We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Elaborating the Theoretical Model
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2021
Most definitions of creativity foreground novelty or originality. But if we look at how nature solves tricky problems, we discover several interesting things. Successful problem solving tends to be parsimonious (simple, economic or elegant) such as the wax cakes built by bee colonies. The number of basic solutions to such tricky problems of how to design an eye, how to fly and how to make a functioning radar system, are relatively few and have been rediscovered again and again ( a pattern discovered by Richard Dawkins). The fact that nature tends to reuse basic anatomical designs (mammals, birds, reptiles) again and again (common descent, homology) is also a case of parsimony or getting it right. This can be seen as a case of co-evolution but of an intra-species kind. Popper’s and Baxandall’s concepts of how problem situations constrain problem solvers is yet another version of getting it right.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
