Does randomness play a crucial role in human creativity? I view this
as a question about how the human brain functions. Could evolution
have somehow produced a mechanism in our brains which involves some kind
of random process? As a mathematician, I have often had the experience
of suddenly seeing how to prove a theorem that I've been struggling with
for weeks or months, or even years. Somehow my brain succeeds in
finding a chain of links between one thing and another. Perhaps this
simply involves a process of systematically considering all possible chains
of links which satisfy some specific criteria and in some specific order.
But I don't think that is what actually is happening. My intuition
is that the process is one where the brain searches for chains of links
by imposing some specific criteria for selecting such chains and then somehow
randomly considering the possibilities. It also seems that there
is some kind of feedback mechanism which has the effect of continuously
changing the selection criteria, perhaps in a way which also involves
an ingredient of randomness. This mysterious process could be called
"controlled randomness." The process is undoubtedly quite complex and must involve a rather delicate
balance between the controlling aspect and the role which randomness
plays. Instead of attempting to discuss this in general, it seems easier
to consider specific creative activities, e.g. creativity in mathematics,
composing music, painting, and dreaming. The last is certainly a creative
activity which most human beings and various other species participate
in. For now, we will begin to collect interesting links.
IN ART, MUSIC AND DANCE
Interview
with Merce Cunningham
Random Notes on Dramatic Space
Alea iacta est
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
Chaos Theory
A letter to New Scientist
DREAMS:
Brunel's
Psychology Links
Sleep
and Dreams
The Hobson-McCarley Theory of Dreams
Dreaming:
Function and Meaning
Creation
of Dream Meaning
PENROSE - Shadows of the Mind, etc
Symposium
Minds,
Machines, and Mathematics
The
Mind and Consciousness
COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND AI
The
Cerebral Symphony
Journal of Consciousness
Studies
Computers
at the dawn of creativity
Marten's
GEB Page
Hofstadter
The
Matter of Mind
Back to Randomness Page.