Title: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIVITY 1: evolutionary ethology
1THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIVITY 1
evolutionary ethology
- Neil Greenberg
- University of Tennessee
- ORICL
- July 11 2000
2My deep gratitude to
- Colleagues
- David Crews, Robert Switzer, Thomas Jenssen
- Postdoc and graduate student
- Cliff Summers, Enrique Font
3And . . .
- Mentors and role-models
- Paul D. MacLean
- Danny Lehrman
- Colin Beer
4My Own Work . . .
- Clarifying the neurobehavioral causes and
consequences of social behavior -
- Specific lesions in the striatal complex
profoundly impair
aggression - Stress endocrinology orchestrates and
maintains the social dynamic - (at least in the reptile model)
5Natural History
- Natural history is the study of natural organisms
and objects. - It involves the description of nature and
attempts to determine the causes, consequences,
and interrelationships of the phenomena observed
therein.
6ETHOLOGY
- ETHOLOGY, the biological study of behavior has
its roots in Natural History. - ETHOLOGY is among our most powerful disciplinary
tools for understanding the causes and
consequences of behavior - It is the approach to understanding behavior that
invokes the methods and theoretical constructs
of several disciplines within biology
7Ethology
- Ethologists . . .
- describe behavioral traits,
- the development of behavioral traits in
individuals (ontogeny, experience), - the environment in which behavioral traits occur
(context, stability), - the evolution of behavioral traits (how they
enhance fitness), and - the physiology and proximal causation of
behavioral traits (neurology, endocrinology).
8EVOLUTIONARY ETHOLOGY
- EVOLUTIONARY refers to the assumption that
environmental circumstances selectively preserve
traits that enhance fitness. - FITNESS refers to relative success in
reproduction, particularly clear when
circumstances limit the number of offspring that
can survive. Traits that enhance fitness are
adaptations.
9Adaptations
- ADAPTATIONS are . . . Both manifest traits and .
. . - . . . processes by which organisms or groups of
organisms maintain homeostasis in and among
themselves - in the face of both short-term environmental
fluctuations and long-term changes - in the composition and structure of their
environments.
(Rappaport, 1971)
10IS CREATIVITY an ADAPTATION?. . .
- YES!
- Creativity is a potent biological adaptation in
that it catalyzes or facilitates a regulatory or
advantageous change in response to a real or
perceived challenge or stress. - Creativity consequently results in higher fitness
in terms of ones direct or indirect contribution
to future generations.
11CREATIVITY . . .
- reflects a spontaneous or evoked increase in the
intensity of cognitive processing . . . - that enables the relating and integrating of
variables . . . - not ordinarily associated with each other.
12The adaptive process . . .
- is one of continuous assimilation of internally
mediated consequences of the organisms action on
the environment and the resulting accommodation
of these action schemes into the previously
formed structure - (Piaget 1980)
13CREATIVITY, like all adaptations
- Helps us cope with challenges that threaten our
capacity to meet needs such as - Physiology (food, drink, exercise)
- Safety (security, order, protection)
- Belonging ( sociability, acceptance, love)
- Esteem (status, prestige, acknowledgment)
- Self-Actualization (personal fulfillment)
- (Maslows need hierarchy)
14CREATIVITY meets needs, is intrinsically
motivating
- Real or perceived needs are served by creative
perceptions, thoughts, or actions which associate
familiar or novel stimuli in varying
combinations. - Intrinsic reward systems operate to maintain this
valuable activity. - Rewards are commensurate with the real (or
perceived) urgency of the need, once the
dissonance created by difficulty in accommodating
it is resolved.
15CREATIVITY meets needs . . . . . . it
can heal the mind and body
- The therapeutic benefits of activities that
involve the experience of creativity provide
powerful evidence for a biologically adaptive
function that may be independent of any specific
kinesthetic, visual, or musical art form.
16CREATIVITY defined . . .
- CREATIVITY . . .
- involves the expression of unprecedented or novel
perceptions, thoughts, or actions . . . - by which an organism or group of organisms copes
. . . - with present or potential changes in the
composition and structure of the environment.
17What is the experience of creativity ?
- The defining experience of creativity involves a
dramatic change in perception or understanding. - This can be more or less exciting,
18EUREKA ! !
- The sense of reward is commensurate with the
intensity of the need satisfied, with the tension
or dissonance resolved. - "...nothing holds me --
- I will indulge my sacred fury!
- (Kepler announcing the discovery of his Third Law)
19ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY
- Alternative theories such as INSPIRATION or
PERSPIRATION are NOT mutually exclusive . . . - They each refer to one of the several dimensions
of creativity that ordinarily work as an
ensemble.
20INSPIRATION THEORY
- Joan . . . you must not talk to me about my
voices. - Robert How do you mean? Voices?
- Joan I hear voices telling me what to do. They
come from God. - Robert They come from your imagination.
- Joan Of course. That is how the messages of
God come to us.
21INSPIRATION THEORY
- Joan . . . you must not talk to me about my
voices. - Robert How do you mean? Voices?
- Joan I hear voices telling me what to do. They
come from God. - Robert They come from your imagination.
- Joan Of course. That is how the messages of
God come to us.
22PERSPIRATION THEORY
-
- Thomas Alva Edison
- Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine
per cent perspiration.
23Integrating subsystems
- Primary and Secondary Process Cognition
- . . . primary process cognition of dreaming,
reverie, psychosis and secondary process
cognition involving the abstract, logical,
reality-oriented thought of waking consciousness
(Fromm 1978) - creative individuals can more easily shift gears
from primary process, unfocused attention
(associated with low levels of cortical arousal),
to more focused secondary process (higher levels
of cortical arousal) for the expression or
implementation of creative insights (Kris 1952).
24Creativity and Stress
- The activation and use of the biological
mechanisms we possess to deal with any deviations
from the resting state constitutes the stress
response. - STRESS . . .
- is essential for coping with
- . . . challenges to our biological stability
- . . . challenges to our capacity to meet our
needs - is among our most potent adaptations
25creativity ?
- Sometimes the creative insight strikes like
lightening, but it is - orchestrated by cognition
- guided by motivation
- energized by emotion
- These engage the same neural and endocrine
subsystems as the stress response
26How stress works . . .
- First, an almost instantaneous
sympathetic-adrenomedullary (SAM)
flight-or-fight acute response (adrenaline) - Next, a few minutes later, a back-up
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (HPA)
chronic response (ACTH and glucocorticoids
27What does stress have to do with creativity ?
- The endocrinology of stress enhances the neural
mechanisms of perception and cognition and action
(inputintegrationoutput) - Stress enlarges our possibilities for solving
problems
28CREATIVITY meets needs . . .. . . it can enrich
the spirit
- Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
- that is all Ye know on earth,
- and all ye need to know
- (Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn, Stanza 2)
- A thing of beauty is a joy forever
- Its loveliness increases it will never
- Pass into nothingness.
-
(Keats, Endymion. Book I, Line 1) - "It was as though I had looked for a truth
outside myself, and finding it had become for a
moment a part of the truth I sought... (CP Snow)
29Premises of the neuroethological approach to
Creativity
- Learning requires the orchestrated actions of
motivation, affect, cognition, and access to a
network of potential associations - Physiological stress selectively activates the
essential neural systems and expands the range
of potential associations - Creativity is at the end of a continuum that
begins with the simplest connections of
associative learning
30A biological understanding of creativity
- Creativity is at the end of a continuum due to
adaptive co-opting of the machinery of
associative learning and of physiological stress - Physiological stress is a response to intrinsic
and extrinsic (environmental) change - Adaptive developmental changes induced by
physiological stress enhances the interface with
selective environmental pressures and expands an
organisms adaptive options and potential for
innovation.
31EXTREMES CREATIVITY as an AFFECTIVE DISORDER
- Creativity often involves unique or
unconventional ways of perceiving, thinking,
acting - It is unsurprising that these unique ways may
sometimes be expressed as behavioral dysfunction
-- disorders such as TLE, depression,
schizophrenia
32Creativity and Life
- "When making a decision of minor importance, I
have always found it advantageous to consider all
the pros and cons. In vital matters, however,
such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the
decision should come from the unconscious, from
somewhere within ourselves. In the important
decisions of personal life, we should be
governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our
nature." --Sigmund Freud
33Creativity and Art
- Art is among the purest expressions of human
creativity - Creativity is among our most potent coping
mechanisms - The aesthetic experience affects our confidence
in our beliefs
34ART an extreme expression of creative
communication
- "The best things cannot be told, the second best
are misunderstood. After that comes civilized
conversation after that, mass indoctrination
after that, intercultural exchange. And so,
proceeding, we come to the problem of
communication the opening, that is to say, of
one's own truth and depth to the depth and truth
of another in such a way as to establish an
authentic community of existence.
(Jos Campbell, 1968)