harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (08/27/87)
I would be grateful to receive references to work on modeling creativity (in any domain -- verbal, mathematical, artistic, motor). I am also interested in relevant experimental and observational work. -- Stevan Harnad harnad@mind.princeton.edu (609)-921-7771
wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin) (08/28/87)
Stevan,
Re your request for creativity leads, here are some old quotes.
William H. Calvin
University of Washington NJ-15
Seattle WA 98195
DONALD T. CAMPBELL, 1974, "Evolutionary epistemology" in PA Schilpp ed,
_The Philosophy of Karl Popper_, Open Court:LaSalle IL., p.430.
The Following Quotes are all from the above reference, not
checked against originals:
p427:
"[From] the teeming, swelling host of fancies which a free and high-flown
imagination calls forth, suddenly that particular form arises to the light
which harmonizes perfectly with the ruling idea, mood, or design. Then it
is that which has resulted slowly as the result of a gradual selection,
appears as if it were the outcome of a deliberate act of creation. Thus
are to be explained the statements of Newton, Mozart, Richard Wagner, and
others, when they say that thoughts, melodies, and harmonies had poured in
upon them, and that they had simply retained the right ones." ERNST MACH,
1895, p.174 in "On the part played by accident in invention and
discovery," _Monist_ 6:161-175 (1896). 1895 inaugural lecture in Vienna.
Poincare's essay on math creativity expouses such a view at length:
"Among the great numbers of combinations blindly formed by the subliminal
self, almost all are without interest and without utility; but just for
that reason they are also without effect upon the esthetic sensibility.
Consciousness will never know them; only certain ones are harmonious, and,
consequently, at once useful and beautiful." Henri Poincar,
"Mathematical creation," in _Foundations of Science_, New York: Science
Press, p.392., 1913.
Souriau's recurrent theme is "le principe de l'invention est le hazard."
from DTCampbell74:
"A problem is posed for which we must invent a solution.... We know how
the series of our thoughts must end, but not how it should begin. In this
case it is evident that there is no way to begin except at random. Our
mind takes up the first path that it finds open before it, perceives that
it is a false route, retraces its steps and takes another direction... By
a kind of artificial selection, we can...substantially perfect our own
thought and make it more and more logical." PAUL SOURIAU, _Theorie de
l'Invention_, Paris:Hachete, 1881.
"...the new conceptions, emotions, and active tendencies which evolve are
originally *produced* in the shape of random images, fancies, accidental
outbirths of spontaneous variations in the functional activity of the
excessively unstable human brain, which the outer environment simply
confirms or refutes, preserves or destroys-- selects, in short, just as it
selects morphological and social variations due to molecular accidents of
an analogous sort." WILLIAM JAMES, 1880, p.456 in "Great men, great
thoughts, and the environment," _The Atlantic Monthly_ 46(276):441-459.
DT Campbell, "Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought
and in other knowledge processes." _Psychol. Rev._ 67:380-400 (1960).