Creativity: Linchpin in the Quest for a Viable Theory of Cultural Evolution

Abstract

This paper outlines the implications of neural-level accounts of insight, and models of the conceptual interactions that underlie creativity, for a theory of cultural evolution. Since elements of human culture exhibit cumulative, adaptive, open-ended change, it seems reasonable to view culture as an evolutionary process, one fueled by creativity. Associative memory models of creativity and mathematical models of how concepts combine and transform through interaction with a context, support a view of creativity that is incompatible with a Darwinian (selectionist) framework for cultural evolution, but compatible with a non-Darwinian (Self-Other Reorganization) framework. A theory of cultural evolution in which creativity is centre stage could provide the kind of integrative framework for the behavioral sciences that Darwin provided for the life sciences.