The origins of creativity, d'Edward O. Wilson : Émotions paléolithiques, institutions médiévales et technologies de dieu

A team of psychologists from the University of Virginia and Harvard University recently found that volunteers disliked sitting alone for even as little as six minutes with nothing to do but think. The enjoyed mundane external activities more. They even preferred administering electric shocks to themselves if nothing else was available.

The full explanation of any biological phenomenon, including creativity in both science and the humanities, engages three levels of thoughts:

1. What is it? Provide the structure and functions that define the phenomenon (a bird taking flight, your reading of this sentence, etc.)

2. How was it put together? What were the events that resulted in the conditions of its origins, whether ten seconds or a thousand years ago?

3. Why do the phenomenon and preconditions exist in the first place? Why not a different mode of evolution not present on this planet that might have produced a different kind of thinking brain?

The small events in prehuman evolution appears to have been a shift from a primarily vegetarian duit – fruit, seeds, soft foliage – to one with substantially more meat. The shift was made easier by the habitat in which it occurred.

No animal species, at least none out of the more than one million known, has a language. Linguists define it as the highest form of communication, an endless combination of words translatable into symbols, and (this is the important part) arbitrarily chosen to confer meaning.

What exactly is creative literature, by what means is language rendered as art? And how are we to judge it as such? The answer : by its innovation of style and metaphor, by its aesthetic surprise, by the lasting pleasure it gives.

Fine novels and antique photographs are pixels of history. Put together, they create an image of existence as people actually lived it, day by day, hour by hour, and in the case of literature, the emotions they felt. Finally, they trace some of the seemingly endless consequences that followed. That is why we so value Proust…

Innovation of this kind in the creative arts is important in a second way. The evolution of the arts parallels organic evolution int he manner they both work. The best artists and performers seek original ways to express themselves in image, sound, and story. Originality and style are everything, measured by the degree to which the innovations attract imitation.

The humanities, particularly the creative arts and philosophy, continue to lose esteem and support relative to the sciences for two primary reasons:

• their leaders have kept stubbornly within the narrow audiovisual bubble we inherited happenstance from our prehuman ancestors

• they have paid scant attention to the reasons why (and not just how) our thinking species acquired its distinctive traits.

Therein lies the dilemma of the humanities. They, and with them a large part of liberal education, are expected to describe and explain the essence of a social world of Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and go-like technology with no clear idea of meaning or purpose

The humanities, particularly the creative arts and philosophy, continue to lose esteem and support relative to the sciences

Like every other species surviving today, ours was just extraordinarily lucky. Over 98 percent of the species that ever lived have vanished

Without the invention of language we would have remained animals. Without metaphors we would still be savages.

Human beings are not only weak in grasping time but nearly unconscious of what is going on around them in present time. In our daily lives we imagine ourselves to be aware of everything in the immediate environment. In fact, we sense fewer than one thousandth of one percent of the diversity of molecules and energy waves that constantly sweep around and through us.

The Heart of the Matter confirms that for all our frivolities and foibles, we are (how to put it?) a decent people. We overreach, we boast, we fumble, we have an inordinate fondness for guns. our most celebrated heroes are not poets or scientists; few Americans can name event dozen of either living among us. Our heroes instead are billionaires, start-up innovators, nationally ranked entertainers, and champion athletes.

The humanities, in contrast, are supported primarily by educational institutions, which receive their income from tuition and endowments, along with a tax)based sliver from government. In the competition between science and the humanities for funds provided by the American people the humanities rank consistently lower than science.

Competition from faith-based culture is not the only force suppressing the humanities. For more potent is the digital revolution. Science and technology are not hostile to the humanities; They bend them to no supernatural dogma or blind ideology. Nevertheless, their competition has become overwhelming; Artisanal manufacture, garden agriculture, and commercial wild fishing are shrinking toward extinction. Automation, mass production and global communication increase the world economy, not the influence of the humanities, such that the best jobs are taken by those trained in science, technology, and technology commerce and low

3 pre-conditions came together to produce a human-grade species:

1. the creation of campsite, made possible by the shift in diet as early as the ancestral Homo erectus

2. high levels of cooperation among members of the group. Each person knew all the others, and something about their labor roles, their ability, and their character.

3. those with higher capacity of language had enjoyed higher survival and reproductive rates than their group-mate rivals; More importantly, in competition between groups, those who won were superior not only in mortal territorial agression but also in the ability to form alliances, develop trade, and extract materials and energy from sources in the natural environment.

The brain grew from 99cc in the ancestral Homo erectus to 1,300 cc or even higher in the early Homo sapiens. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we spend most of our time chattering while scribbling (gribouiller) pictures and symbols. and why, in societies too large to know all its members, we treasure and gossip about celebrities.

• Like every other species surviving today, ours was just extraordinarily lucky. Over 98 percent of the species that ever lived have vanished

• A playface is assumed by adults with young family children and often includes mock-biting (mordiller?). Play differs as genetic trait between boys and between girls, with boys prone to engage in imitation fighting, singly or between coalitions, as a way of expressing dominance. […] That all of these signals and movements are hardwired genetically is supported by their appearance in blind, deaf and mute infants. Although these infants have no previous visual or auditory experience, they engage in the same appropriate smiling and crying, plus calmness to denote a neutral mental state.

• Why nature is mother? A speech by Julia Roberts on behalf of Conservation International
  

I don’t really need people but people need me
Yes, your future depends on me
When I thrive, you thrive
When I falter, you falter or worse
But I’ve been here for eons
I have fed species greater than you, and
I have starved species greater than you