Cognitive Mechanisms in Human Creativity: Is Variation Blind or Sighted?

✍ Scribed by ROBERT J. STERNBERG

• Book ID: 102870831
• Publisher: Creative Education Foundation
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 985 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-0175
• DOI: 10.1002/j.2162-6057.1998.tb00813.x

✦ Synopsis

Is Variation Blind or Sighted?

ABSTRAfl

It is argued that the cognitive mechanisms in human creativity are, for the most part, sighted rather than blind. The article opens with a review of attempts to apply evolutionary ideas to psychology. It continues with an argument that blind-variation ideas seem to apply well in some areas of psychology, but that the psychology of human creativity is not one of these areas. An alternative sighted-variation framework is then proposed. It is argued, nevertheless, that the blind-variation system of biological evolution itself shows emergent creative properties, even though this system does not serve a s an appropriate model for human creativity.