Why the Creative Process is Not Darwinian

2000

Darwin’s ideas on variation, heredity, and development differ significantly from twentieth-century views. First, Darwin held that environmental changes, acting either on the reproductive organs or the body, were necessary to generate variation. Second, heredity was a developmental, not a transmissional, process; variation was a change in the developmental process of change.An analysis of Darwin’s elaboration and modification of these two positions from his early notebooks (1836–1844) to the last edition of the Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication(1875) complements previous Darwin scholarship on these issues. Included in this analysis is a description of the way Darwin employed the distinction between transmission and development, as well as the conceptual relationship he saw between heredity and variation. This paper is part of a larger project comparing commitments regarding variation during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 1998

New Scientist, 2009

The rediscovery of Mendel’s laws a century ago launched the science that William Bateson called “genetics”, and led to a new view of evolution combining selection, particulate inheritance, and the newly characterized phenomenon of “mutation”. This “mutationist” view clashed with the earlier view of Darwin, and the later “Modern Synthesis”, by allowing discontinuity, and by recognizing mutation (or more properly, mutation-and-altered-development) as a source of creativity, direction, and initiative. By the mid-20th century, the opposing Modern Synthesis view was a prevailing orthodoxy: under its influence, “evolution” was redefined as “shifting gene frequencies”, i.e., the sorting out of pre-existing variation without new mutations, and the notion that mutation-and-altered-development can exert a predictable influence on the course of evolutionary change was seen as heretical. Nevertheless, mutationist ideas re-surfaced: the notion of mutational determinants of directionality emerged in molecular evolution by 1962, followed in the 1980’s by an interest among evolutionary developmental biologists in a shaping or creative role of developmental propensities of variation, and more recently, a recognition by theoretical evolutionary geneticists of the importance of discontinuity and of new mutations in adaptive dynamics. The synthetic challenge presented by these innovations is to integrate mutation-and-altered-development into a new understanding of the dual causation of evolutionary change— a broader and more predictive understanding that already can lay claim to important empirical and theoretical results— and to develop a research program appropriately emphasizing the emergence of variation as a cause of propensities of evolutionary change.

Simonton is attempting to salvage the Blind Variation Selective Retention theory of creativity (often referred to as the Darwinian theory of creativity) by dissociating it from Darwinism. This is a necessary move for complex reasons outlined in detail elsewhere. However, whether or not one calls BVSR a Darwinian theory, it is still a variation-and-selection theory. Variation-and-selection was put forward to solve a certain kind of paradox, that of how biological change accumulates (that is, over generations, species become more adapted to their environment) despite being discarded at the end of each generation (that is, parents don't transmit to offspring knowledge or bodily changes acquired during their lifetimes, e.g., you don't inherit your mother's ear piercings). This paradox does not exist with respect to creative thought. There is no discarding of acquired change when ideas are transmitted amongst individuals; we share with others modified versions of the ideas we...

This thesis examines the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the concept of natural selection which is pervasively invoked in biology and other ‘evolutionary’ domains. Although what constitutes the process of natural selection appears to be very intuitive (natural selection results from entities exhibiting differences in fitness in a population), this conceals a number of theoretical ambiguities and difficulties. Some of these have been pointed out numerous times; others have hardly been noticed. One aim of this work is to unpack these difficulties and ambiguities; another is to provide new solutions and clarifications to them using a range of philosophical and conceptual tools. The result is a concept of natural selection stripped down from its biological specificities. I start by revisiting the entangled debates over whether natural selection is a cause of evolutionary change as opposed to a mere statistical effect of other causes, at what level this putative cause operates and whether it can be distinguished from drift. Borrowing tools from the causal modelling literature, I argue that natural selection is best conceived as a causal process resulting from individual level differences in a population. I then move to the question of whether the process of natural selection requires perfect transmission of types. I show that this question is ambiguous and can find different answers. From there, I distinguish the process of natural selection from some of its possible products, namely, evolution by natural selection and complex adaptation. I argue that reproduction and inheritance are conceptually distinct from natural selection, and using individual-based models, I demonstrate that they can be conceived as evolutionary products of it. This ultimately leads me to generalise the concepts of heritability and fitness used in the formal equations of evolutionary change. Finally, I argue that concepts of fitness and natural selection crucially depend on the grains of description at and temporal scales over which evolutionary explanations are given. These considerations reveal that the metaphysical status of the process of natural selection is problematic and why neglecting them can lead to flawed arguments in the levels of selection debate.

Proceedings of the 7th Computational Creativity Symposium at AISB 2021, 2021

This philosophical paper examines the Darwinian account of creativity as a model for assessing computational creativity. It will first establish a Darwinian account of creativity using Simonton’s model. It will then apply this model to popular image-producing AI, Generative Adversarial Networks, and the promising Creative Adversarial Network, both used in the computational production of ‘artworks’. The paper will argue that these networks are compatible with a Darwinian account of creativity, due to the presence of blind variation within the networks, a key component of Simonton’s model. The paper will then address some initial objections. The aim of this paper will ultimately be to assess whether the AI systems are compatible with the Darwinian model of creativity, and in the process explore Darwinian creativity as a potential standard for testing computational creativity.

Religions, 2023

A longstanding question in science and religion is whether standard evolutionary models are compatible with the claim that the world was designed. In The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, theologian E. V. Rope Kojonen constructs a powerful argument that not only are evolution and design compatible, but that evolutionary processes (and biological data) strongly point to design. Yet Kojonen’s model faces several difficulties, each of which raise hurdles for his understanding of how evolution and design can be harmonized. First, his argument for design (and its compatibility with evolution) relies upon a particular view of nature in which fitness landscapes are “fine-tuned” to allow proteins to evolve from one form to another by mutation and selection. But biological data run contrary to this claim, which poses a problem for Kojonen’s design argument (and, as such, his attempt to harmonize design with evolution). Second, Kojonen appeals to the bacterial flagellum to strengthen his case for design, yet the type of design in the flagellum is incompatible with mainstream evolutionary theory, which (again) damages his reconciliation of design with evolution. Third, Kojonen regards convergent evolution as notable positive evidence in favor of his model (including his version of design), yet convergent evolution actually harms the justification of common ancestry, which Kojonen also accepts. This, too, mars his reconciliation of design and evolution. Finally, Kojonen’s model damages the epistemology that undergirds his own design argument as well as the design intuitions of everyday “theists on the street”, whom he seeks to defend. Thus, despite the remarkable depth, nuance, and erudition of Kojonen’s account, it does not offer a convincing reconciliation of ‘design’ and ‘evolution’.

This philosophical investigation critically examines Stephen J. Gould's concept of contingency in biological evolution, challenging his influential claim that evolutionary history is fundamentally random and unpredictable. By engaging with Gould's seminal work "Wonderful Life" and drawing on the convergence theory proposed by paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris, the paper systematically deconstructs the notion of evolutionary randomness. The central argument unfolds through multiple interconnected lines of reasoning. First, Morris's extensive documentation of convergent evolution—where different species independently evolve remarkably similar structures and behaviors—demonstrates that evolutionary pathways are more constrained and directional than Gould's contingency thesis suggests. From camera eyes in diverse species to complex behaviors like eusociality, these convergences indicate underlying biological "design constraints" that narrow the range of possible evolutionary outcomes. Philosophically, the paper exposes critical conceptual flaws in Gould's understanding of contingency. By analyzing the nature of causation, the authors argue that Gould inconsistently treats evolutionary events as both determined by initial conditions and fundamentally unpredictable. Drawing on philosopher Brendan Sweetman's analysis, the paper contends that every biological event has a causal explanation rooted in physical and chemical processes, rendering the concept of pure randomness scientifically incoherent. The investigation further addresses potential objections, including quantum mechanical indeterminacy, by introducing Bohmian Mechanics as a deterministic alternative that delivers identical empirical results. This approach reinforces the paper's core thesis: that evolutionary processes, while complex, operate within a fundamentally law-governed, predictable framework. Ultimately, the paper presents a nuanced view of evolution as a process with significant structural constraints, where apparent randomness reflects human epistemic limitations rather than ontological uncertainty. By challenging Gould's contingency thesis, the authors propose a more structured understanding of life's development—one that recognizes both the remarkable creativity and the underlying lawfulness of evolutionary processes.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2015

Dietrich and Haider (2014) justify their integrative framework for creativity founded on evolutionary theory and prediction research on the grounds that "theories and approaches guiding empirical research on creativity have not been supported by the neuroimaging evidence". Although this justification is controversial, the general direction holds promise. This commentary clarifies points of disagreement and unresolved issues, and addresses misapplications of evolutionary theory that lead the authors to adopt a Darwinian (versus Lamarckian) approach. To say that creativity is Darwinian is not to say that it consists of variation plus selection-in the everyday sense of the term-as the authors imply; it is to say that evolution is occurring because selection is affecting the distribution of randomly generated heritable variation across generations. In creative thought the distribution of variants is not key, i.e., one is not inclined toward idea A because 60% of one's candidate ideas are variants of A while only 40% are variants of B; one is inclined toward whichever seems best. The authors concede that creative variation is partly directed; however, the greater the extent to which variants are generated non-randomly, the greater the extent to which the distribution of variants can reflect not selection but the initial generation bias. Since each thought in a creative process can alter the selective criteria against which the next is evaluated, there is no demarcation into generations as assumed in a Darwinian model. We address the authors' claim that reduced variability and individuality are more characteristic of Lamarckism than Darwinian evolution, and note that a Lamarckian approach to creativity has addressed the challenge of modeling the emergent features associated with insight.

Challenges for Evolutionary Theory. Adaptation, Inheritance and Development. Forth. 2016

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species profoundly changed the way we view the natural world and the way we view ourselves within that world. Ever since Darwin, we have seen species not as static entities specially created by a higher being, but as entities which change in response to environmental pressures. According to Darwin, such changes are primarily due to natural selection: the differential reproduction of organisms as a consequence of differences in fitness in a given environment. Thus, on Darwin's view, humans and other organisms are the result of a causal process that has taken place over millions of years, a causal process which has led to the adaptation of organisms within their environments.

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity, 2010

2010

Models of creativity based on natural evolution have taken the genetic code of modern genetics, and ignored the goal-less nature of Darwin's original theory. This paper uses the comparison with evolutionary theory to suggest that exactly the opposite approach should ...

2007

The argument that heritableepigenetic change plays a distinct role in evolution would be strengthened through recognition that it is what bootstrapped the origin and early evolution of life, and like behavioral and symbolic change, is non-Darwinian. The mathematics of natural selection, a populationlevel process, is limited to replication with negligible individual-levelchange, i.e. that uses a self-assembly code.