The evolutionary roots of creativity: mechanisms and motivations

Abstract

One contribution of 12 to a theme issue 'Biology, cognition and origins of musicality'. We consider the evolution of cognition and the emergence of creative behaviour, in relation to vocal communication. We address two key questions: (i) what cognitive and/or social mechanisms have evolved that afford aspects of creativity?; (ii) has natural and/or sexual selection favoured human behaviours considered 'creative'? This entails analysis of 'creativity', an imprecise construct: comparable properties in non-humans differ in magnitude and teleology from generally agreed human creativity. We then address two apparent problems: (i) the difference between merely novel productions and 'creative' ones; (ii) the emergence of creative behaviour in spite of high cost: does it fit the idea that females choose a male who succeeds in spite of a handicap (costly ornament); or that creative males capable of producing a large and complex song repertoire grew up under favourable conditions; or a demonstration of generally beneficial heightened reasoning capacity; or an opportunity to continually reinforce social bonding through changing communication tropes; or something else? We illustrate and support our argument by reference to whale and bird song; these independently evolved biological signal mechanisms objectively share surface properties with human behaviours generally called 'creative'. Studying them may elucidate mechanisms underlying human creativity; we outline a research programme to do so.

Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality

“…Wiggins et al [75] endeavour to relate creativity and its principles, as exercised in human music, to parallels in other species as a means of shedding light on the evolution of cognition and the emergence of creative behaviour. This endeavour entails analysis of creativity at the phenomenological level.…”

Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song

“…The analogy to music would then not primarily be based on the surface similarity to music on the level of the communicative medium (use of pitch, timbre, rhythm or dynamics), but on functional considerations such that they do not constitute a medium to convey types of ( propositional) semantics or simpler forms of meaning, but are instances of comparably free play with form and displays of creativity (see below and Wiggins et al [143]). …”

“…Animal vocalizations may be motivated by forms of meaning (that are not necessarily comparable with combinatorial semantics), for example, expressing aggression or submission, warning of predators, group cohesion, social contagion or may constitute free play of form for display of creativity, for instance (but not necessarily) in the context of reproduction. Given that structure and structure building moving from the language end to the music end is less constrained by semantic forms, more richness of structural play and creativity is expected to occur on the musical side [143].…”

Evaluation of Musical Creativity and Musical Metacreation Systems

“…Again, the CSF provides tools for thinking about evaluation within a creative system. Wiggins et al [2015] formulate evaluation as a function of four parameters: artefact, creator, audience, and context. This gives a clear signal of how difficult the problem is in general.…”

“…Individual human creativity, and self-evaluation of created artefacts, are dependent upon the individual's domain-specific expertise, the social experiences and social climate in which the creator is embedded, and the individual's particular goals at hand [Wiggins et al 2015]. The specific audience at hand is also a key factor, especially within the context of computationally-generated music, as academic and domain experts may focus on different aims or attributes of the systems and their output .…”