Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Boden refines this definition in various ways:
1. There are two ways in which something might be new:
a. psychological-creativity introduces something that is new to the person who
devised the idea or artefact, but may be previously known to others, and
b. historical-creativity is new to the whole of history.
2. Boden finds three distinct ways in which something might be surprising:
a. it is unfamiliar or unlikely;
b. it unexpectedly fits into a class of things you hadn't realised it fitted into;
c. it is actually something you thought was impossible.
3. Regarding her third criterion for creativity Boden is certain that there are more
ways in which value might be shown than anybody could ever list.
Boden's definition, unfortunately, is not as helpful as it might be in guiding at-
tempts to write creative software. She does not
formally
define new, surprising,
valuable, useful or appropriate. In this domain, even if not elsewhere, a formal def-
inition is required for the creativity measure since the aim is to encapsulate it in an
algorithm.
Our own definition of creativity that follows is independent of notions of useful-
ness and appropriateness. In the next section we explain how this frees our account
from some unwelcome difficulties in handling any normal understanding of cre-
ativity. We also discuss some likely reasons why people might find our definition
objectionable and rebut the criticisms. We then use our definition to examine some
typical creative examples of human endeavour, some physico-chemical processes,
individual (non-human) organisms and entire ecosystems to assess their degree of
creativity.
13.3 Defining Creativity
We wish to write programs that are creative. In this context, (stochastic) programs
may be considered as generative systems that produce a distribution of outputs,
perhaps a set of related static artefacts or a trajectory of states that the program itself
traverses dynamically. We may consider such a program to be a
framework
:
A framework is a stochastic generative procedure; in particular, it generates
representations of patterns.
Frameworks are particular kinds of representations, namely stochastic proce-
dures; thus, beginning in the very same circumstances they will not generally pro-
duce the very same patterns. For example, Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism
are different frameworks for the production of art. Quantum electrodynamics is a
framework for generating questions and answers about the interaction of light and
