(highlight:: Bounding the System: Understanding Creativity at Different Scales
Summary:
Thinking in terms of systems allows for flexibility in deciding how to bound the system in the context of creativity.
Traditionally, the boundary of creativity has been drawn at the individual level, focusing on the brain as the locus of creative thinking. However, complex systems theory enables a broader perspective, considering the inclusion of the body, tools, or even the entire society as a complex cognitive system.
By viewing creativity as emerging at the societal level, it becomes natural to expect simultaneous invention, as the system is primed for discovery and understanding.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The second you're comfortable Thinking in terms of systems that gives you a flexibility to step back and ask well What is the right way to bound the system a natural way to bound the system In thinking of creativity is at the skull you think okay brains That's involved in thinking Maybe we should just need to focus on what's happening inside an individual brain So that's One decision about how to bound the system and that's a standard way of Drawing the boundaries of cognition is that the skull thick looking at individual brains and that's sort of classic Romantic notion of creativity is sort of Looking at one individual brain, but once you're a card carrier and complex systems theorist You're not tied to classic boundaries. You can step back and be like well, what if I drew that boundary slightly differently? What if I included I don't know maybe the body or all the tools the person's using or even zooming out to look at an entire society as a complex cognitive system that makes certain kinds Of ideas or discoveries Or innovations more or less likely to be had by any of the individual people that make up that society And once you start thinking about Creativity as something That might emerge at the level of entire society Then it becomes almost natural to expect that you would get these moments of simultaneous invention because The system is set up in just The right way that it's ready for that Discovery it's ready for that next step and understanding)
- Time 0:06:56
- snipdpost-queue, collective_creativity, creativity, innovation,

(highlight:: The Adjacent Possible: System's Only Produce New Things Adjacent to Existing Things
Summary:
The concept of the adjacent possible, coined by biologist Stuart Kauffman, suggests that within complex systems, evolution occurs incrementally by taking steps to adjacent possibilities.
Similar to being in a space of valleys, hills, and mountains, species can only take steps to nearby locations rather than making giant leaps. This idea also underlies the groundbreaking insights of Darwin and Wallace, who were able to recognize and step towards new possibilities adjacent to the existing ideas in circulation.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Another nice metaphor from inside complex systems is the idea of the adjacent possible This is cute little phrase from Stuart Kauffman who's a biologist but also one of the original Complex systems theorists and he was thinking about the evolution of Organisms of species and the insight that he had was that you can't go From anywhere to anywhere things change incrementally You can only take a step to that spot In the space of possible different bodies and brains If you can actually reach that spot from where you are right now The metaphor underlying this Is that you can think of a species as being a particular location in Some set of valleys and hills and mountains and you can't jump from one Mountain top to the next all you can do is take One step and that step might take you a little bit down We're a little bit up Similarly when you're thinking about the kind of you know radical idea that was had by darwin and wallace If You actually look at the ideas that are in circulation there that insight that they had was to the adjacent possible It was next to ideas that were in circulation the pieces were there They were just able to take the right step in the right direction and recognize that that new way of thinking about the world Was actually really productive)
- Time 0:09:27
- adjacent_possible, snipdpost-queue, stuart_kauffman, complex_systems, complexity,

(highlight:: Scientific Innovation and Ecological Niches are Produced Via the Same Process
Summary:
The critical insight is that individual ideas relate to the larger ecosystem of ideas and individuals, creating conceptual niches that need to be filled by specific ideas.
Similar to how evolution finds similar solutions for ecological puzzles, individuals naturally end up at similar ideas when embedded in a complex societal system. Creativity is not isolated within individual brains but emerges from people in relationship with each other and a sea of ideas.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think the critical insight is to think about how that individual relates to the rest of the ecosystem of ideas and the ecosystem of individuals that they're inhabiting and in That conceptual ecosystem of Different insights perspectives tools. You're going to have conceptual niches You're going to have a niche that needs to be filled by particular idea that helps make sense of the larger constellation of facts And in the same Way that Evolution ends up finding similar solutions if it's faced with similar ecological puzzles similar niches to be filled Humans are just naturally going to end up at similar Ideas if they're embedded in this larger complex system That's at the level of the entire society the entire society that we inhabit And so all of a sudden if you sort of zoom out from individual Brains bear brains To draw the boundaries of the system slightly differently To start thinking about creativity as something that maybe doesn't happen entirely within an individual Skull Isolated and insulated from the rest of the world But instead as something that emerges from people in relationship to each other with a whole sea of ideas floating around Then)
- Time 0:14:47
- snipdpost-queue, ecological_niches, innovation, scientific_breakthroughs, system_behavior,

More is Different (The Paper
Summary:
The concept of 'more is different' suggests that adding more parts can lead to the emergence of something qualitatively new, rather than just an increase in the existing parts.
This phenomenon is observed in creativity, where the combination of different elements produces something unique and not achievable from the individual components alone.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The 50th anniversary Of a paper that really sort of laid this out in the sciences by philip anderson The title of which is more is different Right the idea is that sometimes when you add More parts It's not just more and more and more of what you're happening with the parts This moment happens where the parts together collectively produce something new That's what Happens with creativity you put steven hawkins brain together with the bodies of his students together with the diagrams Or putting out the board and that is doing something that's Qualitatively different Than you be able to get from any of the components on their own)
- Time 0:21:37
- emergence, system_behavior,