The Creative Process of Cultural Evolution

Abstract: Even this saying itself is a variant of a similar statement attributed to Bernard of Chartres in the 12th Century, and inspired the title for a book by Steven Hawking and an album by Oasis. Creative ideas beget other creative ideas and, as a result, modifications accumulate, and we see an overall increase in the complexity of cultural novelty over time, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the ratchet effect (Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993). Although we may never meet the people or objects that creatively influence us, by assimilating what we encounter around us and bringing to bear our own insights and perspectives, we all contribute in our own way, however small, to a second evolutionary process -- the evolution of culture. This chapter explores how we can better understand culture by understanding the creative processes that fuel it, and better understand creativity by examining it from its cultural context. First, we look at some theoretical frameworks for how culture evolves and what these frameworks imply for the role of creativity. Then we will see how questions about the relationship between creativity and cultural evolution have been addressed using an agent-based model. We will also discuss studies of how creative outputs are influenced, in perhaps unexpected ways, by other ideas and individuals, and how individual creative styles "peek through" cultural outputs in different domains.