This article was downloaded by: [California Institute of Integral Studies] On: 11 December 2014, At: 11:14 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20 Eureka! The Myths of Creativity Gianluca Bocchi a , Eloisa Cianci a , Alfonso Montuori b & Raffaella Trigona a a Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy b California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California, USA Published online: 09 Dec 2014. To cite this article: Gianluca Bocchi, Eloisa Cianci, Alfonso Montuori & Raffaella Trigona (2014) Eureka! The Myths of Creativity, World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 70:5-6, 276-308 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2014.977073 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
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This article was downloaded by: [California Institute of Integral Studies]On: 11 December 2014, At: 11:14Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
World Futures: The Journal ofNew Paradigm ResearchPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20
Eureka! The Myths of CreativityGianluca Bocchia, Eloisa Ciancia, Alfonso Montuorib &Raffaella Trigonaa
a Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italyb California Institute of Integral Studies, SanFrancisco, California, USAPublished online: 09 Dec 2014.
To cite this article: Gianluca Bocchi, Eloisa Cianci, Alfonso Montuori & RaffaellaTrigona (2014) Eureka! The Myths of Creativity, World Futures: The Journal of NewParadigm Research, 70:5-6, 276-308
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2014.977073
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California, USA
RAFFAELLA TRIGONA
Universita degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy
The origins and manifestations of creativity are viewed from a complexity-basedevolutionary perspective. The development of complexity, myths of creativity,and the nature of organization are discussed, as is the nature of creative insight.
KEYWORDS: Complexity, creativity, emergence, evolution, learning, systems theory.
COMPARING PARADIGMS
Alfonso Montuori (A. M.)
The term complexity has become part of our daily vocabulary now. It is a rich andmultifaceted concept, popular both with the emergence of complexity science, andmore generally to refer to the experience of living in an interconnected, interde-pendent, uncertain world. But my experience is that there is already a plurality ofinterpretations of what complexity means. In fact there appears to be considerableconfusion about complexity. So let’s begin with an attempt at definition.
Gianluca Bocchi (G. B.)
A fundamental aspect of the notion of complexity is that all the definitions thusfar have been either very uninformative or extremely technical. There are twofundamental aspects that characterize the theory of complexity: one is about thenature of the objects of knowledge, the other about the relationship between theknowing subject and the objects of knowledge.
All systems we define as “complex” exhibit certain specific properties. Let mepoint out a few, starting, for example, with sensitivity to minor changes. We usuallyhold that in any system a simple, minor causes produce minor effects, while bigcauses produce big effects. But complex systems, as chaos theory shows, reveala different dynamic: even minor causes can be amplified to produce big effects.This characteristic has been made famous by the idea of the butterfly effect.1
Address correspondence to Gianluca Bocchi, Universita degli Studi di Bergamo, P.le S.Agostino 2, Bergamo, Italy. E-mail: [email protected]
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A second characteristic of complex systems is that, for them, change is discon-tinuous rather than additive. There are states of stability, like those investigatedby Gould (1980, 1985, 2002, 2007),2 with the notion of “punctuated equilibria,”or even those studied by Prigogine (1979)3 in thermodynamics, where a systemtends to remain more or less stable over long periods when confronted by a ma-jor series of perturbations. Then, suddenly, in periods that are relatively brief inhistorical terms, the system experiences a jump. Through this jump it generates anew equilibrium and, in the case of evolution, a new species. This discontinuouschange is just as important as the sensitivity to initial conditions I spoke of earlier.
We also need to address the notion of emergence. In complex systems, thewhole is more than the sum of its parts. That is, the sum of the interactions, thequality and the quantity of the interactions, ensure the generation of a new system,whose properties cannot be deduced from the sum of the parts. This concept ofemergence has been emphasized, above all, by Kauffman (2000)4 and the Santa FeInstitute. Emergent properties were quite well-known to the individual disciplinesthat developed during the twentieth century, but from the middle of the centuryonward, these sciences began to dialogue among themselves, to study and discussthese aspects. It was at this time that researchers began to question whether thecharacteristics of emergence were not, to some degree, general characteristics thatapplied irrespective of the nature of the systems being considered.
It all began with complexity within individual disciplines. Then different sci-ences started to contaminate one another and researchers wondered whether or notthere might be a vocabulary of models that was common to all complex systems,independently of their nature.
Eloisa Cianci (E. C.)
Could we say that it was science itself, at the very beginning, that encouragedawareness of the complexity that exists outside of us, in the world we live in,and inside of us, intrinsic to our essence as sapiens and as individuals with anecological and social context?
I am thinking of the contributions made in this sense by cell biology, evolu-tionary and genetic biology, but also by physics, with the study of thermodynam-ics, complex systems, and non-linearity, or by neuroscience with the cognitivesciences.
In a certain sense, it’s as if the “reductionism” typical of classical scienceenabled the emergence of a veritable “new science,” taking into account diversityand pluralism, a science that was qualitatively different from the modern one,which used as its means of knowledge, the relationship, the connection, the creationof “narrow bridges” between different disciplines . . .
G. B.
We need to be clear on this point. First there was the complexity within individualsciences: the punctuated equilibria of Gould, the concepts of autopoiesis and self-organization of Maturana and Varela (1980, 1984; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch1991),5 the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of Prigogine. Then these sciences
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began to contaminate one another and, at that point, we began to wonder if therewas a vocabulary for models that were common to complex systems, irrespectiveof their nature.
This process is really interesting because it shows how complexity originatesin diversity and tends toward unity. And the two aspects cannot be eliminated,without the risk of failing to understand what it means to do research into complexsystems. Complexity originates in diversity because it is always the complexityof something, of physical systems or biological systems and these systems exhibitparticular characteristics that cannot be reduced to each other. What is more, apartfrom diversity, there are also invariant aspects of the systems themselves.
From this point of view, complexity is half-way between two visions of theworld. These are the traditional visions, the so-called reductionist views, thattend to observe nature and its characteristics from just one angle, engaging in aprocess of simplification, holding that a single perspective can be sufficient for thedevelopment of a complete understanding of all the characteristics of the systemin question and the pluralistic and diversified vision of all systems, which keeps inmind the role of the observer, the diversity of the different possible approaches totheir study, and, therefore, accepts the diversity of their exhibited characteristics.
I would underline the importance of considering these two currents of thoughttogether: on the one hand, pluralism, whereby the complexity current is stronglycritical of all the impositions of traditional physics, shall we say from Laplaceonward. On the other hand, especially in recent times, it has been suggested thatnature’s pluralism may require the development of inter-relationships betweenwidely differing fields, and lead to a general science of complex systems that iso-lates certain properties that are transversal characteristics of nature and humanity.
A. M.
The roots of this second vision go far back in history, but in the twentieth centurythere are two very clear predecessors that are often not given the attention theydeserve. I am thinking of General System Theory and Cybernetics. Both emergedas attempts to develop a language, a set of concepts, and a way of thinking that wastransversal, in the sense that it could move across individual disciplines. GeneralSystem Theory originated in the 1940s in the work of the biologist Ludwig vonBertalanffy who initially sought to find a new approach to the study of life orliving systems. More broadly, Von Bertalanffy (1976) envisioned General SystemTheory as a way to address the increasing complexity of the world’s problems.General System Theory emerged as an alternative to the dominant form of inquiryand way of thinking, reductionist analysis, which was criticized for being unableto address wholes, interdependence, and complexity. Reductionism is based onthe assumption that scientific explanation of complex phenomena should be interms of component, simpler phenomena, and that the whole is explained fromthe knowledge of its parts. General System theorists argued that reductionismabstracts a subject from its environment, with the isolation of a variable in alaboratory being the classic example, and that by studying an element of a largerwhole in isolation reductionism is unable to account for systemic and emergent
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properties, or the way relationships and interactions form the organization of thelife. General Systems Theory was presented as a new way of thinking that allowsfor the study of interconnections among systems, and accounts for the nature of“open systems” thatinteract with their environments.
General System Theory introduced key concepts such as open and closed sys-tems, stressing the role and importance of context and environment, equifinality,or the way systems can reach the same goal through different paths, and iso-morphisms or structural, behavioral, and developmental features that are sharedacross systems. Here we find the roots of what you referred to earlier, Gianluca,“a vocabulary for models that were common to complex systems, irrespective oftheir nature.”
General System Theory positioned itself as trans-disciplinary rather than inter-disciplinary. Inter-disciplinary refers to interaction between disciplines, whereastransdisciplinarity refers to going beyond or across disciplines. General SystemTheory was supposed to be the common language spanning diverse disciplines.Central to this language was the concept of “system,” defined as a group ofinteracting, interdependent elements that form a complex whole. It also pointedtoward a new worldview, a systems view of the world, which emphasizes suchkey concepts as every system’s embeddedness in other, larger systems, and thedynamic, ever-changing processes of self-organization, growth, and adaptation.It is not surprising therefore that systems concepts have been central to the riseof ecology as a field of inquiry, with such concepts as ecosystem. In creativityresearch the Systems Approach has also at times been referred to as an ecologicalapproach, because of the emphasis on the larger ecosystem in which creativityemerges.
General System Theory was generally viewed as equilibrium-oriented, andfundamentally static, particularly as interpreted in mid-twentieth-century func-tionalist sociology, most notably in the worl of Talcott Parsons. This focus onorder and equilibrium was also one of the main sources for the initial critiquesof General System Theory’s application in the social sciences, most notably inthe functionalist sociology of Talcott Parsons. As a result of this particular inter-pretation, which was dominant in sociology for a while and was generally quiteinfluential, anything associated with systems or cybernetic theories was viewed asbeing fundamentally politically conservative and oriented toward maintaining thestatus quo, rather than open to creativity and change.
In its early years, General System Theory engaged in fruitful exchanges withinformation theory and cybernetics, most notably at the classic Macy conferencesfrom 1946 to 1953. Concepts such as negative and positive feedback, entropy,and self-organization became part of the systems lexicon. Negative feedback isdeviation-reducing feedback, which can be found in a thermostat. An increasein temperature below a certain threshold kicks in the heating, so that a relativelystable temperature is maintained. Positive feedback occurs in so-called “self-exciting” or “runaway” systems when one person’s rude behavior leads anotherperson to respond even more rudely and the whole thing escalates until the arrivalof the police acts as a negative feedback. Positive feedback can be found both invicious and virtuous cycles. People who do not exercise tend to feel more and
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more out of shape, and therefore feel like exercising less and less, which makesthem even more out of shape, and therefore even less likely to move, and so on.Alcoholism and drug addiction also work through runaway positive feedback. Butpositive feedback can also kick-start a situation that has become stuck—the moresomebody exercises, the better they feel, and so they keep exercising. With its focuson deviation amplification, positive feedback is also associated with creativity andinnovation. If negative feedback maintains a system on course and in equilibrium,positive feedback’s deviation amplification takes it toward disequilibrium andchange.
Cybernetics focused on process, on navigation (the Greek origin of the word,kybernetis, means steersman), and the connection and communication betweenevents and concepts. A classic example is the relationship between Order andDisorder, or Stability and Change. Many paired concepts such as Order and Disor-der were traditionally viewed as opposites and referred to as “paradoxical.” Froma cybernetic perspective they are viewed as forming part of one larger ongoingcircular process (much like day and night), rather than static opposites. It hasbeen suggested, for instance, that creative individuals are not either psycholog-ically “healthier” or more “unstable” than individuals who are not particularlycreative. Research shows creative individuals are both healthier and more un-stable, experiencing periods of instability but also having the ego-strength torally from setbacks, and in the process experiencing a wider range of humanpossibilities.
Cybernetics morphed into what came to be known as “second-order cyber-netics,” which went beyond the useful but mechanistic concepts of negative andpositive feedback. Second-order cybernetics moved from the study of observedsystems to the study of observing systems. The fundamental role of the observeror inquirer in every inquiry became central, as cybernetics moved into the field ofepistemology. Cybernetic epistemology was later to make a considerable impactin the field of family therapy, and in the sociology of Luhmann (1995). Cyber-netic epistemology holds that every statement is always made by somebody. Thespeaker/knower/observer cannot be left out of the equation, and there is no “God’seye view from Nowhere.” One of the more radical interpretations of cyberneticepistemology holds that any statement tells us more about the speaker than aboutthe event, object, or person s/he is describing. In the context of creativity, thismeans that creativity is always an attribution made by somebody. Certain moresociologically inquiries into creativity have in fact shifted the research towardthose that make the judgment about what is, and what is not, considered creativein a field.
In the 1980s Chaos and Complexity theories introduced important new dimen-sions to Systems Approaches. Whereas in General System Theory the focus hadbeen on systems in equilibrium, researchers now began to incorporate cyberneticconcepts and study systems in states that were far from equilibrium. As a result theybegan emphasizing the role of self-organization, emergence, and unpredictability.These developments in science have led to what has been called the “challengeof complexity.” The irreducible complexity of phenomena ranging from atoms tostar systems, from cognitive systems to human societies is increasingly clear. In
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other words, this complexity, which takes the form of interconnectedness, interde-pendence, unpredictability is not amenable to reductionistic approaches. Eliminat-ing the interconnectedness, interdependence, and unpredictability also eliminatesmany of the most important dynamic features of the system. Complexity is nowbeing recognized as a basic fact of existence, whereas in traditional, reduction-ist approaches to research it was considered an exogenous, chaotic element thatinterfered with the “purification” of the variable to be manipulated.
The term complexity is generally defined as the length of the minimal programrequired to compute a number. But this is an algorithmic definition, and anotherdefinition might be a measure of how hard it is to put something together startingfrom elementary parts. Complexity has also been described as a reconnaissance ofcomplex causality, where complexity entails a shift in our description of phenom-ena, which at minimum recognizes the cybernetic dimension of mutual, recursive,and circular causality. Perhaps central to our understanding of complexity is thatit emerges out of the inclusion of relationships as a dynamic, constitutive processdimension of the phenomena we want to understand rather than viewing them asstatic elements in isolation from their environment. So let us explore how today wecan continue pursuing this “transversal” dream and conceive of a general scienceof complex systems that isolates properties and build models.
G. B.
Let’s begin with some examples. Stuart Kauffman applied models of natural evolu-tion to technology and organisation (Kauffman 1995, 2008). He shows that certainaspects of technological evolution can be mapped in the same way as biologicalevolution; not that the appearance of airplanes can be compared to the explosion ofthe Cambrian6 era, but both these evolutionary processes have a common pattern.The Cambrian explosion and its animal plans, just like technological innovation,are a sort of “experimentation” and show an initial wealth of possible alterna-tives, which subsequently become standardized as a relatively small number of“winning” variants. Complexity, therefore, can also be understood as a search forthe patterns underlying the variety of phenomena in the universe, relating verydifferent fields to one another.
Gould, in his book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), tells the storyof punctuated equilibrium (Gould, 2002). The model of punctuated equilibria asa specific model of discontinuous change, which can be applied to a specific areaof nature and even to a specific area of evolution, namely the origin of species. Heends up by generalizing on his reflection: discontinuous change in nature is alsoapplicable to other levels of evolution, both higher and lower than species.
A further example: in recent years, studies have shown that the growth ofnewborns, whether human or animal, follows models of discontinuous change.Growth is not constant, but there are many days where there is no development at alland then moments of rapid growth in the space of 24 hours. It is probable, therefore,that discontinuous change involves not only the physiological aspect, but also thepsychological. Psychology is discovering today that cognitive development is notsimple; it requires a certain amount of repetition of behavior, attitudes, and so on,
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before a proper psychological restructuring takes place. Learning functions in thesame way.
Gould himself believed that there is a strong movement in favor of discontinuouschange today. It can be seen in cultural and disciplinary development: Kuhn’s7
very concept of the paradigm was one of the first concepts of discontinuous changein the philosophy of science (Kuhn 1957, 1962/1970).
It is interesting to see how the conceptual pathways taken by Gould, Kauffmanand Prigogine all intersect, and how each of them set off from a particular pointof view to arrive at a general one. Kauffman starts from a theory on the origin oflife and considers life as a property emerging from chemical substances. He thenbegins to question whether this concept of emerging property cannot be used tostudy phenomena at other hierarchical levels, such as the origin of consciousness oreven human and social organizations. We know, too, that Prigogine, starting fromthermodynamics, ended up studying phenomena like urban expansion. Thereafter,there appeared what we might call truly transversal sciences, two of which arecurrently in rapid expansion: one is the study of networks, the other of self-organized criticality.
I think that the motto of the American flag, “Ex pluribus Unum,” capturesthe complexity movement quite well, bearing in mind also that ex uno therewill emerge plures. The complexity movement does not lead toward a generalunification of the sciences, but focuses on the relationships between the sciences.The importance of looking at the world from the point of view of multiplicity aswell as unity has been, in my opinion, the characteristic of the major scientistswho have considered the question of complexity. Some of these scientists havebeen more reductionist than others, some have been methodologically precise.Gould and Eldredge (Eldredge and Tattersall 1982; Eldgrede 2005),8 for example,have maintained their own very strong identity in this sense, before expanding toconsider other aspects. Kauffman, too, seeks to apply the validity of models he hasfound in specific fields to much wider contexts. He has tried to elaborate a generalscience of connections, starting from his biological models for the origin of life.This dual focus, which any study of complex systems implies, is fundamental.
Now we come to the second aspect: complexity is not only a property of thesystems of the world, but is also a methodological attitude of the observer. Inother words, a system is complex if, and only if, we choose to consider it so.Otherwise, we can just consider any system as a black box, limiting ourselvesto merely observing the simple properties it exhibits. From this point of view,Heinz von Foerster (1982)9 was exemplary, since he introduced this concept oftrivial machine and non-trivial machine, not as ontological concepts, but as so-called “ethical” concepts, governing the relationship between subject and object.Therefore, if we consider a system as predictable and determinable, this willalways give us answers that are predictable and determinable. On the other hand,if we consider a system as being open to unpredictability and contingency, ourobservation of it will give us answers that are unpredictable and contingent.
This aspect of complexity is an explicitly philosophical and epistemologicalone, developed, in particular, by Edgar Morin.10 Morin said that complexity is acognitive and ethical approach, which goes beyond imposing certain properties
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of natural systems and, rather, is the willingness to consider natural systems, ifwe like, from the point of view of their inexhaustibility. Therefore, this move-ment in favor of complexity clearly means a radical break, both scientific andepistemological, with the Laplacean11 approach. This latter way of thinking wasextrapolationary. It sought to adopt a point of observation and, starting from there,to define that which was important and that which was not, to the eye of theobserver. This approach developed in the modern era. It reached its fundamen-tal expression with Laplace, who held that once we find the primary qualitiesof the particles that make up the world, neither the future nor the past will holdany problems for us and everything will be either predictable or reconstructed.Obviously, this is not just a scientific option, but is also an epistemological andphilosophical vision that describes the architecture of the world as continuous andholding no surprises for us. By contrast, the development of a complex approachshows how our relationship with the world can be subject to discontinuity and un-predictability. This approach is much more general and, in a certain sense, radical,because it highlights how there are thresholds in our knowledge that disprove eventhose models that have been successful. In other words, it emphasizes how ourknowledge is always a patchwork of models that have different ends, concepts,and perspectives.
On the basis of what we have said so far, there emerges another fundamentalaspect of complexity, namely a new idea of subject: the knowing subject is alsocomplex, not just the object, nor is it just the relationship between the subject andthe object that is complex. It is evident that we are already so at a neurologicallevel, but our whole psyche is based on this plurality of system and languagemodels. Knowledge is a complex object because it is an interaction between apluralist world made up of systems that have different behaviors, and an equallypluralist subject, which is made up of a brain, of an equally rich and plural psyche.In other words, the relationship of knowledge is one of hyper-complexity betweena complex knowing subject and a complex knowing object.
One last fundamental aspect, particularly emphasized by Morin and Varela, isthat a movement in favor of complexity is always a movement at risk, because itfinds itself caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the one and the many. It isclear, therefore, that what is needed most are continuous route adjustments, ratherthan polemics over reductionism. Reductionism holds that science is basicallyreduction and that the plurality of objects and methods dissolves into this relation-ship. I find that there has been a lot of confusion over this, because, in reality, wefind it hard to abandon the idea of dichotomy, typical of modern thinking. We havesaid it many times: it is the idea of dichotomy between objectivism and relativism,between rationalism and irrationalism, between reductionism and holism that hashad so much influence over science in the twentieth century. Instead, I think thatcomplexity is an attempt to create a binocular vision, which is rooted, probablyfundamentally, in the processes of human knowledge.
The complexity movement, for example, leads to an interesting interaction withmany forms of spirituality. On the one hand, it creates problems for the cosmol-ogy prevalent in Western tradition: that is, the monotheistic cosmology, dividedbetween good and evil, while on the other hand, it helps to re-valorize models
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of pluralistic cosmologies, such as Taoism and Hinduism. It is not surprising thatcomplexity leads to dialogue with these spiritual or transformative approaches,since it reveals a profound partnership between the various forms of knowledge.Knowledge is always tension between uniting and multiplying, just like a part-nership is always tension between creating new common points of view and therecognition of one’s individuality and personal characteristics. This is certainlya map worth developing. In this sense, complexity does not imply a relativisticapproach but an evolutionary one, recognizing that the patterns that we identifyin the world transform the world itself, in a cooperative way.
COMPLEXITY AND CREATIVITY
A. M.
Let’s step back and discuss the mechanistic model of science that developed inthe modern era. This model reflected a certain mechanical vision of the world,and now we are looking at a more creative vision of the world. Let’s explore thismechanistic view and the emerging vision of the world that sees evolution as acreative process.
G. B.
I think that the fundamental thing to underline about this perspective is the centralrole played in it by history and process. A mechanical vision tells us that a systemfunctions if and only if its parts have been designed in the most efficient waypossible. This perspective implies that the parts are designed once and for all andthen the system either works or it does not. When the parts are assembled correctly,the system works. Clearly, from this point of view, history can play no role in amechanical system. I referred earlier to Laplace. Laplace said that the universewas something independent of history. The universe worked in a predictable way,which was so determinable that history could bring nothing new. Consequently,anyone today is capable of predicting the future. Meanwhile, evolutionism has ledus to understand that systems work in nature precisely because they have a historyand are incorporated within a history. The constitutive elements of a system arenever planned in the optimal way, but have their historical characteristics, whichthen change in significance according to their way of interacting and assemblingwith other systems. In other words, the very identity of systems becomes a processand history.
The fundamental aspect of the cultural change of complexity lies in the newimportance of the concept of history with regard to identity. Identities develop inthe course of history, they transform and, therefore, there is no such thing as astatic and non-temporal identity: it is a highly dynamic and evolutionary concept.
A. M.
This prompts a great deal of reflection. It’s important to understand how “livingbeing” was understood in Laplace’s time.
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G. B.
During Laplace’s time, the view of the life was still a creationist vision, in whichnature was designed once and for all by God. The existence of organisms dependedon the fact that they were perfectly well adapted to their function and could notchange. However, evolution has shown us that organisms have their own historyand their biological identity depends not only on having a history, but their veryconstruction is closely linked to it.
When we speak of human cultures or even individual identities today, we haveto be aware that there there is not one abstract point of arrival for identities,irrespectively of their interactions. It is rather the quality and quantity of theinteractions that expand or shrink the space available to human possibilities.
Raffaella Trigona (R. T.)
So, how can we tackle the question of evolution, how can we read history in anevolutionary and dynamic way?
G. B.
We need to consider the fact that with the appearance of the concept of evolution,our idea of history changes, too. The first important intervention of evolutioncomes with that moment in the 1980s when evolution puts the traditional idea of“planning” in difficulty. This idea was linked fundamentally to the mechanisticmetaphor of the 1600s, which considered time as a negative variable. It held thatthe “planner” was the engineer who determined at the outset the ideal allocationof resources and decided, right from the start, the various steps of development,whereby everything unexpected was perceived as a destabilizing event for theperfectly pre-constituted order. In the seventeenth century, God Himself becamea great engineer. One of the problems is that this concept attributes God with theidea of an absolutely mechanical plan, thereby fueling all the polemic currentlysurrounding creationism.
In reality, evolution brought with it another, radically different metaphor,namely the “do-it-yourself” proposed by Jacob, where evolution takes place un-der non-ideal conditions (Jacob 1970). Let me explain: history creates non-idealobstacles and evolution operates by generating, as best it can, a re-interpretationand re-organization, using the material that history has left at its disposal. In thiscase, history is not only a positive fact for the development of the plan, but alsorepresents the only condition in which the plan can develop.
Another useful image could be that of the Gothic cathedrals, which were notthe product of engineers, but artisans. The model of the Gothic cathedral is veryuseful in understanding the aspect which most closely resembles evolution, thatis, the re-use of a vast array of heterogeneous materials. To date, several examplesof architecture and urban engineering have referred to this model, Gaudi’s Spaincoming to mind. Gaudi thought of himself as a “medieval artisan” (Van Hensbergen2003). Just like the cathedral builders, he never made preparatory sketches, butfollowed the history of the materials, manipulating and experimenting. This was
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a very strong paradigmatic change and it helps us to understand that re-using is afundamental element in evolution.
The same thing happens at a genetic level: in fact, in this field, the idea ofmolecular do-it-yourself has been gaining importance. It has even been discov-ered that the evolution of the genome depends in great part on attributing newfunctions to gene material that originally had none. Consequently, the logic of thegenome is redundant, because the vast majority of the genome is not made upof functional DNA, but junk DNA. Not functional, though, does not mean that itcannot become so. We now consider that this very waste material is the basis forthe future evolution of the human genome and, therefore, unlike the mechanisticidea, it is an extremely positive function because it brings new possibilities with it.Furthermore, these developments tell us that complexity is strictly connected to re-dundancy. This thesis is fundamental to human events, because we now know thata society, a culture, or any individual’s brain, function in a way that is very similarto the the functioning of a genome. The cell’s redundancy and DNA replicationare aspects of a sort of biological “memory.” And intellectual creation, whetherscientific, artistic, or literary, is obviously attained by individuals, who not onlyhave an unique memory, but also have a memory that draws from very heteroge-neous sources. Artistic, literary, or scientific geniuses cannot emerge unless theyhave a redundancy of cultural affiliations. This means that there can be no creativegenius if there is a total break with tradition. Even a person who theoreticallyrenounces tradition, in reality, by doing so, is putting himself in relation to it,thereby asserting a continuity.
The same thing happens with the human psyche: the innovations of the psycheare based on the whole experience of a person, both neurological and psycho-logical. Dreams are an example of the redundancy mechanism in the cerebralfunctioning of our species; these help us understand that, in reality, the memorythat we have at a subconscious level is extremely broad and practically isomorphicto DNA, to junk DNA. Just as the genome takes contingent interventions, bothinternal and external, from its experience, which it can then re-use, we can drawfrom a series of experiences in our background. These experiences are located ina subconscious or preconscious memory, because, clearly, they cannot interferetoo much with our daily activities. The dream mechanism is fundamental for this,because it contains a series of redundancy retro-mechanisms that are fundamentalnot only for the repetition of our psyche, but rather for its evolution.
So, what am I trying to say? Well, that these two examples, the genetic oneand the psychological one, contain a pattern, a sort of symmetry of behavior, bywhich the human species is able to re-elaborate, on another level, this fundamentalevolutionary mechanism.
This action needs to be properly understood in order to face the problems ofpsychic and social suffering. When a series of external interventions cause thepsychic and social redundancy to become too distant from a certain state of equi-librium, then the evolutionary capacity of the systems themselves is interrupted.There is a risk of dangerous states of regression or even the blockage of the sys-tems themselves. At an individual level, these can derive from a pathology, but, at
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a collective level they may derive from various social pathologies: war, conflicts,but also common day violence.
A. M.
Let’s consider evolution as a creative process. I find it really intriguing that thereis an emerging a trend, across many different fields, toward a change in ourunderstanding of creativity and “the creator.” In fact, there’s a clear move awayfrom the notion of a single creator. From the inevitability of top-down processes,the Creator creating the world in seven days, the composer providing us with hisscore, we are seeing the creative product as an emergent property of the interactionsthat make up the creative process. While there are broad guidelines, whether inGaudi’s case or that of a group of musicians improvising on a particular song, theseguidelines provides a loose framework, which can range from the very functionalto a specific mood, for example, and within that framework we see (and/or hear)the process/product of the interactions.
It is of great interest to me that our understanding of leadership is changing inmuch the same way that creativity is changing. Breaking with their roots in thevision of the “Great Man,” the Lone Genius, the Fearless Leader, the Great Hero,towards a much more distributed, relational view. We can see for instance that inthe two last great social movements, the Arab Spring and Occupy, there was noheroic leadership figure (Montuori 2013). How different that is from the 1960swith its proliferation of revolutionary leaders, whether Mao or Che or Malcom orMartin Luther King. If leadership and creativity are today increasingly viewed asthe result of interactions, that invites another closely connected question, on therelationship between diversity and creativity.
G. B.
Let’s begin by drawing up a sort of natural history of diversity. The historyof nature is punctuated with the emergence of certain thresholds. That’s wherecomplex systems are created that are not decomposable to the sum of their parts.The interesting thing is that in all these twists and turns, diversity plays a key role.
Let me give you a cosmological example. We know that our life depends on theexistence of many chemical elements and, in particular, heavy chemical elementssuch as carbon and iron. The universe did not come into being any differently,but, at the beginning, there was an enormous presence of hydrogen and helium.The first generation stars knew nothing of the heavy elements. For billions ofyears, the universe was dominated by just hydrogen and helium. What was itthat made life possible? Well, the fact that, at a certain point, the first generationstars exploded as supernovas and these cosmic explosions generated nuclei ofheavy atoms, such as iron and carbon. It was billions of years before life becamepossible in the universe, a period in which, due to the explosion of these stars, thechemical diversity grew enormously. Consequently, right from its chemical basis,diversity is a fundamental product of time and history. Only this has enabled theemergence, at least on our planet, of complicated beings equipped with a complexbiochemistry.
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We can see the same thing in natural history. It took three billion years of lifebefore animals appeared. In the beginning, bacteria were all homogeneous. Cellswere all similar to each other, and none of them were specialized. Animals onlyappeared much later thanks to their specialization and, as Edgar Morin (1981,1985) has defined them, they were “second level organisms.” There was a movefrom the homogeneous towards the diversified, thanks to which different organismswere generated and these entered into symbiosis or conflict with each other.
Therefore, we can assert that diversity is the fundamental path along whichevolution has emerged. We can explain the emergence of human intelligence in asimilar way; had our brain not been extremely diversified, we would not have beenable to behave in the flexible and creative way that characterizes human conscienceand intelligence. In fact, these qualities derive from the fact that in our brainthere coexist very different neuronal networks and parts that tell different stories,because they developed in very different moments. What needs to be emphasizedabove all, is that diversity and time are the fundamental elements behind theemergence of new systems, new properties, new behavior, and, consequently,creativity (Bocchi and Ceruti 2002).
R. T.
We are talking about the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny, which ensuresthat the adult individual keeps some of those characteristics of the immaturephases of our ancestral species. This means that a small human, at birth, has notdeveloped completely and actually needs to have a long period of caring for inorder to complete his/her development. This is an important phenomenon as itprovides a wide range of adaptability to individuals with respect to the species’characteristics. The great significance of this lies in the fact that it reminds usevery time that our being human is characterized by an original condition ofindefiniteness and incompleteness. Furthermore, it shows how our subsequentevolutionary acquisitions are not determined by specific genetic or anatomicalcharacteristics (such as the volume of the brain), but how they are emergingproperties, generated by a greater complexity of connection; symbolic languageis a case in point.
From the earliest times, human creativity has not been the result of a greaterintelligence than other living species, but rather, as a refined sensibility, capacityfor connection and ability to compare different levels.
G. B.
Creativity derives from an interaction that is neither determined nor programmable,between diversities that are obviously compatible with one another. Not only isthe diversity important, but also the presence of a context and fundamental rulesof interaction, whereby the diversities have all the time necessary to interact withone another.
Creativity is closely linked to diversity via another key concept of complexity,namely redundancy. We might ask, why is evolution so rich in creation? Why hasevolution had, and why does it continue to have, so much time? Every individual
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is a new process, every individual has her or his own fundamental genetic card.New species are created because, throughout the world, so many individualsare generated, so many genetic combinations. In the same way, new ideas arecreated because our brains have so many possibilities of interaction, not to mentioncompetition, between different neuronal networks. The same thing happens withinour society: new ideas are generated because the interactions between individualsare rich, multiple, and diversified.
A. M.
We are seeing the parallels—the isomorphisms—between what are traditionallythought of as evolutionary processes, and the emergence of ideas, which tradi-tionally are likely to be studied under the heading of creativity. We see networks,interactions, connections, the role of time, and diversity. But with all this creativity,we obviously acknowledge society today is in crisis.
G. B.
Today we are starting to consider the role of diversity, but we still have notproperly recognized the role of time and redundancy. In other words, for there tobe innovation, it is not sufficient just to put different individuals together, or togive an individual a diversified culture. There also need to be interactions betweenthese individuals that are sufficiently rich, continuous, constant, and far-reaching.Above all, though, it must be possible to make mistakes, to go down a blind alley,or to follow a line of development that will eventually prove fruitless. Nature hasgenerated this redundancy over millennia, hundreds of thousands of millions ofyears. Evolution is creative because it has the variable of time on its side. Now,humanity can be creative if, and only if, it understands that the time variable isintrinsic to the creative process. It is not just a contingent aspect, but intrinsicto the way in which diversities can interact. For this reason, there cannot be amechanical rule of interaction between diversities. Emergence is not somethingimplicit in the parts, whereby, putting them all together, the parts give rise to amore efficient “whole.” The “whole” comes about only if the forms of interactionare confronted, tried out, and set one against the other. And this is the real paradoxof our society, which seeks economic and technological innovation by constantlyaccelerating the rhythm. To this purpose, it even tries to curtail diversity, unawarethat such behavior may in fact lead to sterility.
We should be very clear on this point. If human organizations, whether statesor companies, want to learn something from natural creativity, then these twovariables of diversity and time must be considered as critical and indispensable. So,one of the rules for setting up a creative group is not just to choose individuals whoare very different, both internally and externally, but also to give them sufficienttime to create multiple relationships, using different languages. Therefore, goodleadership ensures different individuals are seen by others as different, according toa range of registers and languages, above and beyond the rational, technological,and scientific. The more this interaction between human individuals is made
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creative, the more each person will become a plurality of poles, languages, andpotential, all of which can contribute to the interaction.
I believe that, nowadays, it is fundamental for human organizations to under-stand the secrets underlying the success of natural creativity. Nature expresses amuch greater diversity and redundancy than we previously thought. Nature neverachieves innovation via the quickest route. As we said earlier, before reachingthe processes of standardisation, there needs to be an interminable process ofexperimentation. For there to be new species, every individual needs to have aredundancy and genetic variety that are different from each other.
E. C.
This gives food for thought, when we consider the typical ways we learn, evenon how we “do science,” and, therefore, on how we set up and structure thoseorganizations, such as universities, academies and companies, that are intended toacquire and produce new knowledge.
G. B.
So, here is the great paradox: human organizations, these days, whether states,companies, or universities, are hardly natural, or rather, they are still based onscience’s mechanical model, which has given results, but results that are no longercomparable with the importance of planetary requirements. For the same technol-ogy to produce innovative results today, the processes of innovation must not bedirect. The innovation process should not contain an arbitrary restriction on thetime and space of its interaction, because the creative process represents the emer-gence of new totalities, which need different qualities and quantities to emerge.How did life emerge? How did conscience emerge? Because they were the prod-uct of a long history with numerous different constituents. We should never forgetthat the quality and quantity of the interactions are strategic to this emergence.Human creativity is clearly a process of emergence and, as such, is subject tothe same natural rules. A simplified system cannot give creativity. It may rendercertain aspects more efficient than their previous versions, but this serves, if at all,to standardize. However, creativity has its own precise rules, which are linked toevolution and the processes of natural history.
A. M.
We can summarize as follows. The idea is that of a universe that, instead of beinghomogeneous, mechanical, and static, is plural and dynamic, and indeed creqative.And of a thought process, a way of thinking, which, instead of homogenizing andtotalizing, is diversifying and individualizing. Let’s go back to this view of thecreative universe.
G. B.
I think it is really interesting, as you have stressed, to compare the idea of creativityand the idea of the universe. The universe of Laplace was not creative, because
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it was deducible from laws, so the fundamental tendencies were described bylaws. The fixation of Laplace’s era was: “the laws are everything, everythingwas present from the beginning, history is just something peripheral,” just likediversity. History was not creative. Nowadays, even the most conservative scien-tist would overturn this argument, saying: “the laws of the universe delimit anenormous space of possibilities, an infinite space of possibilities.” History willdecide which possibilities will be realized and which not, and the space for con-tingency and randomness is immense. What does this all mean? It means thatnothing can be taken as given in the universe, that the universe is creative andcontingent, in a structural way. This is what Gould emphasized, too, with respectto evolution. This concept of a creative universe, the affirmation that, even at thelevel of the macrocosm, identities are constantly evolving and that the future isnot deducible from the past, represents a completely new idea (Ceruti 2008; Peat2000).
Today, we still observe a universe, from our point of view as terrestrials, inwhich life seems to be a phenomenon that is constantly occupying more spacewith regard to the inanimate universe. Yet, we cannot know the future relationshipbetween life and the universe. In the end, life may well create new alternatives todecay and cosmic death, which seem to be defined by the processes of coolingdown and entropy of the universe. In the universe, life is creation, par excellence.It is compatible with the laws of the universe, but it is not deducible from them.This is true, likewise, for human intelligence, for consciousness and for the birthof technology. Intelligence, consciousness, life and complex human society areobviously compatible with the universe, but they are also, and above all, uniqueand unrepeatable creations.
The creative universe is a new paradigm, one that has been gaining ground inrecent years. It helps us understand, through a fundamental triangulation with themacrocosm and the microcosm, how the idea of a creative subject, too, is a newone. Every individual is certainly equipped with biological limitations: the humanspecies cannot fly. There are a thousand genetic reasons for which the humanspecies today, and for the foreseeable future, will not develop wings. However,the human species does not have a defined destiny, but an infinity of possibilities,the realization of which will depend on history, the responsibility of the variouscivilizations, nations, cultures, and individuals.
While all this might appear “hopeless” from one point of view, because it saysthat there is no historical law that guarantees that the human process is progressingwell, on the other hand, it gives us a very large room to maneuver. The fact that wecan conceive of a creative society, a more complex one, is because it is not alreadywritten down somewhere, in the laws of history. Thus, the process of constructingnew cultures, new social relationships, is a creative process par excellence. It usesaspects that are abstractly present in the human species, but uses them to openup possibilities that are really new. The same thing applies to the individual. Anindividual is never a rigid potential, but becomes what her interactions make herbecome, so it is very important to understand that the wealth of proper stimulationsthat we give an individual, both when she is young and an adult, will be decisivefor the creativity of the individual.
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There is no such thing as an individual who is creative, singularly and in isola-tion. However, this does not mean that all individuals have the same potential. Atthe same time, we should be aware that “innate” potentials are nothing comparedto what an individual may or may not become, thanks to interactions and theskills developed in particular circumstances. All of this means that the context,the educational setting becomes paramount. It is by no means of secondary im-portance that universities, research environments, or professional environments ina company, should offer special intellectual and sensorial stimuli. Working in anaesthetically rewarding environment may be fundamental to the creation of newideas. If there are many individuals, it is not sufficient for them to be extremelycompetent for them to successfully develop better or right ideas. These individualsneed to have a humus, too, which supports them, and this humus is not just individ-ual. It is multidimensional. I think that one aspect that gets overlooked today, butwhich is actually very important, is the sensory nature of knowledge. Knowledgeis not based just on an abstract body and on an abstract individual, but is made upof bodies, light, colors, and emotions.
E. C.
This brings to mind the epistemological theories on the sensory-motor bases ofPiaget’s12 theory and on the indispensable role of perception and movement inreaching the possibility of elaborating an abstract, reversible, and formal thought,typical of adulthood (Piaget 1967).
G. B.
In fact, there is a fundamental aspect from which we need to start, a more generalargument that could also refer to sport and games, namely the fundamental char-acter of movement in the human learning process. A child learns by constructingcomplex spaces and this happens because, from birth onward, he has a relationalvision of the space around him at any one time. Clearly, these childhood relationsare initially focused on the individual and, later, they become de-centered. In thisway, with the help of his parents, the child constructs in space the various bound-aries, settings, and places of different quality. Obviously, there is a significantvariability in the extent and quality of the spaces that are generated, and it is herethat the parents play a crucial role; they have the task and the responsibility formaking this learning either creative or non-creative. A child, with its greater ca-pacity for movement, obviously has a deeper understanding; not only objects, butrelations, too, generate their own meaning, because this enables us to understandsomething fundamental; that objects are relations.
R. T.
So, movement plays a key role in the learning process. But what are the implica-tions?
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G. B.
Movement is, in part, ritualized and, in part, virtualized. Let me give you anexample: sports and games are ritualized and virtualized in their movement. Sportdeserves to be studied in depth for this very reason; it is where movement is themost important activity. Movement in sport, though, is not random, but guided byrules, so what becomes particularly relevant in sport is the role of “boundaries.”The opposite is true in games, where great physical movement may be involved,but movement is fundamentally virtual, such as casting dice. In this case, thevirtuality permits us the same actuality as a real movement, because it producesand makes relations evolve. We could say that a game like Monopoly has just asmuch movement as a game of tag played by children. Clearly, in all of this, there isa radical difference in the ratio between virtuality and physicality, but their ritualityis the same. Every form of learning, then, whether it be synchronic or diachronic,is based on movement. Movement which, evidently, can also be extremely virtual,like the movement in Internet, in museums, or leafing through books. In fact, it isat the root of every type of training, which, do not forget, is intrinsically relational.Learning is to be considered not so much the “memorization” of an isolated object,as the “comprehension” of the network of relations in which that object is found.
E. C.
We should look at the role travel plays in creating new learning opportunities.Above all, how can learning be modified historically, in the passage from a modernage, where travel was reserved to a small elite, to present days, where movementis possible on a worldwide scale for a wide range of people?
A. M.
The twentieth century really created a very different set of opportunities in termsof travel and globalization. At the beginning of the century we saw mass migra-tions to America, ships crossing the ocean on their way to places like Ellis Island,where immigrants would be “Americanized,” in more ways than one. In 1968 theappearance of the Boeing 747 marked the beginning of a new form of mass travel,and was also the birth of mass tourism. Trips that had previously taken weeks oreven months could now be made in less than a day. This accelerated the processof globalization and diversification immeasurably, leading to an intensificationof trade, of cultural exchanges, and the fruitful cross-polllination in the arts andsciences. It could easily be argued that many if not all of the most importantdevelopments in human history are the result of cross-cultural interactions. Thetrade networks of the Mediterranean were central to the enormous creativity ofthat region, for instance. Unfortunately, cross-cultural exchanges and interactionsare all too often framed in a very negative sense. We see this at the individual level,where the psychology of cross-cultural encounters initially focused on the preven-tion and cure of culture shock, and in the discourse of diversity and immigration.Rarely do we see a focus on the relational creativity of cultural interactions. Partof the problem here has been that in both cases we did not have established ways
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of thinking about the positive, enriching, psychological dimensions of travel—theconcept of personal growth being notoriously absent in mainstream psychologyuntil recently—and creativity was understood as a personal phenomenon: therewere no categories to account for the creativity of interactions, relationships, letalone cross-cultural encounters. Fortunately this is all starting to change now, butthe process has been slow.
G. B.
It’s true that these days we are giving great emphasis to those spaces calledEurope, America, or even the “whole world,” for our training. While, in the past,these were not considered spaces for learning by the vast majority of humanbeings, today that is no longer so. This great change began toward the middle ofthe nineteenth century. In fact, this historical period witnessed the creation of aspace–time relationship that was common to all human beings. Until that moment,space, with its temporal roots, was equivalent to the physical space that could becovered, so, for the vast majority of civilization that meant a mental learning spacethat coincided with the physical space that had been explored. In the modern era,especially in the 1800s, with the start of the first popular tours spawned by theappearance and growth of the railways, the first national spaces began to appear.Nowadays, by force of circumstances, the spatial experiences of all of us havebecome European at the very least, if not international. Clearly, it makes sensenow to talk of movement in this new space, interpreting it as all the possiblecombinations of virtuality and physicality, since they are both indispensable fora complete learning experience. By way of example, the abilities stimulated byplaying Lego in a virtual way are different from those developed by the classiclego blocks. Or, on a more adult level, video conferences can never compare withthe functions involved in a real business trip; the latter implies a personal andcomplete relationship with the place visited, something only partially perceivedthrough audio-visual means. So, what is the real observation to be made, in thesedays of globalization? Well, that the planetary space, European or American orAfrican space, and so on are no longer linear, but increasingly subject to whatI would call a “hologram” effect. While the cultural differences and diversitieswere once separated into the various areas of the planet, nowadays we have aconcentration of different cultures, by which I mean not only ethnic and religious,but also linked to styles and ways of life, even within the same city. We may beGermans, Italians, French, or of any other origin, yet still have ways of life that arevery different from those typical of a population. This aspect is particularly evidentin the great cities around the world. This is also because, maybe primarily because,they have a stratified temporal dimension. Probably any rural place, today, has amulticultural experience of this sort. However, what distinguishes the metropolisand borderlands is that the diversity, so evident these days, reveals a constitutivediversity over time and a temporal stratification, which simpler urban and ruralcontexts lack. In this sense, we can say that our spatial travel is always a kind ofspatial-time travel. If we accept this, then the activity of travel assumes numerousconnotations. The first of these being the fact that we know that the space–time we
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live in is highly diversified. The second is that we not only experience, inevitably,the quality of the space, but also the relation or the difference between this qualityof space and the physical space in which we live, from which we originate. Thisis because we cannot detach ourselves much from our travel; we always occupya place whereby, excluding a totally nomadic existence, the trip is also “nostos,”return. So, without being aware of it, we always create a comparative point of view.This is just like a child, who builds his external space and then returns home. Thetrip has a sense from the moment there is a home, although this home need not bea physical space. It may also be a spiritual home. The nomad has no home as such,just “the starry sky above him” as Leopardi (2009) called it in the “Cantico notturnodi un pastore dell’Asia” (The nocturnal canticle of an Asian sheepherder). In anycase, the theme of travel is the theme of “nostos”, and this gives us a comparativeviewpoint of the human condition, at a cognitive level, because it tells us howthe human condition is a variety in unity and, consequently, we discover the deeprelations and the deep differences that are part of our experience.
A. M.
I must say that the creativity of cultural exchanges all seems so much moreapparent, as we are dialoging here in North Beach, in the heart of the San Franciscoof the “Beat Generation,” surrounded by so much local color and diversity ofpeople, traditions and backgrounds . . . San Francisco is definitely a city associatedwith moments of cultural creativity, first in the 1960s, and now with the technologyrevolution, which has brought Facebook, Twitter, and Google to the Bay Area.
G. B.
That’s right; history seems to have its mythical moments: the Florence of theMedici, the Athens of Pericles, periods of balance between power and art. Ithink that it is very important to understand that “creativity stimulates creativity.”There are certain moments that have a critical mass of interactions, which leadto the emergence of something new. It was hardly surprising that the Englishuniversity scene of the 1920s was so creative, given that, despite being separatedby disciplines, the great thinkers often met to talk, eat together, and live in the samecolleges. For example, the economist Keynes (1984)13 was extremely influencedby biology, because he was living side by side with the evolutionists. Today’suniversity for the masses seems to have destroyed all this. We should thereforehave a political obligation to create the conditions that will ensure a creativesociety, at the level of the masses, not just an elite. Until now, the moments ofgreatest creativity have been those where an elite succeeded in its interaction, butthis dynamic was possible because it excluded the rest of the world. The Athens ofPericles was a very creative city, but it kept the foreigner at bay, there was slavery,“barbarians,” “stammerers,” “the foreigners.” The modern world has created amass society, where, apparently, there are greater opportunities for all, but thereare also greater regressive possibilities, like totalitarianism, which perhaps we canaddress later. Today the struggle is over the need to create quality and quantity inthe interactions at a mass level, so that the creative processes that are generated
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within a small group can now be generated at a wider collective one. I considerthis a fascinating challenge if we think of the possibilities this could open up forthe human race.
A. M.
A whole host of questions come to mind. How can we re-design society to beso rich in these interactions? Can humanity draw on the creative potential of sixbillion people, not just a few thousand, or hundred thousand, as has been the caseso far with scientists and leading technologists?
I am really keen on “unpacking” this pervasive individualist mythology of cre-ativity. Mickey Mouse comes to mind, with the light bulb that comes on above hishead every time he has a great idea . . . Creativity is considered as an event thathappens inside the head of an individual, and only in certain privileged circum-stances, such as moments of artistic creation or scientific discovery. For somethingto be considered “creative” by the collective imagination, it must resemble the the-ory of relativity or a Beethoven symphony. Now, we are putting forward a differentinterpretation of creativity: we mean it as an ecological phenomenon, rather thanan event happening within one person’s head. Research into creativity has broad-ened, too; we do not just study the mental process or the characteristics of onecreative individual. On the other hand, it is not enough just to have a simple idea.For this to become reality, there need to be many other elements. If you workin an organization, this means coming up against bureaucracy, discussing withcolleagues, setting in motion a veritable ecological process. So, it becomes neces-sary to consider creativity as a much more complex and systematic phenomenonthan that of one individual’s activity. For example, I grew up with the music ofthe Beatles, and my generation grew up with musical groups as iconic images ofcreativity. But in the 80s, in all the academic research on creativity, I never foundany discussion on how creativity emerges within a musical complex or band.These studies, at least in the United States, have focused almost exclusively onindividuals rather than groups. When I first began my research on creative groups,many people still could not conceive of the idea of such a thing: creativity was justan “intra-psychic” phenomenon. Likewise, the creative process was merely “whathappened within the head of a creative person.” And the individual was viewedvery much as a closed system. It has taken a number of factors—from the needfor innovation in business to the reality of the networked society to the conceptualcontribution of systems and complexity theories to begin to bring about change.
G. B.
I would like to return to the image of Mickey Mouse and the light bulb, becausewhat confounds people is the immediacy and rapidity of the result. Individualisttheories of creativity emphasis the rapidity of the final result, without consideringthe importance of the variety and non-directionality of the preparatory work.That is why it is interesting to remember the evolutionary models, that of thepunctuated equilibriums. Gould used this to show us how most histories of speciesare characterized by long periods of stasis, then a steady emergence of populations,
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each different from the others, in which a species diversifies greatly and, only whenone of the genetic varieties remains isolated to some degree, there develops andquickly emerges a great variety, from which originates a new species. Obviously,we cannot blindly apply evolutionary models of biology to human creativity, butthis example teaches us something important: when a creative group managesto isolate itself to some extent, so as to produce a new result, this does notappear from nothing, but needs to be related to all the work preceding it. Thinkof Einstein.14 This scientist may well have been a particular genius; in fact, theisolation that excluded Einstein from the university world probably favoured hiscreative capacity, but without all the preparatory work around Newton’s paradigm,there would never have been an Einstein. We may marvel at the creativity of thisperson, but we know that, when it comes to quantum theory, Einstein took aconservative stance and was famous for asserting that “God does not play dice.”While it is true that Einstein was an innovator par excellence, he was also aconservative par excellence.
Although each individual has his own peculiar and unique mental dynam-ics, every mind is also the concentrate of an entire age, and this concentrateis anything but homogeneous. Returning to the history of science, the scien-tist is a person who brings together many contradictions present in his time,managing to recombine them in such a way as to see different possibilities. Hewho creates may be pregnant with the future, but he is also conditioned by thepresent.
Let’s give another example, the figure of Copernicus. He understood the pos-sibility of a heliocentric system, but still within the logic of the medieval spheres,within a universe that was still substantially Ptolemy’s. Copernicus, too, was aninnovator and a conservative at the same time. Then there was Darwin (1859a,1859b), who had to circle the globe before arriving at the theory of evolution!And the interesting thing is that the data and observations Darwin made aboutthe birds of the Galapagos largely conform to the traditional paradigm. It wasonly when he reread this data through the eyes of Malthus15 that there emergedother points of view that shed new light on them. So, can we say that Darwin’stheory of evolution is continuous or discontinuous? The result is discontinuous,but, without all this preparatory work of twenty years, without his globe-trotting,without putting many elements together, the theory of evolution would never haveemerged.
The human mind is always a microcosm, reflecting a more general macrocosm,which we can define as Zeitgeist or spirit of the age, which, in turn, is made up ofarchaisms, as well as thrusts toward the future and even contributions from far awayin space and time. It is as if the creative process, even the most individual, werea sort of funnel of concentration within the mind of an individual, of extremelyvaried elements, originating from different times and spaces. The most creativeindividual is the one who can create networks, who knows how to interpret hisown experiences in the light of many other points of view. It was exactly like thiswith Einstein, Copernicus,16 Darwin,17 or Mozart. These “geniuses,” who wereanything but alone, expressed their ideas via a network of myriad contributions,deriving from various languages and cultures, separated in space and time.
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E. C.
This behavior that has typified the history of science still happens today, beingclearly evident in the social recognition of any new scientific discovery. Frequently,the name of one or two principal exponents working on the research are remem-bered, while the team that backed up the research work is hardly acknowledged.For example, when talking of the discovery of DNA,18 we always remember Wat-son and Crick (1953), but we hardly ever mention Maurice Wilkins and RosalindFranklin, who made a notable contribution to the discovery. Yet another examplecould be the recognition system that scientists have developed within their field,whereby researchers frequently assert their existence by placing the name of anacknowledged scientist, who is head of their laboratory, before their own on apaper.
G. B.
I agree, but if we consider less individual processes, then the argument becomeseven clearer. We notice how a scientific team works in a collective way. What ismore, this condition is responsible for both increased creativity and for the blocksto any further creativity. The musical paradigm is particularly interesting, becausemusic in our culture, whether music or cinema, is increasingly seen as a collectivephenomenon. The Beatles represented a great emergence as a musical complexin the second half of the twentieth century, because a musical group expressesperfectly the need for the musical creator to be subject to collective rules. Theemergence of polyphony, the role of the orchestra in Western tradition, was anotherimportant radical phenomenon, because an orchestra is a complex organization ofinstruments.
Furthermore, we can see, today, how the musical product, just like the cine-matographic, is increasingly dependent on the ability of technicians. The moreimportant technology becomes for the musical or cinematic product, the more thetechnical contribution ceases to be marginal and becomes an integral part of thecreative process. In fact, in the modern era, there is an increasing dependence ontechnology, whether on a small scale like a good computer or writing program, orat a more refined level, like re-elaborating sound or images. In my opinion, thisdependence on technology does not represent a reversal of the creative process,but a greater awareness of the roots of the creative process itself.
There are researchers who are investigating this very question, the impact oftechnology on the human species. Among the Italian researchers, Giuseppe Longo(2005, 2008)19 has given pride of place to the figure of the symbiont. He assertsthat the human species today cannot really be considered as other than a symbiosisbetween human and bacteria. Similarly, an expert on bacteria like Lynn Margulis20
states—only half-jokingly—that the human species is not a simple mammal, but asymbiosis of Homo sapiens with innumerable bacterial species (Margulis 2008).We should be aware today that the human mind is probably already in pronouncedsymbiosis with technological elements, which, on their own, are probably notintelligent, but certainly, when they interact with the human species, generate theembryos of a new collective intelligence for our species.
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Whether you like this or not, our age is one in which another essential elementneeds to be added to creativity as a collective phenomenon, understood as theinteraction between individuals. I am talking of technology as an instrument forthe elaboration of creative possibilities that, on their own, were not present inthe human mind. In other words, when we write today with a common wordprocessor, we quickly realize that many of the writing possibilities suggested tous actually derive from the interaction between mind and machine. This happensin writing, in music, in the cinema, and so on. Ours is not just the age in which weacknowledge the collective aspect of the creative process, but also that in whichcreation is a phenomenon shared by humans and technology. The human race isincreasingly influenced by technology and, likewise, technology by the humanrace. In this sense, far from being a process that standardizes the mental processesof the human species, technology is a process that, by interacting with these mentalprocesses, helps expand the range of possibilities.
Naturally, this novelty also brings with it a risk. As Edgar Morin (1999, 2008)wrote, the great risk is that human beings, to make themselves understood bythe machine, become mechanized, adopting its same language, so humans arereducing the variety of possibilities and are, so to speak, stooping to the machine’slevel, rather than using technology to rise above it. On the other hand, if the humanspecies retains its variety of languages, of biology, of body and psyche, then themachine is transformed into an external factor and the possibilities for our speciesincrease significantly. The choice is ours and it is not imposed by the machine;if anything, the machine is just “another,” asking us what we want to do withourselves.
A. M.
To summarize, I would like to outline the characteristics of a world that we areleaving behind us, a world seen as a system that is static, closed, deterministic,hierarchic and even polarising or disjointing, as Morin (2008) described it. In theplace of this closed world, we do not want to substitute one that is open rather thanclosed, but rather one where there is an interaction between open and closed. Thisworld reveals itself creatively, evolving between periods of stasis and periods ofsudden change.
Likewise, if we consider our identity as open, it becomes an identity that hascontinuous exchanges with the world, continuous interaction, constantly beinggenerated by an alternation of equilibrium and non-equilibrium, but it has toretain a degree of closure in order to keep its integrity.
Returning, finally, to the theme of creativity, we may also consider the con-tradictory nature of the relationship between the individual and the collective. Infact, the creative individual is sometimes hampered by the collective, in the sensethat individuals can be blocked by bureaucracies, peers, and so on—this imageryis extremely prevalent in our individualistic culture. Perhaps the archetypal ex-ample is the movie The Fountainhead, based on Ayn Rand’s novel by the samename—the individual is seen as the source of creativity, and other people are all
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a source of conformity, while, on other occasions, this diversity is just seen as aproblem (Rand 1994). This exemplifies precisely the kind of disjunctive, either/or,polarizing thinking that made thinking about creative interactions so difficult if notimpossible. Either individual creativity or collective conformity. The possibilityof creativity in interactions, in groups, in some, rather than all or none, as thephilosopher Jay Ogilvy (1977) articulates it, is not part of the mental landscape.This is why a shift in our thinking toward a more complex perspective is so neces-sary now: a way of thinking based on reduction and disjunction, particularly whentaken to its polarizing extremes, drastically limits our landscape of possibilities.
Jazz history is characterized by many interesting chronologies, but not nearlyenough emphasis is given to the fact that this music originates from the interactionbetween different cultures. Clearly, jazz has strong African roots, but it was notborn in Africa, and has used European instruments like the piano and the saxo-phone, not to mention its typically complex harmonies. The African Americanswho were its first practitioners made use of whatever was available, and drew ona plurality of traditions, instruments, and musical values. Frequently, a problem-atic essentialism leads us to associate a creative product to one culture, insteadof studying how the interaction of various groups, ethnicities, and traditions hascreated a completely new and original music. Art we call European has really beenenriched by other traditions from all over the world – Africa, Japan and Polynesiafor modern art (see Picasso, Van Gogh, and Gauguin), gamelan21 music for De-bussy, heralding an oriental fashion that characterized the whole of that historicalperiod. All of this is practically missing in our concept of creativity, just as it is inour way of thinking: the role of interaction, organization, contamination . . . Thesefactors are often overlooked or, at best, considered within the creative processesof one “genius,” isolated from his historical context and without his “networks”of relationships and contexts.
G. B.
There are many observations that could be made on the relationship between theindividual and the collective. Let’s go back, once more, to the scientific modelsof evolution. Consider Kauffman (1995) and this chemistry of life, conceived ofas a phenomenon shared by a network of very different but very heterogeneouschemical constituents. First of all, life was a global and planetary property, onlylater creating the cell, and the metabolic activity within a cell became distinct fromthe metabolic activity surrounding it. First, there was an environment suitable forlife on a planetary level, then the organisms appeared. This does not mean thatthe organisms were not an important step forward; without the cell and withoutthe organisms, there would not have been the animals, plants and human species,but the organisms and the individuals, ultimately, exist only because they have aprimordial support network.
A. M.
Let me try to summarize some of the more recent developments as a way ofclosing this section. There are strong indications that in the twenty-first century
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the discourse and practices of creativity itself are changing quite dramatically.A transdisciplinary review of creativity shows interesting developments across aspectrum of disciplines. A synthesis of the emerging research and practices ofcreativity can be summarized as proposing a view that is radically different fromthe machine metaphor.
In the emerging view, creativity is the fundamental nature of the universe,the process of creation itself, rather than the spark of an occasional (C/c)reatorin a machine, clockwork universe. From early roots in philosophy to biology,the notion that the universe as a whole appears to be a creative process (e.g.,evolutionary cosmology), is becoming more widespread. Rather than assumingthat “creation” occurs once with a “big bang” or a Creator God, emerging viewsin disciplines ranging from Christian theology to cosmology are beginning topropose an ongoing creative process that manifests in different modes and tempos,a “creation continua.” Creativity is, in this view, an intrinsic characteristic of Being,as well as being, rather than a rare event or quality. At the human level creativity islikewise a basic characteristic of being human, and this is shown in the emergingunderstanding of everyday creativity, and more broadly as “everyday, everyone,everywhere” human capacity and possibility.
Creativity is seen as a networked, systemic, ecological, contextual, historicaland relational process rather than an isolated, atomistic phenomenon. An opensystems view of creativity stresses the roles of interactions, and the expansion ofthe creative process from an insight inside one person’s mind to a more systemicprocess occurring in time and space. This means looking at creativity as a processembedded in a network of relationships, influences, and interactions, an evolvingprocess that involves continuous exchanges with one’s environment. It is notconfined to great and unusual insights in limited domains such as the arts andsciences. Unlike their Baby Boomer parents, Millennial college students associatecreativity with everyday activities and social interaction. Research on creativepartnerships, group creativity, collective improvisation, open source networkeddiscovery, creative cities, and other forms of interactive creativity, as well asthe role of environments in fostering creativity point to a much richer and morecomplex view of the who, where, and how of creativity.
Many of the most interesting social innovations of the last 20 years or so havebeen about networking, participation, and grassroots efforts. These innovationsare connected to the emergence of the Internet, social media, the emergenceof a networked society, the changing role of women, the values of the Millennialgeneration, including (and this is limited to mostly U.S./U.K. examples): YouTube,Etsy, Facebook, Wikipedia, WebMed, Lord of Warcraft, farmer’s markets, artisanalfoods and the Slow Food movement, MySpace, blogs, vlogs, Twitter, flash mobs,Britain’s Got Talent, independent music labels and movies, Garageband, DIYculture including DIY education, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Craig’s list, Dancing with theStars, American Idol, and all sorts of “reality television.” The emerging Makersmovement is another sign, as is Toffler’s related concept of “prosumer” whichbrings together the terms producer and consumer to illustrate how the traditionalopposition between the two roles is becoming blurred (Toffler and Toffler 2006).
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These are all examples of new forms of expression and networked organizationthat involve a much greater degree of grass-roots participation than before.
The traditional role of the critic, the artist, the record label, the audience, thereader, the novelist, the journalist, the photo-reporter, the newspaper, are all beingsupplemented (and in many cases seriously threatened) by this ability individualshave to connect, participate, create, and share their creativity with the world inways they could not before. The traditional top-down, one-way communicationfrom author to reader, from performer to audience, from star to public, fromproducer to consumer, from leader to follower, is changing with the emergence ofa participatory culture. These are, arguably, the social manifestations of the claimsby Foucault, Barthes, and others of the “death” of the author, the subject, and soon. Phenomena such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, but also al Qaedaare examples of social movements that have used a form of “swarm,” or networkedcreativity. Aided by the Internet, social media and collaborative processes, socialmovements have developed new and unusual solutions to addressing the problemsfaced by small groups in getting their message across as well as committingterrorist acts.
The implications of these emerging views of creativity are considerable. “Ev-eryday, everywhere, everyone” creativity points to the possibility of a much morewidely distributed creativity throughout organizations and society. Creativity isno longer limited to a few clearly defined areas, such as the development of newproducts, and exceptional individuals. It can be brought to bear on simple humaninteractions, work processes, interpersonal conflicts, and other areas where it wasformerly not valorized or even recognized.
Creativity is paradoxical/cybernetic; paradoxical in the sense that character-istics of the creative person, process, product, and environment defy conventionand involve the conjunction of qualities that are not commonly “thought together.”The paradoxical nature of creativity has long been acknowledged, but until theemergence of complexity thinking, which argued for the paradoxical nature ofcomplex systems, it has remained rather under-theorized. For instance, terms suchas order and disorder, rigor and imagination, hard work and play, idea generationand idea selection, times of introspection and solitude and times of interactionand exchange are typically viewed as static, either/or oppositions, whereas in thecontext of creativity they are in an ongoing cybernetic process of “navigation.”Creativity is a complex phenomenon. As we have seen, because of Modernity’ssplit between science and the humanities (romanticism), it was viewed in a polar-ized way and this in turn led to rather simplistic yet persistent notions of creativity.Paradox is a recurring characteristic of creativity at all levels of granularity. It canbe found in research on creative individuals, creative groups and organizations,and in the creative process.
Highly creative individuals have paradoxical qualities. For instance, they can beboth energetic and quiet, smart and naıve, playful and disciplined, extroverted andintroverted, rebellious, and conservative, and they escape rigid gender stereotyp-ing. Most dramatically, perhaps, it has been suggested that they are both “crazier”and “saner,” scoring higher on measures of psychopathology but also on measuresof mental health.
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Research on creative groups in R&D has indicated that successful researchersare both more autonomous and more collaborative, engage in both basic andapplied research, are focused but also avoid narrow specialization. As with theparadoxical characteristics of individuals, we find that whereas conventionallythese terms are mutually exclusive, in the case of creativity—and in the view ofsome researchers—they are viewed as two sides of the same coin, rather thanopposed.
The creative process involves both divergence and convergence, idea-generationand idea-selection, being open and being critical. The ability to entertain what onthe surface appear to be opposing thoughts or concepts seems central to creativethinking. In fact, many creative insights and breakthroughs in the arts and scienceshave been attributed to this ability, what Rothenberg (1979) called “Janusian think-ing.” The term for this form of paradoxical thinking is taken from the image ofthe Greek God, Janus, with two faces looking in opposite directions. It is charac-terized by the capacity to entertain two opposite or contradictory ideas, holdingeach to be valid or true simultaneously. Creative individuals utilize this form ofcognition that transcends ordinary logic, resulting in resolutions to complex prob-lems that are novel and original. Such formulations are often creative because ofthis capacity for embracing opposites; two conditions that appear initially to bemutually exclusive or antithetical can be held in tension, often leading to a majorbreakthrough in insight.
Cybernetics offers a different way of thinking about paradoxical phenomenain creativity. A static logic of either/or is replaced by a fluid process of ongoingnavigation between two terms that are normally framed as contradictory. Para-doxical characteristics therefore reflect a cybernetic relationship that involves aboth/and logic, whereby the terms can alternate at different times, as with intro-version/extroversion, rebelliousness/conservatism, or divergence/convergence.
The above terms are paradoxical—in the sense that they go against commonsense—because in modernity they were historically and culturally viewed as op-positions. With the increasing importance of creativity in today’s world, we seethat the “paradox” of creativity provides us both with insights and alternativesto the challenge of postmodernism articulated by philosopher Jay Ogilvy (1989),who has argued that the pressure toward postmodernism is building from our lackof ability to overcome certain dualisms that are built into modern ways of knowing.
One example originates in the finding that creative individuals do not conform tostereotyped, polarized definition of gender roles. Creative individuals have accessto a wider range of experience, and are limited to ways of being, thinking, andfeeling associated with traditional gender roles. This characteristic was viewed asparadoxical because it goes against traditional gender roles and assumptions.
Creativity is an emergent process arising out of interactions within a given sys-tem and between the system and its environment and is therefore unpredictable.The Modern individualistic view of creativity oriented to “eminent” or uncon-troversial creatives producing exceptional products. Now there has been a shifttoward a more collaborative, “everyday,” ecological networked understanding andpractice of creativity, as shown above. The former view was strictly “top-down”:the flash of inspiration came from God down to humankind; the composer was
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at the top of the organizational chart of the symphony orchestra; the artist’swork is transmitted to a passive audience. Creativity is not interactive here. Theemphasis today is increasingly on breaking down the old hierarchical binariesof artist/audience, composer/performer, top/down, with creativity an emergentproperty of interactions, and more and more ways and being sought to increase“audience participation.”
The emergent nature of creativity poses a big challenge to more traditional(scientific) management approaches that focus on order, predictability, and theavoidance of mistakes. Traditional organizations, as we have seen, were not de-signed for creativity. When creativity was necessary, it came from individualsselected to be creative for a specific task (Research and Development, an execu-tive brainstorming session), and the assumption was that once the creative solutionwas found, things would go back to normal, meaning to the machine model oforder, predictability, and so on. Creativity tools like lateral thinking fit very wellwith the assumption that a tool could be used to elicit a creative idea, which couldmake the creative process limited and contained, and not require anything butan insight in the mind of one person, not disturbing the larger organization inthe process. The central difference between machine organizations and innova-tive organizations is that the latter view creativity as central to their mission andidentity. They do not call on creativity only in moments of need. This differencein attitude might be summarized like this: an improvising musician would notsay “let’s be really creative tonight” but “let’s do a great show,” and in innovativeorganizations rather than saying, “we need a creative solution,” as if that werean unusual phenomenon, they might say “we need a great solution,” or in SteveJobs’s well known expression, an insanely great solution, because creativity is agiven (Isaacson 2011). The question is not whether to be creative, but what are wedoing with our creativity, how are we using it, and how good are we at manifestingand expressing it?
NOTES
1. For further details, see the glossary under “complex system.”2. Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) was an American palaeontologist, geologist, biologist and
historical scientist. Together with Niles Eldredge he elaborated, in 1972, the theory of punctuatedequilibrium, giving a new interpretation to the theory of evolution by proposing that evolutionprogressed in “jumps,” characterized by long periods of relative stability, “punctuated” by intense,sometimes catastrophic, moments of activity. He is highly considered by contemporary scientificthinkers (see Gould 1980, 1985, 2002, 2007).
3. Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) was a physicist, chemist, and epistemologist. Awarded the NobelPrize for Chemistry in 1977 for his studies into thermodynamics applied to complex systems andthose far from equilibrium. Central to his thought were the concepts of entropy, irreversibility,dissipative structures, and self-organizing systems. From this starting point, together with otherresearchers like Francisco Varela and Isabelle Stengers, he began to reflect on the connectionsexisting between very different sectors, such as physics, chemistry, ecology and the social sciences,considering them as integrated systems of knowledge. For this reason he is considered one of theFathers of complexity (see Prigogine and Stengers 1979).
4. Stuart Kauffman (1939). Is a biophysicist and biochemist, and researcher into complex systems.For many years Kauffman collaborated with the Santa Fe Institute (1986–1997), following variouslines of research; in particular, into biological systems and their modeling, for example, the role
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of self-organization in systems far from equilibrium, the role played by autocatalytic systems inthe origins of life, the role played by genetic regulatory networks in the genetic expression andbiology of growth (see Kauffman 2000).
5. Francisco Varela (1946–2001) was a biologist, philosopher, neuroscientist, and epistemologist.Together with Maturana (Humberto Maturana, Santiago del Cile, September 14, 1928, biologistand Chilean philosopher) he elaborated the concept of autopoiesis (from the Greek “auto” [self]and “poiesis” [creation] to indicate the fundamental characteristic of living systems (see Varela,Thompson, and Rosch 1991; Maturana and Varela 1980, 1984).
6. The Cambrian is one of the most important divisions of the geological timescale, from around542 to 490 million years ago. Life had not yet started to develop on land during the Cambrian.
7. Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–1996) was a scientific historian, philosopher, and epistemologist. One ofthe fathers of the historicist perspective, the post-positivist philosophical perspective, he proposedstudying science by starting from the routes it has taken through history, rather than followingmore general logic. To this end, he formulated an epistemology that emphasized the various stages(immature science, normal science, crisis, revolutionary science, resolution) that the scientificdisciplines went through during their historical development (see Kuhn 1957, 1962/1970).
8. Niles Eldredge (1943) is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist. In 1972, together withStephen J. Gould, he elaborated the theory of punctuated equilibrium, giving a new interpretationof the theory of evolution by proposing that evolution progressed in “jumps,” characterized bylong periods of relative stability, punctuated by intense, sometimes catastrophic, moments ofactivity. Since 1969, he has been curator of the Department of Invertebrates at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History (see Eldredge and Tattersall 1982; Eldredge 2005).
9. Heinz Von Foerster (1911–2002) was a scientist, scientific anthropologist, and physicist. VonFoerster dedicated his life to analyzing various arguments: starting with the analysis of memoriza-tion processes, analyzed as recursive dynamics, and learning and forgetting processes, he crossedthese sectors of analysis with cybernetic studies. He was responsible for second order cybernet-ics, which, unlike the first order, elaborated by Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann, shiftsthe attention from observed systems to observing systems. In 1956 he founded the BiologicalComputer Laboratory at the University of Illinois (see Von Foerster 1982).
10. Edgar Morin (1921) is a philosopher and French sociologist. Known for his transdisciplinaryapproach, Morin’s prolific output has covered topics ranging from the philosophy of science tocinema, ecology to politics. Central to his work is the development of what he calls “complexthought,” a way of thinking and of being in the world that acknowledges interconnectedness,uncertainty, and creativity. We refer mostly to his major six-volume theoretical work, La Methode(1977). In English, we recommend Morin and Kern (1999) and Morin (2008).
11. Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), was a major scientist of the Napoleonic era. He believedfirmly in causal determinism, which is well summed up in the following extract from the in-troduction to Essai: “We can consider the present state of the universe as the effect of its pastand the cause of its future. Should an intellect at a determined instant come to know all theforces operating in nature, and all the positions of all the objects of which nature is composed,if this intellect were, furthermore, sufficiently broad as to subject these data to analysis, it couldencapsulate in one single formula the movements of the greatest bodies in the universe and thesmallest atoms; for such an intellect, nothing would be uncertain and the future, just like the past,would be evident to his eyes” (1814, 2).
12. Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a naturalist and epistemologist. He studied nature, the originand growth of knowledge, and is the father of genetic epistemology. Convinced that we cannot“know knowledge,” leaving aside what the various sciences say on the subject, he elaboratedan experimental epistemology, with the aim of coordinating the methods and results of differentsciences, without being reduced to any of them, and genetic, because attentive to the historicaland evolutionary processes that enable science to undergo a continuous self-application andreflection upon itself. In 1955 he founded and directed until his death the Centre Internationald’Epistemologie Genetique (see Piaget, 1967).
13. John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Economist and founder of modern macroeconomics, hisstudies gave rise to what many thinkers define as the Keynesian revolution. In disagreement with
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the neoclassic economic theory prevalent at the time, he sustained the need for government inter-vention, via increased public expenditure, even through public debt, to encourage the acquisitionof goods and services and favor employment (see Keynes 1984).
14. Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German physicist, particularly known for the formulationof the principles of relativity. In 1905 Einstein formulated the principle of special relativity,in which he added the principle of the constant speed of light to Galileo’s earlier principleof relativity. General relativity, formulated in 1916, however, was founded on the equivalenceprinciple, which expresses the identity between inertial and gravitational mass, that is, it statesthat two bodies are attracted gravitationally with the same mass with which they react to any force,of whatever nature. From the point of view of general relativity, the gravitational field, that is, anon-inertial system, is indistinguishable from any other non-inertial system. Since bodies havemass and generate gravitational fields, all environments are non-inertial. The greatest implicationof general relativity is that space loses its most typical and absolute characteristics. Space–time isconstantly modified by the presence of bodies, which alter it, bend it, and transform it. Space–timeacquires those properties of non-Euclidean geometries, in which, for example, the sum of theangles of a triangle is no longer 180 degrees, and two parallel lines can meet. Euclidean space,as we know it, remains a valid instrument for describing nature, if it is thought of as a localphenomenon.
15. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was an English economist. Malthus’s idea of man’s“struggle for survival,” whereby the population tends to grow geometrically, so more quickly thanfood supplies, which grow arithmetically, had a decisive influence on Darwin for the formulationof his theory of evolution.
16. Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) was a Polish astronomer, universally known for his heliocen-tric theory, which, contrary to the geocentric theory, placed the Sun rather than the Earth at thecenter of the orbit of the other planets. Copernicus was the first to demonstrate that the Sun’smovement is only apparent and is the effect of the Earth’s daily rotation around its own axis,laying the foundations of modern astronomic theory; indicating, for example, the precession ofthe equinoxes and the correct order of the planets in the solar system. His fundamental work, Derevolutionibus orbium coelestium, was published in 1543, shortly before his death.
17. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was a biologist, geologist, zoologist, and botanist, universallyrecognized as the father of evolutionism. His studies and investigations in various fields furnishedextensive proof for the transformation of organisms and he elaborated the hypothesis that allspecies, however different today, in reality, descended from a single common ancestor. He wenton to describe the factors that led to the evolution of species, elaborating his theory of naturalselection (see Darwin 1859a, 1859b).
18. The discovery of DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid) occurred in 1953 thanks to the work of thebiologist James Watson, the physicist Francis Crick, together with the biophysicists MauriceWilkins and his assistant, Rosalind Franklin. Nicknamed the double spiral, it is the chemicalsubstance that enables genetic transmission. For further information see Watson and Crick (1953).
19. Giuseppe O. Longo is an Italian information theorist, novelist and author of several plays whosework has focused on the relationship between human beings and technology.
20. Lynn Margulis (1938) is a biologist. She is known particularly for her theory on the origin of eu-karyotic organelles, now generally accepted as the explanation for the formation of mitochondria.According to this theory, the mitochondrion presents certain characteristics typical of bacteria:the presence of cardiolipin molecules and absence of cholesterol in the internal membrane, thepresence of circular double spiral DNA and the presence of its own ribosomes and a doublemembrane. Like bacteria, the mitochondria have no histones and their ribosomes respond tocertain antibiotics. What is more, mitochondria are semi-autonomous organelles that replicate,by binary fission, independently of the cell. Considering these similarities, the endo-symbiotictheory sustains that the mitochondria derive from ancestral bacteria, equipped with an oxidizingmetabolism, which were absorbed by the eukaryotic cells, to their mutual benefit. Subsequently,the bacteria transferred most of their genetic material to the cell, becoming, thereby, mitochondria.
21. The gamelan is an orchestra of musical instruments, originating in Indonesia and consisting ofmetallophones, xylophones, drums, and gongs, which may also include bamboo flutes, stringedinstruments, and voice. Traditionally, the term “gamelan” is used to refer more to the group of
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instruments of which it is composed than the musicians themselves. A gamelan is an entity inwhich the instruments are designed and tuned to play together.
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