are enough developmental data to justify models of creative potential over the lifespan. Simonton’s (1986a) model of creativity and age is an important first step in this direction, and sets the stage for further advances. But it does not cover the period of early childhood, a period that we and others such as Gardner and Case suggest embraces critical bifurcation points in the developmental landscape. Moreover, it awaits connection to key biological elements such as neuronal development and degeneration.

A second body of data concerns memory and mental representations. The last decade has seen a revived interest in this subject (see e.g. Anderson, 1983). Preliminary work (e.g. Masui and Lumsden, 1985) indicates that epigenetic rules can be incorporated as control parameters in semantic network dynamics. This leads naturally to questions about the sort of structure produced by rules of a given form, particularly in the presence of relinking operations. Given different rules and relinking strategies, differing degrees of association or dissociation among chunks or subnetworks may emerge. Predictions of this nature can be tested against the available cognitive and developmental data on semantic associations in an attempt to characterize the underlying epigenetic rule space.

A third important data set comes from archaeology. Information in the form of spatiotemporal artifact distributions will be invaluable to the construction of the type of evolutionary theory we discuss. We note that formal models of cultural evolution (e.g. Renfrew and Cooke, 1979; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1981) deal almost exclusively with the transmission of innovations and not their generation. But since the innovation process itself is a

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driving force behind cultural evolution, such treatments are of limited explanatory value. Full explanatory power is obtainable only in a theory that generates cultural trajectories between innovations and covers the creative events themselves. This theory would show how specific innovations arise, distribute in time and interrelate. This information can be tested, at least in preliminary fashion, by comparison with the archaeological data.

There are hot spots visible in the creativity Zeitgeist. Domain specificity is promising because it can be pursued on several different levels. At the neurobiological level it is possible to consider creative thought as localized neuronal activity. The neuronal group hypothesis, for example, suggests that creative problem solving along different sensory modalities involves the activation of different networks of groups. By contrast, if creativity is a structurally distributed function, cortical localization of neuronal activity should be less pronounced across domains. At the cognitive level, testing creativity in different problem domains will measure performance across categories. Administered over age classes, these tests will also provide information on the development of domain-specific creativity (or lack thereof). With psychometric techniques, including principal component and factor analysis, it may also be possible to cluster creative domains on the basis of personality characteristics.

Another important focus is specification of the link between creativity and the sociocultural environment. We reviewed evidence that various elements of both the proximate social environment and the more diffuse cultural environment influence creativity (e.g. Amabile, 1983a for a comprehensive discussion). But enumeration of these factors is not sufficient. We need to know the pathways of interaction, as well as the size and extent of the interactions with conscious and unconscious processes (Harris).

A third focus is the identification of determinants of between-individual variation in creative performance. Drawing on current techniques in behavior genetics, it should be possible to estimate the influence of genetic factors on variability in the expression of epigenetic rules as well as variation within and across creative domains. Where such variability exists, our prediction is that genetic factors will account for a significant proportion of the observed variation.

Finally, we see future investigations having potentially profound effects on the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. As Gardner (1985) notes, among current investigators there is a widespread tendency to regard thinking as a computational process (e.g. Bara and Guida, 1984; Pylyshyn, 1984). Yet there is steadily accumulating evidence that noncomputational processes are involved in creativity. The message for mind theorists is clear: ascribing the computational features of machines to mind implies that machines are capable of passing a modified Turing test in which an observer attempts to distinguish between human and machine on the basis of their creative works. If creative thought incorporates both computational and noncomputational processes, no strictly computational mind will ever graduate from Turing’s academy. Construction of a true “thinking machine” will then be contingent upon a major paradigm shift over and above that to “massively parallel” machines. Continued research into the creative process as something “more” than the manipulation of symbols may perhaps motivate investigators to look beyond the current computational universe in their quest for human nature.

We view the creative mind as an outstanding problem facing evolutionary biology. The commentaries show a similar perspective shared by investigators in a diversity of fields. One cannot hope to begin reconstructions of the evolutionary history of the creative mind without better understanding the creative process. This in turn requires insight into how the individual is influenced by the sociocultural environment. Since these responses may also be mediated by the genes, we need to understand the neurological foundations of information transmission, storage and response. But the brain is the culmination of a long-evolving history in which many of the dominant forces were created by the creative mind itself. And so the circuit is complete: from the evolutionary history of the creative mind to the creative process and back again. The puzzle is purchased, some of the bigger pieces sorted and laid out. Now begins the real work.