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The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, Second Edition

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The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, Second Edition THE CREATIVE MIND How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: myths and mechanisms was first published, Mar- garet A. Boden’s bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the nature of human creativity in the arts, science and everyday life. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, intro- duction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind. Margaret A. Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at Sussex University, where she founded the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences in 1987 (now the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science). Her previous publications include Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (1977/87), Dimensions of Creativity (1994) and The Philosophy of Artificial Life (1996). THE CREATIVE MIND Myths and mechanisms Margaret A. Boden Second edition First edition published 1990 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd. Second edition published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 1990, 2004 Margaret A. Boden Margaret A. Boden asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Boden, Margaret A. The creative mind: myths and mechanisms/Margaret A. Boden.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Creative ability. 2. Artificial intelligence. I. Title. BF408.B55 2003 153.3′5—dc21 2003046533 ISBN 0-203-50852-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-34008-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–31452–6 hbk ISBN 0–415–31453–4 pbk FOR JOHN TROUNCE AND IN MEMORY OF TONY TRAFFORD I am not forgetting beauty. It is because the worth of beauty is transcendent that the subtle ways of the power that achieves it are transcendently worth searching out. John Livingston Lowes CONTENTS Preface to the second edition ix Preface to the first edition xi Acknowledgments xii In a Nutshell 1 1 The Mystery of Creativity 11 2 The Story so Far 25 3 Thinking the Impossible 40 4 Maps of the Mind 54 5 Concepts of Computation 88 6 Creative Connections 125 7 Unromantic Artists 147 8 Computer-scientists 199 9 Chance, Chaos, Randomness, Unpredictability 233 10 Elite or Everyman? 256 11 Of Humans and Hoverflies 277 vii CONTENTS 12 Epilogue 305 Notes 323 Bibliography 331 Index 339 viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION This book is about human creativity, and how computers (discussed in Chapters 5–8) can help us to understand it. Since I first wrote it my views on what creativity is have remained basically the same. So, apart from minor clarificatory changes, I haven’t altered the main text of the book – except to add one example-program: Douglas Hofstadter’s COPYCAT. I had originally planned to highlight COPYCAT in my discussion of analogy, but after much soul-searching decided not to include it at all. I felt that the details of how COPYCAT works were too technical for a general audience, but didn’t want to skate over them for fear of appear- ing to recommend magic; moreover, they were not yet o fficially pub- lished so would not have been easy for readers to find. I soon regretted that decision, so I added a foreword to the 1991 paperback indicating what is interesting about the program while ignoring the details. In this second edition I have taken the opportunity to integrate that brief account of COPYCAT within Chapter 7. I have, however, added two new pieces: one best read before the main text and one after it. The first gives an introductory overview of my account of creativity. It distinguishes the three main types of creativity – combinational, exploratory, and transformational – and outlines how far we can expect computers to match them. The second new piece, an ‘epilogue’ placed as Chapter 12, mentions some computer models of creativity developed in recent years. In writing that I have assumed that readers will already be familiar with the main text. So, for example, I describe Harold Cohen’s recent painting- program there without re-describing its predecessors (the AARON pro- grams featured in Chapter 7). Because The Creative Mind was written for a general audience, I haven’t detailed the many comments I’ve received since it first appeared. Anyone who is interested can find a wide range of commentary, and my own replies, in two ‘multiple reviews’ in the professional literature. One is in ix PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17: 3 (1994), 519–570; the other in Artificial Intelligence 79 (1995), 65–182. In addition, Hofstadter has criticized com- puter models of creativity in general – and my ideas in particular – in several recent publications: his large book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies (1995, especially pp. 55–193 and Chapter 6) and his two chap- ters in David Cope’s Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style (2001). Also, Selmer Bringsjord and David Ferrucci oppose my account in their book Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity (2000, especially Chapter 1). Recent surveys on computers and creativity include the books listed in the Bibliography under Candy and Edmonds (2002), Dartnall (2002), Finke, Ward and Smith (1992), Franchi and Guzeldere (1995), Guzeldere and Franchi (1994), Holyoak and Thagard (1994), Partridge and Rowe (1994), Shrager and Langley (1990), and Schwanauer and Levitt (1993). These are all fairly technical, however. The items mentioned in the previous paragraph are more accessible for non-specialists. M.A.B. Brighton, November 2002 x PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION This book offers new answers to some old questions: What is creativity? How is it possible? And could science ever explain it? Creativity is a puzzle, a paradox, some say a mystery. Artists and scientists rarely know how their original ideas come about. They men- tion intuition, but cannot say how it works. Most psychologists cannot tell us much about it, either. What’s more, many people assume that there will never be a scientific theory of creativity – for how could science possibly explain fundamental novelties? Parts of the puzzle can now be put in place, for we can now say something specific about how intuition works. Sometimes, creativity is the combination of familiar ideas in unfamiliar ways. In other cases, it involves the exploration – and sometimes the transformation – of conceptual spaces in people’s minds. I describe conceptual spaces, and ways of transforming them to pro- duce new ones, by using computational concepts. These concepts are drawn from artificial intelligence (the study of how to make computers do what real minds can do), and they enable us to do psychology in a new way. My theme, then, is the human mind – and how it can surpass itself. We can appreciate the richness of creative thought better than ever before, thanks to this new scientific approach. If the paradox and mystery are dispelled, our sense of wonder is not. M. A. B. Brighton, April 1990 xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am especially indebted to Gerry Martin, for his many careful com- ments on the entire manuscript. I am grateful to the following friends also, for their helpful comments on various sections (any mistakes are, of course, my own): Peter Bushell, Andy Clark, Ben Gibbs, Marie Jahoda, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Stephen Medcalfe, Ruth Raider, Aaron Sloman, Paul Wellings, and Peter Williams. Alison Mudd prepared the printed versions of the text, and Jacqueline Korn advised me in difficult circumstances: I thank them both. Part of the book was written during a sabbatical year granted by the University of Sussex. Laurence Lerner kindly allowed me to reprint two of his poems from A.R.T.H.U.R.: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer (published by Harvester Press). A few brief passages in the text are partly based on other work of mine: the sections on betrayal and the detective novelist (in Chapter 7) on my Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man; the discussions of BORIS (Chapter 7) and the brain-stuff argument and Chinese Room (Chapter 11) on my Computer Models of Mind: Computational Approaches in Theoretical Psychology; the remarks on describing noughts-and-crosses (Chapter 7) on Minds and Mechanisms: Philosophical Psychology and Computa- tional Models; and the story of the compass (Chapter 11) on my paper ‘Wonder and Understanding’ published in Zygon, 1985. As for the diagrams, I thank Harold Cohen for allowing me to reproduce the Frontispiece and Figures 7.2–7.9, and Kyra Karmiloff for Figure 4.11. Other diagrams are reproduced with the publisher’s permission as follows: Elsevier-Sequoia S. A. for items from A. Karmiloff-Smith’s paper ‘Constraints on Representational Change: Evidence from Children’s Drawing,’ Cognition, 1990 (Figures 4.4–4.10); MIT Press for items from Christopher Longuet-Higgins, Mental Pro- cesses (Figures 5.1–5.3); Addison-Wesley for an item from E.
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