The creative mind: Toward an evolutionary theory of discovery and innovation

The creative mind remains largely uncharted despite the efforts of investigators from many fields. Discussions arising from the perspective of evolutionary biology have helped somewhat to clarify the problems surrounding human creative activity. However, even the most advanced evolutionary treatments are unable to provide thorough explanations of creative activity or to deal productively with its effects on behavior and society. Moreover, it appears that such explanations will not be forthcoming within the current evolutionary paradigm. Our purpose in this report is to present a potentially new evolutionary approach to human creativity. We begin by introducing the concept of a system in which the components of individual cognition, including intelligence, learning, memory, personality and motivation interact with features of the sociocultural environment such as social stratification, educational policies and modes of communication to influence the creative process, discovery and innovation. Implicit in this concept is the assertion that a productive characterization of the creative process cannot be stated solely by reference to a single level of organization. Empirical evidence corroborating this assertion is examined. Our system concept is then integrated with current theories of biocultural dynamics, leading to the hypothesis that creative activity is an evolved strategy in which rules of cognitive development act through the joint inheritance of genetic and cultural information. Data from cognitive science, social anthropology and behavior genetics, testing the hypothesis of genetic involvement in creative development, are presented and discussed. Building on previous investigations, we suggest that creative potential in particular problem domains relates to the organization of semantic networks through the forging of links among previously dissociated elements. Formalization of this linking thesis in turn generates several quantitative predictions about domain specificity, the relationship between creative potential and age, environmental complexity, and various aspects of the sociocultural environment. A central problem in our theory of discovery and innovation is how creative activity is instantiated in the functional architecture of the brain. We develop a model in which creative activity is related to the patterns of activation among collections of neurons that are innately predisposed to respond to particular patterns of electrochemical excitati