Darwinism provides not only a theory of biological evolution but also supplies a more generic process applicable to many phenomena in the behavioral sciences. Among these applications is the blind-variation and selective-retention model of creativity proposed by Campbell (1960). Research over the past 4 decades lends even more support to Campbell's model. This support is indicated by reviewing the experimental, psychometric, and historiometric literature on creativity. Then 4 major objections to the Darwinian model are examined (sociocultural determinism, individual volition, human rationality, and domain expertise). The article concludes by speculating whether the Darwinian model may actually subsume all alternative theories of creativity as special cases of the largerframework.

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Creativity as Blind Variation and Selective Retention: Is the Creative Process Darwinian?

Because creativity has to do with the production of new ideas, one might think that its study rightly falls within the domain of cognitive psychology. Of course, creativity involves cognition, but it involves a type of cognition that seems only to occur within a matrix of associated motivational, attitudinal, and personalogical traits. Thus, to understand creativity, the person as a whole must be considered. Because of this, theories about the creative process have traditionally been personality theories rather than purely cognitive theories. In 1949, Guilford (1950) pointed out that we did not know enough about creativity. We can never know too much about the creative personality, but we certainly know more than I could hope to cover in this chapter. For more information, the reader may consult the reviews of the literature by Dellas and Gaier (1970), Wallach (1970), Stein (1974), Taylor and Getzels (1975), and Barron and Harrington (1981).

Personality, situation, and creativity.

Hypotheses were stated which specify individual creativity as a function of developmental and productive period variables. It was then argued that these hypotheses could be better tested by examining generational fluctuations in creativity. Information from cultural and political archival sources was thus aggregated to form time series spanning 127 generations of European history. Data quality checks, control variables, data transformations, time-lagged comparisons, and trend analyses were used to improve the validity of the causal inferences. While the results varied according to the type of creativity (discursive or presentational) and the degree of achieved eminence, creative development was found to be affected by the following: (a) role model availability, (b) political fragmentation, (c) imperial instability, and (d) political instability.

Sociocultural context of individual creativity: a transhistorical time-series analysis.

The determinants of creative productivity were specified in the form of six hypotheses. Using a multivariate cross-sectional time-series design with several controls, the lives and works of 10 classical composers were analyzed into consecutive 5-year age periods. Two independent measures of productivity were operationalized (works and themes), with each measure subdivided into major and minor compositions according to a citation criterion. It was consistently found across both productivity measures that (a) quality of productivity is a probabilistic consequence of productive quantity and (b) total productivity, while affected by age and physical illness, is otherwise free of external influences (viz., social reinforcement, biographical stress, war intensity, and internal disturbances). Due to the more selective nature of the thematic productivity measure, the criterion of total themes alone was affected by competition and a time-wise bias. The article closes with a brief discussion of the broad substantive utility of the methodological design.

Creative productivity, age, and stress: A biographical time-series analysis of 10 classical composers.

Section headings and selected papers: Personality. The psychobiological basis of personality (M. Zuckerman). Temperament and personality: Eysenck's three superfactors as related to temperamental dimensions (J. Strelau, B. Zawadzki). Crime and personality (G.H. Gudjonsson). Intelligence. The psychometrics of intelligence (A.R. Jensen). Geographical variation in intelligence (R. Lynn). Malleability and change in intelligence (N. Brody). Further Eysenckian Interests. Eysenck's contribution to understanding psychopathology (G. Claridge). (Im)pure genius--psychoticism, intelligence, and creativity (J.P. Rushton). Eysenck's personality theory and organizational psychology (A. Furnham). Epilog. Psychology as science (H. Nyborg). Author index. Subject index.

The Scientific Study of Human Nature: Tribute to Hans J. Eysenck at Eighty

This is a study of the causes of creative florescences in particular periods of time in certain countries. Five hypotheses were tested which have been proposed to explain such florescences. No support was found for four of these supposed causes: wealth, geographical expansion, democratic government and external challenge. Some support however was found for the fifth hypothesis: the more politically fragmented a civilization at a given time, the higher its creativity level.

E. C. Benjamin

Papers

Creativity: A Cross-Historical Pilot Survey