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The emergence of creativity

R. Keith Sawyer
Published online: 19 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: R. Keith Sawyer (1999) The emergence of creativity, Philosophical
Psychology, 12:4, 447-469, DOI: 10.1080/095150899105684

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095150899105684

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 PH ILO SO PH ICA L PSYCH O LO GY , VOL . 1 2 , NO . 4 , 1999

The em ergence of creativity

R. K EITH S AW YER
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A BS TRA C T This paper is an extended exploration of M ead’ s phrase ª the emergence of the novel.º
I describe and characterize em ergent systemsÐ complex dynamical systems that display behavior that
cannot be predicted from a full and com plete description of the component units of the system .
Em ergence has become an in¯ uential concept in contemporary cognitive science [A. Clark (1997)
B eing there, Cam bridge: M IT Press], complexity theory [W . Bechtel & R .C. Richardson (1993)
D iscovering com plexity, Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press], arti® cial life [R.A . Brooks &
P. M aes (Eds) (1994) Arti® cial life IV, Cam bridge: M IT Press; C.G. Langton (Ed.) (1994)
A rti® cial life III, R eading, M A: Addison-W esley; C.G. Langton et al. (Eds) (1991) Arti® cial life
II, R eading, M A: Addison-W esley), and robotics [S. Forrest (1991) Em ergent com putation,
Cambridge: M IT Press]. I propose that novelty is a necessary property of emergent systems, and I’ ll
explore a speci® c kind of emergent system : an im provisational theater ensemble. This is an example
of emergence in a small social group, which I call collaborative emergence to emphasize several
important contrasts with other com plex system s that manifest em ergence, such as connectionist
networks and Alife simulations.

It is the task of the philosophy of today to bring into congruence with each
other this universality of determination which is the text of m odern science,
and the em ergence of the novel which belongs not only to the experience
of human social organism s, but is found also in a nature which science and
the philosophy that has followed it have separated from hum an nature.
(M ead, 1932 , p. 14)

Introduction

M ead’ s use of the terms ª em ergenceº and ª the em ergentº in his 1930 Carus
Lectures (at the M eeting of the Am erican Philosophical A ssociation at Berkeley in
D ecem ber of that year) has in¯ uenced several psychologists working in m y ® eld of
sociocultural and developm ental psychological theory. M ead did not originate the
concept of em ergence; it was at the center of active debates in philosophy and
evolutionary biology in the 1920 s.
The concept of em ergence has a long history predating the 19th century
(W heeler, 1928) , but the term was ® rst used in 1877 by the philosopher George

R . Keith Sawyer, D epartment of Education, W ashington University in St Louis, One Brookings D rive,
St Louis, M O 63130, USA.

0951-50 89/99/040447± 23 Ó 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

 44 8 K . SAW Y ER

H enry Lewes. In a critique of Hume’ s theory of causation, Lewes (1877 ) found it

necessary to distinguish between two types of effects: resultants and em ergents.
ª Although each effect is the resultant of its com ponents, the product of its factors,
we cannot always trace the steps of the process, so as to see in the product the m ode
of operation of each factor. In this latter case, I propose to call the effect an
em ergent. It arises out of the com bined agencies, but in a form which does not
display the agents in actionº (p. 412). An em ergent effect is not additive, not
predictable from knowledge of its components, and not decom posable into those
com ponents. Lewes’ s classic exam ple was of the form ation of m olecules from their
com ponent atom s; water is the effect, and hydrogen and oxygen are the cause; the
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properties of water are emergent from the com bination of hydrogen and oxygen.
These ideas were picked up by several philosophers and evolutionary biologists
just after W orld W ar I. The philosopher C. Lloyd M organ was largely responsible
for propagating the use of Lewes’ s concept through the 1920 s (M organ, 1923 ,
19 33). M organ began his 1922 G ifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews
with a discussion of emergents and resultants, and borrowed Lewes’ s term for his
phrase em ergent evolution, a term suggesting that evolutionary developm ents are
em ergent over historical tim e, with higher levels of complex organization em erging
from lower levels. T his was an anti-m echanist position in that it argued the
im possibility of analytic reduction to com ponents: ª It does not interpret the higher
in term s of the lower only; for that would im ply denial of the em ergence of those
new m odes of natural relatedness which characterize the higher and m ake it what it
isº (M organ, 1923 , pp. 297± 298). From approximately 1926 to 1932 Ð the period
when M ead would have been form ulating the ideas leading to his 1930 lecturesÐ
writers in philosophy, biology, and psychology frequently com m ented on how
ª modishº the concept of emergence had become (Lovejoy, 1927 ; W heeler, 1928 ;
T olm an, 19 32).
There are two substantive analogies between em ergence theory and contem por-
ary theories of the psychology of creativity . First, em ergence theory of the 1920 s was
prim arily an evolutionary theory, and many of the m ost in¯ uential contem porary
theories of creativity are based on an evolutionary metaphor. The evolutionary
approach to creativity is usually associated with Cam pbell (1960) , who proposed
that creativity was subject to the same three-stage process as evolution: blind
variation, selection, and retention. Csikszentmihalyi’ s in¯ uential system s theory
(1988 ) is derived from Cam pbell’ s evolutionary m odel, and includes three anal-
ogous components: the creative individual, who generates a novel product; the ® eld,
a social system of individuals in a discipline, that evaluates novel products and
selects som e of them according to established criteria; and a dom ain, an external
body of work whose stable physical traits allow it to serve the function of retention
across time.
There is a second substantive com parison between em ergence theory and the
contem porary psychology of creativity: a creative insight is hypothesized to em erge
from the subconscious m ind of the creator. M organ viewed em ergence as ª new
m odes of relatednessº that arise from a system of smaller, interacting entities; today,
a novel creative insight is often considered to be a new con® guration of mental
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 449

elem ents, none of which are individually novel. The m athem atician Henri Poincare
described the em ergence of an insight in a canonical article that is frequently
referenced by creativity researchers: ª One evening ¼ I drank black coffee and could
not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to
speak, m aking a stable com bination. By the next morning, I had established the
existence of a class of Fuchsian functionsº (1913 , p. 25). A contemporary example
of this theory is Sim onton’ s cognitive m odel (1988) , which proposes that the
individual ® rst internalizes m ental elementsÐ facts, theories, images, and information
from the creative domainÐ and that these are stored in the brain; during a subcon-
scious creative process these mental elements combine into chance con® gurations, and
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although m any of these novel con® gurations never m ake it into consciousness, som e
of them are ª stableº enough to em erge and cause the subjective sensation of having
an insight.
In these m odels, novelty em erges from cognitive processes. But em ergent
processes are also found in com plex social systems. A m ajor them e of this paper is
that all complex em ergent system s can be said to be creativeÐ not only minds, but
also social system s. To introduce this theme, I will present an example of collabora-
tive em ergence, drawing from m y own study of im provisational theater (Sawyer,
19 97a). Collaborative em ergent phenom ena are those that result from the collective
activity of social groups. Although collaborative em ergence results from the interac-
tions of individuals, these phenom ena cannot be understood by sim ply analyzing the
m embers of the group individually. For example, in an improvisational theater
perform anceÐ where the actors create dialogue on stage without a scriptÐ the
perform ance that results is truly a collaborative creation; the perform ance cannot be
understood by trying to reduce it to a study of the psychology of individual actors.
I’ ll use the example of im provisational theater dialogue to demonstrate several
characteristic properties of collaborative emergence. I’ ll then contrast collaborative
em ergence with novelty in other types of em ergent system s, using a set of contrast
dim ensions to suggest what types of com plex systems are likely to m anifest novelty.
By elaborating on these parallels, I develop a view of creative novelty based m ore
explicitly on the concept of emergence.
These com parisons then lead to a ® nal m ajor them e of the paperÐ that emer-
gent novelty is not the same thing as creativity. Both Csikszentm ihalyi’ s and
Sim onton’ s m odels propose a twofold de® nition of creativity , involving not only
novelty but also selection, or ® ltering according to some criteria, whether this ® lter is
m ental (Simonton) or social (Csikszentm ihalyi). T his second property of creativity
is often called appropriateness, relative to som e dom ain or system of criteria. A s
Poincare points out, creativity does not consist sim ply of m aking new com binations:
ª It is not merely a question of applying rules, of m aking the most com binations
possible according to certain ® xed laws. The combinations so obtained would be
exceedingly num erous, useless and cumbersom e. The true work of the inventor
consists in choosing am ong these combinations so as to eliminate the useless onesº
(1913 , p. 28). W hereas em ergent novelty is a bottom± up process in com plex
systems, appropriateness requires that we also consider top± down effects in system s
with m ultiple levels of em ergent process.
 45 0 K . SAW Y ER

Collaborative emergence: im provisational th eater

Every tim e that a social phenom enon is directly explained by a psycholog-

ical phenom enon, we m ay be sure that the explanation is false. (D urkheim ,
1938 /1895 , p. 104)

M y own research has focused on em ergence in social groups. G roup behavior must
be thought of as emergent in those cases where there is not a structured plan guiding
the group, and where there is no leader who directs the group. Exam ples of
collaborative emergence include everyday conversation, small-group collaborations,
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brainstorming sessions, and discussion sem inars. All of these phenom ena are impro-
visational, because there is no director and no guiding script. Consequently, I have
chosen to study collaborative emergence by analyzing creative improvisational
perform ances, including jazz, im provisational theater, and children’ s fantasy play
(Sawyer, 1992 , 1997a, b). These studies have identi® ed many of the interactional
processes that m ake the difference between effective collaboration and incoherent,
unconnected discourse.
Im provisational theater dialogues display the essential characteristics of collabo-
rative emergence. The transcript that follows is taken from a perform ance from
Spring, 1993 , by the Chicago theater group Jazz Freddy. Jazz Freddy was in the
m iddle of a successful run on the north side of Chicago, selling out m ost of their
shows. They created a ª buzzº because the group was experimenting with a new form
of improv. R ather than the short, ® ve-m inute com edy-sketch style m ade fam ous by
Saturday Night Live, Jazz Freddy perform ed a more dram atic im provisational style
known as long-form im prov. Each Jazz Freddy perform ance was one hour in length,
with two half-hour acts, and the goal of this 10-m em ber com pany was to create a
connected, coherent one-hour play, with no prior preparation, and with only two
audience suggestions. On this night, the group asked the audience for an event and
a location. The suggestions taken were ª the Olympicsº (the event) and ª a conventº
(the location).
Perhaps the m ost innovative feature of the Jazz Freddy style was their ability to
accomplish smooth transitions from one short scene to another, with an act com -
posed of many scenes that were each typically two- to four-m inutes in length. The
following represents the ® rst 2.5 m inutes of the ® rst scene, which totaled about ® ve
m inutes in length. N ote that the actors do not use props; all actions described are
m im ed.

Lights up. M A N carries a chair to front stage right and sits facing audience.
He mim es working at a deskÐ takes a cap off of a pen, opens a book, starts
to make underlining m otions as he studies the page. He stops to rub his
eyes. He then turns the page, and underlines some m ore. The other actors
watch intently from the sides of the stage; the audience is com pletely quiet.
After about 20 seconds, W OM AN stands up from her position at the
opposite side of the stage, and walks over to M AN , m im ing the act of
carrying som ething in both hands, held in front of her:
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 451

1 W OM AN : Here are those papers. Puts down the ª papers.º

2 (2 second pause) She rem ains standing.
3 M A N: Thanks Looks up to face
W O MA N
(2 second pause)
4 I really appreciate your doing those copies for m e.
5 A second m an, M AN 2, approaches from stage left, also carrying
ª papers,º and stops next to W OM AN.
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6 M A N 2: Here are those papers. Puts down the papers.

7 M A N: Thanks a lot, Still facing the two
8 You guys have really been great.
(2 second pause)
9 I’ m gonna stop booking for Closes book on desk.
now
10 W OM AN : OK
11 M A N 2: S URE
(1 second pause)
12 I’ m gonna go get som e m ore papers.
13 M A N: Alright He stands up
(1 second pause)
14 Thanks a lot, I appreciate it.
15 M A N 2: You’ re welcom e.
(1 second pause)
16 W e m ean it.
17 (As he says this, M AN 2 touches WO MAN ’ s arm; woman reaches up
her other hand to grasp his hand; they stand holding hands.)
18 M A N: Thanks for being in m y corner.
19 M A N 2: W e always will be.

There are several im portant features to notice about this brief dialogue. First are
the m any pauses between turns, m ore frequent and longer than a typical conver-
sation. The actors do this to listen and to leave space for everyone to contribute
equally. Like jazz im provisation, im prov theater has a radically egalitarian ethic;
there is no group leader, and actors even have a pejorative term for a situation where
one actor is controlling the scene too m uch: they call it driving the scene.
The second feature to notice is the relative lack of speci® city. After 2.5 minutes,
we still don’ t know very much about this scene. Long-form actors begin a perform -
ance by leaving m any things unresolved; they don’ t want to solve all of the dramatic
 45 2 K . SAW Y ER

problem s right away, because they know they still have 60 more minutes to go. In
the early stages of a long-form performance, the actors are actually trying to generate
com plexity and am biguity, creating problem s for them selves that will then provide
their dram atic task towards the end of the show. In shorter improv skitsÐ ® ve-
m inute gam es that, in contrast, have much less dram atic complexityÐ the actors
often determ ine the key dram atic elements in the ® rst two or three turns of dialogue:
the characters, their relationship, their goals, their location, and what tension or
con¯ ict will drive the scene.
The third feature, collaborative em ergence, is perhaps the hardest to noticeÐ
what’ s so creative and emergent about this dialogue? It seem s to ¯ ow naturally , and
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skimm ing through the transcript, you m ay consider it unproblem atic or perhaps
even uninteresting. The dialogues are collaboratively emergent because with each
actor’ s line, one possible path is chosen, and many other potential paths are closed
off. T o understand the high degree of contingency in im provisation, and what this
im plies for collaborative emergence, let’ s imagine some of these potential alterna-
tives.
Unlim ited options are availab le at the beginning of the scene, of course. M AN
could have chosen a different activity; or another actor might have entered the scene
® rst. The determ ination of who will begin the scene is itself em ergent from the
split-second decisions of all 10 actors. Likewise, any of the nine rem aining actors
could have entered the scene next, during the 20 second period when all of them
were watching him ª study.º T he ensem ble does not choose which actors will be in
a scene, nor their order. A different actor m ay have been just a split-second aw ay
from deciding to stand up, but W O M AN m ade the ® rst m ove.
At line 1, W O M AN could have chosen a wide range of activities and utterances.
Improv actors are taught that everything introduced by a fellow actor m ust be
accepted, and then elaboratedÐ the ª Y es, Andº rule. Thus W O M AN must accept
everything M AN has done nonverballyÐ and it is fairly clear to this largely college-
educated audience that he is studying. By saying ª Here are those papersº she
provides several new pieces of informationÐ she implies that the m an’ s activity is
part of a larger project; that there is a group of individuals (at least two) participating
collaboratively in the effort. She also suggests that not only are books involved, but
ª papersº as well. This is not surprising; but neither would hundreds of other
possible actions have been any more surprising. For exam ple, she could have said
ª Joe! W hat are you doing in my neighborhood coffee shop?º , suggesting a casual
friendship and a public location. She could have said ª Staying late again today, eh?º ,
suggesting a collegial of® ce encounter between peers. She could have established a
status relationship by saying, for exam ple, ª D on’ t forget to take care of that Johnson
report before you leave.º Rather than list still more, I encourage you to invent som e
of your own.
Likewise, in his response at lines 3 and 4, M AN has hundreds of possible
actions that would have seem ed equally coherent and plausible. At line 4, M AN
suggests an asym metrical status relationship, by proposing that W O M AN has done
the copies for him. It would have been just as dram atically coherent for M A N to
take on a subordinate relationship, for exam ple, by saying ª I can’ t believe you’ re
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 453

giving m e m ore work, it’ s already 8 pm!º O r he could have hinted at a conspiratorial
scenario: ª I can’ t believe you m anaged to get those papers! W ho did you pay off?º
By line 19 , core dram atic elements are starting to em erge. W e are beginning to
understand a little about the characters involved, especially M A N and M AN 2, and
we are learning about their relationshipÐ they seem to be coworkers, yet M AN ’ s
repeated ª Thanksº also seems to imply that M AN 2 and W O M AN are helping him
out of friendship, or that they are going beyond the call of duty. W e’ re getting the
im pression that this is a high-pressure situation, one that involves working late, a
large volum e of work already done (ª You guys have really been greatº ) and still
m ore to be done (ª I’ m gonna go get som e m ore papersº ), and a possible ª us against
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themº m entality (ª Thanks for being in m y cornerº ).

All of these dram atic elements are em ergentÐ they have em erged from the
collective interaction and creative contributions of all three actors. N o single actor
has determ ined the direction of the scene. And in fact, an actor can’ t even know the
real m eaning of his own utterance until the other actors have responded; for
exam ple, W OM AN ’ s line 2, ª Here are those papers,º could have been treated as
either the com m and of a supervisor, or the report of a subordinate. T he complete
m eaning is dependent on the ¯ ow of the subsequent dialogue. A nd not only these
two actors are involved; all 10 actors are involved, because the entire group
collaboratively determ inesÐ through their actions and non-actionsÐ which actors
will enter a scene. The contingency that is present at each line of dialogue m ultiplies
from turn to turn, resulting in combinatorial complexity of possible scenes. This is
a classic property of com plex dynam ical system sÐ their rapidly expanding com bina-
torial possibility.

Characteristics of collaborative emergence

I refer to improvisational dialogues as collaboratively em ergent, to distinguish these

em ergent processes from the types of emergence studied by biologists, complexity
theorists, and connectionists. Collaborative em ergent system s have the following
characteristics:

1. unpredictability ;
2. non-reducibilit y to m odels of participating agents;
3. processual intersubjectivity;
4. a comm unication system that can refer re¯ exively to itself, and within which
the processes of com munication them selves can be discussed; and
5. individual agency and creative potential on the part of individual agents.

U npredictability

In the im prov theater transcript presented above, no actor knows what is going to
happen next. At each point in the im provisation, the actor can choose from a wide
range of m oves to propel the dram atic fram e forw ard. Each turn is unpredictable
and novel, accum ulating to result in a collaboratively created, novel perform ance.
 45 4 K . SAW Y ER

A nd as we’ ve seen, no actor even knows how his turn will be interpreted by the
others; each turn gains its ® nal m eaning only from the ensuing ¯ ow of discourse.
T hus, the actor’ s intention does not fully constrain the eventual dramatic m eaning
of the turn; each turn of dialogue, although spoken by a single actor, eventually takes
on a dram atic m eaning that is determ ined by a collaborative, emergent process.
Com plexity theory has long noted that com plex system s display an unusual
sensitivity to initial conditions. T he system ’ s behavior follows general laws, but
because the effect of a small change in initial conditions is so large, predictability
from the laws is computationally im possible. W hat complexity theory has less
com m only m odeled is that in m ost com plex systems, the ª initialº conditions are
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constantly changing, in response to the emerging properties of the system . The

conditions correspond to the em ergent dramatic fram e, which changes at every turn
of dialogue. (Of course, the reason for the focus on initia l conditions is an artifact of
the m athem atical formalism s used by these researchers.)
M ore generally, all em ergence theory argues for the unpredictability of com plex
em ergent system behavior from laws at the lower level. For example, M organ writes
of emergent evolution: ª New m odes of substantial relatednessº arise, ª the advent of
which could not have been predicted on the basis of full and adequate knowledge of
all that had thus far been reached at any or all of the foregoing stagesº (1933 , p. 58 ).
H owever, collaborative em ergence is of a different order of unpredictability from
physical system s, because the ª initialº conditions are constantly changing. W ith
regards to chem ical emergence, M organ notes that som e em ergents are predictable
after their ® rst occurrence: he gives the exam ple of hydrogen and oxygen combining
to form water. The ® rst tim e this happened, water was unpredictable, even though
every subsequent occurrence was predictable. In a sim ilar fashion, many of the
m athem atical sim ulations of com plexity will run the same way if they are given the
same initial conditions.

N ot reducible to agent m odels

T he thought that there are em ergent properties is an epistem ological assum ption
underlying several types of computational m odeling, including connectionism and
A life. For exam ple, Bechtel and Richardson (1993 ) argue that emergent system s do
not demonstrate any of the characteristics of reducible systems: direct localization,
near decom posability, functional and physical independence of units, and linearity.
H owever, m any em pirical scienti® c disciplines rem ain ® rm ly reductionist. Psy-
chology’ s version of reductionism is often called m ethodological individualism because
it assumes that all properties of group behavior can be reduced to, and ultim ately
derived from , properties of individuals (Lukes, 1977) . Reductionism in psychology
extends beyond individualism , with the further assum ption that an individual’ s
m ental function is best understood by breaking down higher level cognitive func-
tions into smaller com ponents; neuropsychologists carry this to the extrem e of
elim inative materialism, arguing that all hum an behavior can best be understand by
a full and complete understanding of the neuronal structures and processes of the
brain (Bechtel & Richardson, 1993 ; Chom sky, 1993) .
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 455

These assum ptions lead psychologists to consider creativity to be a property of

hum an brains. The main threads of creativity research within psychology have all
been individualistic: cognitive science attem pts to model creativity as analogical
thinking; personality trait research, such as m etrics to m easure ª divergent thinkingº
or ª stylistic preferencesº ; cognitive attem pts to identify the stages of the creative
process. All of these approaches are individualistic and reductionist, holding that
creativity involves hum an agency, intentionality, decision-m aking, and problem -
solvingÐ the classic hallmarks of sym bolic AI.
These traditional concerns don’ t get us very far when we analyze im provisa-
tional theater. A n actor’ s intention for an utterance is not necessarily the eventual
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m eaning of the utterance; in fact, in the above transcript, the actors purposely
generate utterances with am biguous interpretations, knowing that the other actors
will later attribute m ore speci® c meanings to them . Likewise, no single actor can
decide the direction that the scene will take; decision-m aking, if it can be said to
exist at all, is a collective social process. It is also dif® cult to identify sequential
cognitive stages of the creative process, since the actors have to respond so quickly
that they don’ t have time for conscious re¯ ection or planning. To help them learn
how to handle these demands, actors are taught the m axim ª D on’ t write the script
in your head,º m eaning that they should not develop expectations about where the
scene will go, or how their own utterances will be interpreted.

Intersubjectivity

O ne reason that lower level descriptions are incom plete is that they do not account
for downward causation (Cam pbell, 1974) . In downward causation, an em ergent
higher level property begins to cause effects in the lower level, either in the agents
or in their patterns of interaction. A lthough reductionist accounts are often success-
ful at describing how bottom± up processes lead to emergent m acrostructure, they
rarely address downward causation.
Recall our sam ple transcript. O ne possible non-em ergence account would be to
claim that the ® rst M A N to enter the stage established the activity of studying, and
everything that the other actors do simply followed from that. But we’ ve shown that
this isn’ t correct, sim ply by suggesting some of the alternative possibilities that were
availab le at each line of dialogue. Nonetheless, this claim gets at an im portant truth
of im provisation: once properties of the dram atic scene are established, they becom e
collective property, and constrain all of the actors. M AN does in fact establish the
act of studying (or ª workingº ), and this act constrains M A N 2 and W OM AN . But
ª constrainº is not the sam e thing as ª determine.º In fact, all im provisation occurs
in the presence of some pre-existing structure (Sawyer, 1996); in this case, through-
out the one-hour perform ance, there is an ever-changing dram atic em ergentÐ a
shared understanding of what has been established and what is going onÐ and the
actors’ future creativity has to proceed within the fram e established by this em ergent
drama. But this constraining shared frame is itself an emergent social product; it is
ever-changing, created in a bottom± up fashion from the actions of individual actors,
 45 6 K . SAW Y ER

yet once created, it constrains and in¯ uences the later actions of those individuals,
in a top± down fashion.
Traditionally, intersubjectivity is de® ned as a state of overlapping, sym m etrical
m ental representations; two or more people are said to ª have intersubjectivityº when
their m ental representations of the situation are in agreem ent. This traditional view
is im plicitly reductionist, because intersubjectivity is reduced to individual subjectiv-
ities and their additive relations. In other words, intersubjectivity, and hence, all
collective activity, is regarded as a simple sum of individual m ental states (M atusov,
19 96, p. 26).
The traditional account of intersubjectivity is inadequate to describe collabora-
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tive em ergence, because there are many social interactions where participants do not
share mental representations, such as disputes, arguments, and debates. In fact, even
when there is no overt disagreem ent, it is unlikely that participants would have
identical mental representations of what is going on. In the above improv theater
transcript, there is a high degree of ambiguity at each dialogue turn. Although each
actor m ay have a rather different interpretation of what is going on and where the
scene m ight be going, they can nonetheless proceed to collectively create a coherent
dramatic fram e. The key question about intersubjectivity is not how agents com e to
share identical representations, but rather, how a coherent interaction can proceed
even when they do not.
The traditional account of intersubjectivity does not leave room for novelty or
for em ergence, because it stresses the reproductive aspects of interactionÐ in inter-
action, I recreate som ething within your m ental state, and you recreate som ething
that was within mine. This view does not account for how som ething new could be
created by group interaction. To properly represent collaborative em ergence, we
need to think of intersubjectivity as, following M atusov, ª a process of coordination
of individual contributions to joint activity rather than as a state of agreem entº
(1996 , p. 34).
In most com putational m odels of em ergent system s, there are two properties
that result in a lack of genuine intersubjectivity. First, the agents are hom ogenousÐ
they maintain essentially the sam e internal representations. Second, the agents do
not m aintain internal representations of m acro-em ergents. Collaborative em ergent
m odels require a m ore robust and empirically accurate description of intersubjectiv-
ity, where the social worldÐ its rules and contentÐ is itself em ergent.

Complex comm unication

In an improv performance, the em ergent is a constantly changing dram atic fram e, an

interactional frame that is emergent from individual actors’ turns, and which then
constrains the future actions of those actors. Because of the dem ands of intersubjec-
tive interaction, there is slippage am ong the mental m odels of the actors. Conse-
quently, for a coherent interaction to em erge, the actors have to be able to negotiate
am ong their distinct representations. However, actors do not step out of character
to talk about how their scene will develop; this would break the dramatic illusion,
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 457

and lose the continuity of the scene. Instead, actors have to negotiate their intersub-
jectivity, while enacting the ongoing scene.
Thus, every actor’ s turn of dialogue both enacts a character within the fram e,
and at the same time, negotiates this intersubjectivity, by proposing an additional
elaboration or transformation of that fram e. This latter com m unicative function is
m etacom m unicative, in that its indirect pragm atic effect is to further de® ne the nature
of the ongoing interaction itself. Im prov comm unicationsÐ like all hum an dis-
courseÐ thus have effects on two levels: an enacted, or denotational level, and a
m etacom municative, or interactionally pragm atic level.
Collaborative em ergence thus requires a com plex symbolic comm unication
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system, one that supports both denotational com m unication and m etacomm unica-
tion. Although such a system could be m odeled using distinct m edia or channels for
these two functions, human language manages to accom plish both functions simul-
taneously, using a single channel (Silverstein, 1993) .

Creativity of agents

In com plex system s with non-creative agents, the range of contingency of the
interaction is quite lim ited. Consequently, agents can sim ply be program med to be
prepared for all foreseeable em ergents. In contrast, in collaborative emergence the
degree of unpredictability of the interaction crosses a threshold at which the agents
m ust engage in creative behavior, if they are to participate at all. If the agent is
programm ed to respond non-creatively to a too-restricted range of potential emer-
gents, the agent will not be capable of continuing to engage in that interaction when
the evolving emergent unpredictably shifts outside of that range. An im prov actor
knows nothing about where the scene is going; the potential dram atic trajectories are
as large as all human action.
Thus collaborative em ergence requires individual agency and creative potential
on the part of individual agents. N ote, however, that m ost computational m odels of
em ergent system s have extrem ely simple models of each agent, with no potential for
a creative action on the part of the agent.

W hat system s generate novelty?

Every atom, m olecule, organism , personality and society is an emergent

and, at least to som e extent, a novelty. (W heeler, 19 28, p. 22)

Is emergence the same thing as novelty, in the sense used by creativity researchers?
In one sense, it is practically a de® nition of novelty: emergent system s, by de® nition,
result in unpredictable effects. But this only transform s the question of novelty into
a question about emergence. To de® ne novelty, we have to de® ne em ergenceÐ what
systems m anifest emergence? How com plex does the system have to be?
M ost researchers in connectionism and A life simply assum e em ergence of their
sim ulations without ever specifying exactly which com plex system s will m anifest it.
A s I noted above, different sim ulations of em ergence m anifest different orders of
 45 8 K . SAW Y ER

T ABLE 1.

Computational emergence Collaborative emergence

Number of units M any Few

Complexity of units Simple units Com plex, creative units
Communication system Simple Metacom municative
Connection density Low High
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predictability; for example, although m any A life simulations come out the sam e way
every tim e, they are still described as em ergent. Or, after thousands of runs, it’ s
often possible to identify statistical regularities in the distribution patterns of various
properties across the runs. Although each single run is unpredictable, these statisti-
cal regularities are predictable em ergents (Bedau, 1998) . Only a few em ergence
theorists have attem pted to categorize these different types of em ergence, or to
identify properties of system s that are em ergent (Cariani, 1991; D arley, 1994).
T hese theorists argue that true em ergence must be unpredictable, and try to
characterize those com plex systems that behave unpredictably.
If we de® ne novelty as unpredictable em ergenceÐ a property of com plex sys-
tem sÐ then we would expect to ® nd novelty in any com plex system , regardless of the
level of analysis. A lthough we typically associate creativity with individuals, we
would also expect to ® nd novelty in com plex system s such as ant colonies, macroe-
conom ic behavior, neuronal subsystem s, or small collaborating groups.
All of the dimensions in T able 1 contribute to the likelihood of a system ’ s
m anifesting emergent properties. There are probably threshold values on each
dim ension which represent a m inim um requirem ent of emergence, but once all
thresholds are crossed, any combination of properties could result in emergence.
T hese dimensions help us to see how collaborative emergence is different from the
types of em ergence typically considered by com plexity theoristsÐ connectionist
networks, Alife sim ulations, or the rational actor m odels of econom ists. In our
im prov theater exam ple, we had only 10 agents, but each agent was com plex, the
density of the system was at the theoretical m aximum (see below), and the com -
m unication systemÐ natural languageÐ was complex.

N um ber of units

Em ergence theorists have lim ited their study to a single type of complex system Ð the
connectionist or Alife version, with lots of units and sim ple rules. M ost em ergence
theorists assum e that the number of units is the sole de® ning property contributing
to em ergence, and propose com putational m odels that represent em ergence at the
left end of the dimensions presented in Table 1. In contrast, collaborative em ergence
falls at the right end of these dimensions. If we no longer associate com plexity and
em ergence only with system s with lots of units, what other dim ensions are likely to
contribute to a system ’ s being em ergent?
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 459

Complexity of units

T wo of the above properties of collaborative em ergenceÐ intersubjectivity and

com plex com m unicationÐ require agents to maintain internal m ental representa-
tions of ª what is going on,º the collaborative em ergent fram e. Unlike a connectionist
robot’ s internalizations of a physical environment (and many of these researchers
also describe these systems as em ergent and improvisational; see Agre, 1997) , these
are representations of an intersubjective em ergent, and they are subjectively form ed
and ® ltered through the agent’ s own goals and concerns (Gilbert, 1995) . T hus,
unlike agent± environment interactions, each agent m ay m aintain a different mental
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representation of what’ s going on. These representations cannot rem ain stable,
because the dramatic fram e is constantly changing, and each change is perceived
and internalized by each participant.
How do the agents coordinate their distinct understandings of the em erging
social interaction, as they are constantly changing and emergent? How does an agent
know what the other agents will do? M ost com puter models of complex system s
contain hom ogenous agents, so that predicting other agents’ behavior is not prob-
lematic. For exam ple, som e A life models include ª custom sº that are shared by all
units, and which each unit can assum e that the others know. In m ost em ergent
m odeling, issues of intersubjectivity are conveniently bracketed, by making all of the
units the sam e, sharing the sam e rules and knowledge base.
If the units are more com plex, we end up having to m odel m ultiple levels of
com plexity, because then each unit is itself a complex system . O f course, one of the
guiding principles of the connectionism paradigm is ª out of sim plicity, complexity.º
T his paradigm in part explains why these m odels are never extended to collaborative
em ergence.

Complexity of com munication

Collaborative em ergence is a property of systems with a com plex comm unication

system, one that supports m etacom m unication: re¯ exive com m unication and nego-
tiation about the ongoing interaction. Com putational m odels of emergence have not
incorporated complex comm unication, although som e em ergent thinkers have ac-
knowledged the importance of this factor. D arley (1994 ) proposed that em ergence
is a function of both the number of units and the com plexity of the rules of
interaction, and Baas (1994) suggested that em ergence occurs when ª the interac-
tions are nonlinearº (p. 522). However, neither provided detailed algorithm s, nor a
theory of com plexity in interaction. (To be fair, no one in cybernetics, sociolinguis-
tics, pragmatics, or conversation analysis has done so, either.)
This issue is of particular concern for cognitive scientists, since they m ust m odel
the interaction of the units on a com puter. In particular, connectionists have not
devoted m uch com putational theory to the develop of comm unication paradigm s,
choosing instead to focus on the network connections. Com plexity of com muni-
cation seem s to inversely correlate with the size of the units; fewer, more com plex
units are likely to have more complex comm unication. Sim ple units will of necessity
 46 0 K . SAW Y ER

engage in sim pler, m ore formal methods of com m unication. For exam ple, M odeling
social systems (Epstein & Axtell, 1996, p. 73) proposes interaction using simple rules
like:

Cultural transm ission rule (tag-¯ ipping):

For each neighbor (4 orthogonally contiguous agents), a tag (one bit in an
8-bit m ask) is randomly selected;
If the neighbor’ s bit setting agrees with the agent’ s at that position, take no
action; if they disagree, ¯ ip the neighbor’ s tag to agree with the agent.

Com putational representations of collaborative em ergence are dif® cult with

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today’ s modeling technology, because no one has an adequate com putational m odel
of a com plex social com munication system (although there is promising research in
agent comm unication languages, most of which are derived from speech act theory; for
exam ple, Belief± D esire± Intention (BDI) approaches). D evelopment of an adequate
m odel will require an interdisciplinary research project, drawing on ® elds such as
sociolinguistics and discourse theory.

Density of connections

T his variable is a m easure of how m any of the possible agent pairs are actually
connected in the network. If every agent were connected to every other agent, the
network would be m axim ally connected. In fact, this is the case with our im prov
theater exam ple, since every actor can hear and see every other actor. In m ost
conversational groups, the nature of the aural m edium im plies that all m em bers of
the group will receive all m essages. Such a degree of network density has a
m aximum rating of 1.0, since all agents receive all m essages.
All com plex systems manifest som e non-zero degree of density, although m ost
connectionist and A life sim ulations limit the connectivity signi® cantly, resulting in
densities under 0.1. For exam ple, the Alife m odels of Epstein and A xtell (1996 )
typically allow each unit to com m unicate only with its four contiguous neighbors on
the grid (with som e exceptions for kinship and friendship, although these exceptions
m ake the graphic displays progressively less com prehensible). If such a simulation
has 100 agents, there will be less than 400 connections out of a possible 10,000
(100 2 ), resulting in a density under 0.04. In a connectionist network with 100 output
layer units, 20 hidden layer units, and 100 input layer units, with every layer’ s units
connected to the next layer, there will be 4000 connections (100 3 20 1 100 3 20)
out of 48,400 possible pairs, for a density of 0.08.
Alife researchers have not explored the im plication of high density; this is
perhaps a result of the dif® culty of im plem enting and observing such a system , since
it would not have the usual characteristic of being visually observable on a two-
dim ensional computer screen. In connectionist models, density will necessarily
rem ain low due to the de® ning architectural features of these m odelsÐ input,
output, and hidden layers.
Connection density is also related to, but is not the same thing as, localizability
and decom posability of the system : if groups of agents can be hierarchically decom -
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 461

posed, then our system is m ore likely to submit to reductionist analysis. Although
identical m easures of connection density m ight or m ight not be hierarchically
decom posable, depending on the pattern of connections, system s with an extrem ely
high density m easure are not likely to be decom posable. Our im prov theater group,
with a density m easure of 1.0, cannot be hierarchically decom posed at all. M ost
com plexity theorists also believe that connectionist and A life networks are not
decom posable, even with densities under 0.1 (see Bechtel & R ichardson, 1993).

N ow that w e have novelty, w hat about appropriateness?

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T he above variables describe which systems are likely to generate novelty. But
novelty is not suf® cient for creativity; we also need appropriatenessÐ the novel
creation must som ehow be viewed as useful, appropriate, or valuable in som e
(higher level) system. For example, evolutionary noveltyÐ a m utationÐ will be
short-lived if the environm ent does not provide selective advantage for that m u-
tation. A subconscious ª chance con® guration of mental elem ents,º Simonton’ s
(1988 ) theory of creative insight, will never emerge into consciousness unless it
passes the brain’ s ® lter; and as Poincare points out (1913) , m ost novel com binations
will be useless.
All com puter models of creativity to date are actually models of novelty only,
without any com ponent corresponding to this selection stage. For example, the
m odels reviewed by Boden (1991) generate large numbers of products, but their
programm ers rarely tell us how they select the outputs that are ª appropriateº for
publication. Such program s include AA RON (a program that generates paintings)
and BACON (a program that generates m athem atical proofs), both of which
generate m any outputs which m ay be novel, but nonetheless uninteresting, banal, or
tautological, and are discarded and never seen by anyone other than the pro-
gram m ers.
Appropriateness requires us to explore how different higher level system s
require and reward different degrees of em ergent novelty. Thus an em ergent theory
of creativity m ust describe relations between levels of analysis. An em ergent m odel
of appropriateness would require a level above the level of em ergent novelty, a higher
level capable of judging the appropriateness of the novelty generated by the lower
level. This higher level could also be a complex, em ergent system . Connectionist
and A life sim ulations, in this sense, do not contain a higher levelÐ the em ergent
novelty is not selected or ® ltered, except by a hum an observer (as noted by Baas,
19 94; Gilbert, 1995) .
This issue is related to downward causation. These com putational m odels
incorporate only bottom ± up em ergent processes; but in creative complex system s,
em ergent effects in turn in¯ uence lower level emergent processes, as noted by
Cam pbell (1974 ) and Sperry (1986) . Cam pbell (1974) argued that there are
processes of downward causation in biological systems, noting that ª the laws of the
higher-level selective system determ ine in part the distribution of lower-level events
and substancesº (p. 180). A lthough Cam pbell was careful to present this concept as
com patible with reductionism , he strongly maintained that ª scienti® c description is
 46 2 K . SAW Y ER

still incompleteº even after a traditional reductionist account has explained a system
in terms of lower level m echanism s and processes (p. 182). The brain scientist R.W.
Sperry argued that consciousness has a determ inative in¯ uence on the underlying
neurophysiological substrate; his position has been called macro-determ inism or
em ergent determ inism , and he writes ª these lower-level physical forces, though still
active, are successively enveloped, overw helmed, and superseded by the em ergent
forces of higher and higher levelsº (1986, p. 269).
Collaborative em ergence m anifests a social version of downward causation. The
top± down effects are likely to be relatively m ore im portant than in physical or
biological systems, since each agent is com plex enough to internalize a m odel of the
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em ergent macrostructure; in such cases, it’ s perhaps more obvious that emergents
are in¯ uencing agent behavior.
Baas (1994) pointed out the lim itations of two-leveled m odels, and proposed
the term hyperstructure to describe complex system s with two or m ore levels of
com plex em ergence, sim ultaneously active and with bi-directional in¯ uence. In
Baas’ s conception, at each level of com plexity, new properties and behavior emerge,
allowing for new interactions at the lower level; thus, ª each level is necessary in
order to get the last level’ s propertiesº (p. 524).
M odeling appropriateness with multi-leveled systems gives us a way to charac-
terize top± down processes. Although typically not represented in connectionist and
A life m odels, top± down processes are constant and pervasive in collaborative em erg-
ence. In an improv theater performance, the dram atic frame that is active at any
given m om ent is a collaboratively created em ergent, but it, in turn, constrains what
actions the actors can enact. T op± down processes play a role in all individual
creativity , as well. For example, creative individuals typically internalize the social
m odels of their creative discipline, through years of socialization and training. Only
after this preparation phase can creative com binations em erge from the subcon-
scious, because they are com binations of elem ents that were not novel, but were
pre-existing in the socially created dom ain. In fact, m ost creativity theorists today
agree that hum an creativity cannot occur without the raw material provided by
higher level social em ergents.

W hat form does the novelty take?

Novelty ¼ is som e new pattern of relatedness. In a sense the ª item sº of

stuff are not new; and yet, in a sense, at each stage of substantial advance
the ª unitsº of stuff are new. (M organ, 1933 , p. 33)

H aving equated novelty with emergent process, we face M organ’ s ontological

confusion: what is new? W hat is the exact nature of the novelty that em erges from
one or another system ? M any current philosophical controversies are versions of this
question, such as, for example, the debate about consciousness. D ennett (1991) and
M insky (1985 ) both say that consciousness is em ergent from the interactions of
non-conscious agents; there is no ontologically distinct ª self,º and the subjective
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 463

sense that there is something more is sim ply a vitalist illusion. Driven by a sim ilar
ontological attitude, m ethodological individualists claim that social groups ª aren’ t
really thereº because, after all, they are just com posed of people (W atkins, 1955).
W hy do we need to exam ine collaborative emergence, if there’ s really nothing new
anyway? Interaction and em ergence can not som ehow create new stuff in the world.
Reductionists of various sortsÐ m echanists, m aterialistsÐ have used such argu-
m ents to accuse em ergentists of the 19th century philosophical sin of vitalism. In the
19 20s, advocates of em ergent evolution had to repeatedly and explicitly deny that
they were vitalists; they held that their position was com patible with m echanistic
explanations, while at the same time extending beyond m echanism (M organ, 1923 ;
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W heeler, 1928) . Even today, emergent thinkers who are explicit m echanists are
nonetheless accused of being vitalists. Like their counterparts in the 1920 s, today’ s
em ergent thinkers go to extrem es to avoid associations with vitalism, coining term s
like ª em ergent mechanismº (Bechtel & Richardson, 1993) or ª em ergentist material-
ism º (Bunge, 19 77).
Em ergent thinking often veers dangerously close to vitalism , because if you
claim that the emergent has an ontological status distinct from the lower level
m atter, then you seem to be claim ing that there is som e non-material entity or
substance. And if you deny that this is your claim , the m aterialist can accuse you of
just being a confused, hypocritical m aterialist. The goal of most emergent thinkers,
in the 1920 s and today alike, is to navigat e these dif® culties and to establish a m iddle
ground between reductionist m aterialism and vitalism. The dif® culty arises because
in creative m ulti-leveled system s, higher level emergents take on causal properties,
and thus take on what seems to be an ontological status independent of the
com ponents. For exam ple, Kim (1992) argued that if an em ergent property has
causal powers, it is ª realº (p. 135). But where does this em ergent property com e
from , if not from the lower level interactions? W hat is the ontological status of these
em ergents?
In part, the ontological confusion results from the difference between em ergent
process and emergent product. W e usually think of creativity as resulting in a
productÐ a painting, a scienti® c journal articleÐ a product that has its own physical
existence, apart from the creator, a product that can be copied and dissem inated,
taking on a life of its own. Som ething now exists that did not exist before the
em ergent process generated it. This singular property of som e em ergents is what we
tend to label ª creative.º A lthough generated by an em ergent process (either con-
ceived of as being within the brain, or as being a social process), the end product is
ontologically distinct from that process. Perhaps this is why creativity research has
always been a branch of psychology: m ost creative products are created by individ-
uals. (Of course, m any products are generated by collectivesÐ as many sociologists
and literary theorists will point out; Becker, 1982.)
Yet m any emergent system s do not generate ostensible products. A n im prov
theater perform ance is ephemeral, and after it’ s over, nothing is left but the
m emories of those who were present during the perform ance. A run of a computer
social simulation doesn’ t generate a product, either; all we have is the visualized
screen representation, exam ined by a hum an observer. A language like English is
 46 4 K . SAW Y ER

em ergent and collaboratively created (Hutchins & Hazlehurst, 1995) , but it doesn’ t
have an independent physical existence.
Keeping these thoughts in m ind, I propose that there are at least four types of
em ergent novelty, each of which can result in downward causation:

1. novel products;
2. ontogenetic em ergence (internalization);
3. collaborative em ergence; and
4. historical or evolutionary emergence.

The latter three forms of emergence do not generate ostensible products. This
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discussion raises several fruitful questions for future research: are there fundamental
ontological differences between product generating em ergence, and non-product
generating? D o these differences affect the decom posability or reducibility of such
systems? D o these different em ergents have different form s of top± down effects?

Type 1: novel products

In traditional creative dom ains, like the arts and sciences, an ostensible product is
created. These creative disciplines require m anipulation of some set of physical
and/or conceptual objects that exist apart from the individual creator. The result of
the creative process is an object with an existence independent of the creator. These
products, in turn, in¯ uence the future creative acts of all mem bers of the discipline,
upon viewing, analysis, and internalization.

Type 2: ontogenetic emergence

W hen a connectionist network creates an internal representation of som e feature of

the external environment, that change in the network is often said to be em ergent
from the interaction of the agent and the environment. This is the sense that the
term is used in connectionist and robotics literatures. In developmental psychology,
this is also the sense of H endriks-Jansen’ s ª interactive em ergenceº (1994 ) and of
Elman et al.’ s (1996) argum ent for em ergence as an alternative to the nature/nurture
dichotomy. Piaget’ s constructivism could be viewed as a version of ontogenetic
em ergence, and it was a core principle of W undt’ s theory of ª creative resultantsº
(see W heeler, 1928 , pp. 60± 61).
This type of emergence changes the complex system (the brain) itself. It doesn’ t
require collaborative em ergence; for exam ple, Piaget’ s m odel does not distinguish
between social and physical environm ents. A nd most robotics researchers who talk
about emergence and im provisation are referring to a single active agent in interac-
tion with an essentially static physical world (Agre, 1997) .
In ontogenetic emergence, the em ergent is an internal system state. In training
a connectionist network, the cause of the network’ s ® nal state could be interpreted
as either (1) an iconic internalization of the external environment, or (2) an
internalization of the pattern of agent± environm ent interaction. Although not ex-
plicitly addressed, connectionist researchers typically assum e that the internal sys-
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 465

tem state is of Type (1), an internalization of some feature of the environment. In

T ype (2), the emergent effect, because it is internal to the agent, is in som e sense at
a lower level than the causeÐ a pattern of interaction, or an external social environ-
m ent. This additional wrinkle arises in m ost em ergentist accounts of organism
developm ent (e.g. Elman et al., 1996).

Type 3: collaborative emergence

Som e em ergent processes are ephem eral; once an im prov perform ance is over, there
is nothing left. But the emergent nonetheless has top± down effects. In an im prov
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theater perform ance, at every m oment of the perform ance, the em ergentÐ the collab-
oratively created dram atic fram eÐ is a socially shared em ergent entity, which con-
strains the next dram atic action.
The school of psychology known as sociocultural psychology has begun to focus
on these types of em ergent social processes. One of its distinguishing features is its
rejection of reductionist methods, and its attempt to explore em ergent group
phenom ena (W ertsch, 1998) . Socioculturalists argue that m any phenom ena of
interest cannot be explained through reductionist analysis, because they em erge
from group interaction. Sociocultural approaches include the lines of research called
social constructivism, activity theory, com puter supported collaborative work
(CSCW ), and situated cognition. All of these approaches share a top± down view of
hum an behavior, and hold that social groups are em ergent phenom ena that cannot
be understood by analyzing the individual m em bers of the group. Examples include
R ogoff’ s studies of collaboration (Rogoff, 19 90); studies of group learning in
workplace settings (Hutchins, 1995) ; and studies of inform al social learning in
preschool play (Sawyer, 1997b). These researchers argue that reductionist analysis
won’ t help us understand social groupsÐ fam ilies, peers on the playground, or
classroomsÐ because the analyst can’ t predict characteristics of the higher level from
properties of a lower level.
A collaborative emergent is not a ® nal end product, like a creative product or
a connectionist network endstate; it is a constantly changing ephem eral property of
the interaction, which in turn in¯ uences the emergent processes that are generating
it.
This results in both top± down and bottom± up processes; the em ergent is
ª initially º created with bottom± up dialogic processes, but im m ediately it takes on
constraining, or top± down, characteristics. In com plex m ulti-layered system s, top±
down and bottom± up processes are always sim ultaneous and bi-directional.

Type 4: historical em ergence

T he em ergence of a new molecule, new species, or new sensory organ falls into this
category. As M organ pointed out (1933) , som e of these em ergents can be retrospec-
tively viewed as determ inistic. For exam ple, water is em ergent from hydrogen and
oxygen, and the properties of water could not be predicted from those of hydrogen
and oxyge n before the ® rst occurrence of water; but after the ® rst time, we can formulate
 46 6 K . SAW Y ER

laws with predictive power. Evolutionary biologists generally hold that we cannot
predict which species would evolve at tim e t, even knowing fully the traits of existing
species and the features of the environm ent at tim e t-1. For example, G ould’ s
ª replaying life’ s tapeº thought experim ent em phasizes the contingency of evolution:
ª Any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different
from the road actually taken ¼ eventual results cannot be predicted at the outsetº
(1989 , p. 51).
Also in this category is the emergence of cultural and historical noveltyÐ a
political revolution, a new Creole language. Social entities like m oney, system s of
exchange, and language are not individual creations, but are emergent from com plex
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social system s. Language is perhaps the prototype example of an em ergent, collec-

tive product which is stable over tim e, although it is not represented by a product
(until perhaps the advent of literacy). These types of em ergence also involve
processes of Type (3) em ergence, in com plex and poorly understood ways (in
sociology, this is the crux of the macro/micro issue; Knorr-Cetina & Cicourel,
19 81).
In econom ics, the classic em ergent is the com m odity price (Arrow, 1994).
A rrow argued that price form ation cannot be explained with individualistic m odels,
writing: ª W hat individual has chosen prices? In the formal theory, at least, no one.
T hey are determ ined on (not by) social institutions known as marketsº (p. 4). Arrow
concluded that m acro-level social variablesÐ which are em ergent and unpredictable
from individual behaviorÐ are essential to studying all social system s.

R atio of novelty to pre-existing structure

In all four types of emergent novelty, we have the issue of the relative amount of
novelty that is created at each unit of emergent tim e. Many em ergent thinkers don’ t
address this issue, only considering the ® nal state of the system to be the em ergent;
for example, in a run of a connectionist system , what is typically of interest is the
® nal stable state of the network (or even the statistical average of m any runs), rather
than all of the interm ediary steps that led to the ® nal state. But we could think of
this em ergent ® nal state as the accumulation of hundreds or thousands of tiny
em ergent stepsÐ each small change in connection weights is a tiny bit of em ergent
novelty.
In fact, this is the classical view in evolutionary biology. In 1928 , W heeler
pointed out that the dom inant em ergent thinkers, M organ and Alexander, proposed
big leaps of em ergence from one level to the next: ® rst you have only living m atter,
and then suddenly you have M ind. An evolutionary biologist, W heeler was an
increm entalistÐ small changes are gradually subject to natural selection and eventu-
ally accum ulate. From an evolutionary perspective, if there is to be continuity and
novelty in evolution, ª the viable novelty at each emergence m ust be very small
indeed ¼ N ovelties such as life and m ind ¼ are of such m agnitude that we can
regard them only as representing the ® nal accum ulative stages of a very long series
of minim al em ergencesº (W heeler, 1928, p. 24).
Increm ental em ergence is also characteristic of collaborative em ergence. At
 T H E EM E RG EN CE O F CR EAT IV IT Y 467

each dialogue turn, an actor can only m odify the em ergent a small am ount; after all,
that has to be the case if it’ s to be collaborative. Is one turn the analogue of one
creative product in science? Is the course of a ® ve-m inute scene more like the history
of a scienti® c paradigm ? These questions have rarely been addressed (although see
Sawyer, 1995).
The increm entalist view is compatible with ® elds like the history of science, or
the sociology of artÐ since each advance is seen to be only a tiny brick in a larger
project. In contrast, psychologists and cognitive scientists tend to think in terms of
the ultim ate end product of em ergent novelty. A higher level system s view is
required before you can see that overall, there is a great deal of stability and
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structure to creative system s (de® ned above the level of the individual/agent) and
that each emergent novelty is a rather small modi® cation to the system .

Conclusion: w hat can this tell us about individual creativity?

Social em ergence bears an interesting analogy to that of m ind. (W heeler,

1928, p. 26)

I began by introducing the concept of em ergence, pointing out that contem porary
creativity theory is in many ways a theory of em ergence. A fter a review of em ergence
and novelty, I presented an exam ple of an em ergent system , an improvisational
theater dialogue. I chose this exam ple because it contrasts sharply with the types of
com plex system s usually considered to manifest emergence, those studied by Alife
and connectionist researchers. I used the term collaborative em ergence to distinguish
the behavior of these types of complex system s, and I brie¯ y summ arized som e
characteristics of collaborative emergent system s, emphasizing how each character-
istic contributes to their novelty.
Next, I presented four possible dim ensions along which a complex system can
be measured, and I argued that each dim ension contributes to the likelihood that the
system will manifest emergent novelty. The exam ple of collaborative em ergence
suggests that the m odels of Alife and connectionism are lim ited to one type of
em ergence; the speci® c nature of these m odels focuses on only one of the em ergence
dim ensions, the number of units.
Collaborative em ergence is a kind of novelty that is generally not studied by
creativity researchers; instead, they study individual creativity as a m ental or cogni-
tive process. But perhaps collaborative em ergence can inform our study of individual
creativity , as wellÐ to the extent that there are regularities and laws that apply to
novelty in all emergent system s. W heeler suggests that those patterns that we
discover while studying collaborative emergence m ay also provide insights into the
psychology of creativity. Connectionist and distributed m odels of mindÐ which had
not yet been conceived in W heeler’ s timeÐ m ake the analogy even more plausible,
by suggesting that both society and m ind are com plex dynam ical system s. If the
hum an m ind is com plex and em ergent, and collaborative creative system sÐ such as
scienti® c disciplines, art worlds, and theater groupsÐ are collaboratively em ergent,
then perhaps there are interesting processual analogies in the ways that novelty is
 46 8 K . SAW Y ER

created. Even though these levels of analysis seem very different, a com plex dynam -
ical systems theoryÐ one that incorporates the unique features of collaborative
em ergenceÐ m ay lead us to a uni® ed theory of creativity, one that incorporates both
novelty and appropriateness.

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