Speaker: Prof Lee (Liane) Gabora, University of British Columbia
Abstract
The honing theory of creativity posits that the mind is a second level of self-organized, self-mending, self-reproducing, ‘autocatalytic’ structure and like the body, it is the hub of an evolutionary process; it is to cultural evolution what the body is to biological evolution.
Innovation is the generative component of this second evolutionary process, ensuring that continuity is balanced with creativity.
Prof Lee (Liane) Gabora will present an agent-based model of two cognitive transitions en route to the capacity for strategic creativity and cultural evolution.
He will show how creative restructuring is modelled using a quantum cognition framework and how cognitive networks relax during incubation and reform anew in a context-sensitive manner, enabling new ideas to emerge.
The unique configuration of one’s cognitive network is exploited as the individual develops their personal creative style and externalizing one’s intermediate (half-baked) thoughts (e.g., as sketches or prototypes) can catalyse the next step of a reiterated honing process.
The approach paves the way for a new understanding of convergent and divergent thought and suggests that ideas are invented with respect to consensus reality, which reflects the totality of human knowledge to this point, but discovered with respect to a more encompassing reality, which additionally reflects knowledge we have not (yet) attained.
He will present evidence for honing theory from empirical studies with musicians, artists, creative writers, dancers and comedians.
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