The Systems Approach to Creativity

This article was originally published in Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non- commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution’s website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial Montuori A. (2011) Systems Approach. In: Runco MA, and Pritzker SR (eds.) Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition, vol. 2, pp. 414-421 San Diego: Academic Press. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.  Author's personal copy Systems Approach A Montuori, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, USA ã 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Glossary System A group of interrelated and interacting elements that Complexity theory The study of interconnected, form a complex whole. interdependent, dynamic systems. Transdisciplinarity An approach to inquiry that moves Cybernetics The art of steering, or the study of across disciplines to find pertinent knowledge to address a dynamic circular interactions and recursive patterns specific question, using the language of cybernetic, systems, of organization. and complexity theories. Historical Overview structural, behavioral, and developmental features that are shared across systems. It is not possible to speak of a single systems approach. There General system theory positioned itself as transdisciplinary are rather of a number of systems approaches, each loosely rather than interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary refers to inter- drawing on different aspects of a family composed mainly of, action between disciplines, whereas transdisciplinarity refers general system theory, cybernetics, information theory, chaos to going beyond or across disciplines. General system theory theory, and complexity theory. Systems approaches have been would be the common language across diverse disciplines. used in most of the social sciences, particularly sociology and Central to this language was the concept of ‘system,’ defined management, but their use has extended into the arts and as a group of interacting, interdependent elements that form a humanities. complex whole. It also pointed toward a new world view that Creativity researchers have used systems approaches draw- emphasizes such key concepts as every system’s embeddedness ing on very different sources and in very different ways. The in other, larger systems, and the dynamic, ever-changing pro- main focus has been to highlight creativity as a phenomenon cesses of self-organization, growth, and adaptation. It is not that occurs in the context of multiple systems, and therefore surprising therefore that systems concepts have been central to involves a network of interactions. the rise of ecology as a field of inquiry, with such concepts as ecosystem. In creativity research the systems approach has also at times been referred to as an ecological approach, because of General System Theory the emphasis on the larger ecosystem in which creativity General system theory originated in the 1940s in the work of emerges. the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy who initially sought to General system theory was generally interpreted to be find a new approach to the study of life or living systems. More equilibrium-oriented, and fundamentally static, particularly broadly, Von Bertalanffy envisioned general system theory as as interpreted in mid-twentieth century functionalist sociology. a way to address the increasing complexity of the world’s This focus on order and equilibrium was also one of the main problems. General system theory emerged as an alternative to sources for the initial critiques of general system theory’s appli- the dominant form of inquiry and way of thinking, reduction- cation in the social sciences, most notably in the functionalist ist analysis, which was criticized for being unable to address sociology of Talcott Parsons. This was viewed as being funda- wholes, interdependence, and complexity. Reductionism is mentally politically conservative and oriented toward main- based on the assumption that scientific explanation of complex taining the status quo, rather than open to creativity and change. phenomena should be in terms of component, simpler phe- nomena, and that the whole is explained from the knowledge Cybernetics of its parts. General system theorists argued that reductionism abstracts a subject from its environment, with the isolation of a In its early years, general system theory engaged in fruitful variable in a laboratory being the classic example, and that by exchanges with information theory and cybernetics, most studying an element of a larger whole in isolation reduction- notably at the classic Macy conferences from 1946 to 1953. ism is unable to account for systemic and emergent properties, Concepts such as negative and positive feedback, entropy, and or the way relationships and interactions form the organiza- self-organization became part of the systems lexicon. Negative tion of the life. General system theory was presented as a new feedback is deviation-reducing feedback, which can be found way of thinking that allows for the study of interconnections in a thermostat. A decrease in temperature below a certain among systems and accounts for the nature of ‘open systems’ threshold kicks in the heating, so that a relatively stable tem- which interact with their environments. perature is maintained. Positive feedback occurs in so-called General system theory introduced key concepts such as open ‘self-exciting’ or ‘runaway’ systems when, for example, one and closed systems, stressing the role and importance of context person’s rude behavior leads another person to respond even and environment, equifinality, or the way systems can reach more rudely and the whole thing escalates until the arrival of the same goal through different paths, and isomorphisms or the police acts as a negative feedback. Positive feedback can be 414 Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy Systems Approach 415 found both in vicious and virtuous cycles. People who do not the equation, and there is no ‘God’s eye view from Nowhere.’ exercise tend to feel more and more out of shape, and therefore One of the more radical interpretations of cybernetic episte- feel less and less like exercising, which makes them even more mology holds that any statement tells us more about the out of shape, and therefore even less likely to move, and so on. speaker than about the event, object, or person she/he is Alcoholism and drug addiction also work through runaway describing. In the context of creativity, this leads to the view positive feedback. But positive feedback can also kick-start a that creativity is always an attribution made by somebody. situation that has become stuck – the more somebody exer- Certain more sociologically inquiries into creativity have in cises, the better they feel, and so they keep exercising. With its fact shifted the research toward those that make the judgment focus on deviation amplification, positive feedback is also about what is, and what is not, considered creative in a field. associated with creativity and innovation. If negative feedback maintains a system on course and in equilibrium, positive Chaos and Complexity Theories feedback’s deviation amplification takes it toward disequilib- In the 1980s chaos and complexity theories introduced impor- rium and change. tant new dimensions to systems approaches. Whereas in gen- eral system theory the focus had been on systems in Process equilibrium, researchers now began to incorporate cybernetic Cybernetics focused on process, on navigation (the Greek concepts and study systems in states that were far from origin of the word, kybernetis, means steersman), and the con- equilibrium. As a result they began emphasizing the role of nection and communication between events and concepts. self-organization, emergence, and unpredictability. These A classic example is the relationship between order and disor- developments in science led to what has been called the der, or stability and change. Many paired concepts such as ‘challenge of complexity.’ The irreducible complexity of phe- order and disorder were traditionally viewed as opposites and nomena ranging from atoms to star systems, from cognitive referred to as ‘paradoxical.’ From a cybernetic perspective they systems to human societies is increasingly clear. This complex- are viewed as forming part of one larger ongoing circular ity, which takes the form of interconnectedness, interdepen- process (much like day and night), rather than static opposites. dence, and unpredictability is not amenable to reductionistic The connection between creativity, madness, and emotional approaches. Eliminating the interconnectedness, interdepen- instability dates back at least to Aristotle. It has become part of dence, and unpredictability also eliminates many of the most popular culture to believe creative people are a little (if not a important dynamic features of the system. Complexity is now lot) crazy. Research shows creative individuals score higher on being recognized as a basic fact of existence, whereas in tradi- measures of psychopathology and on measures of psychologi- tional, reductionist approaches to research it was considered an cal health. They are therefore both healthier and more unstable, exogenous, chaotic element that interfered with the ‘purification’ experiencing periods of instability but also having the ego- of the variable to be manipulated. strength to rally from setbacks, and in the process experiencing The term complexity is generally defined as the length of a wider range of human possibilities. This is a more complex the minimal program required to compute a number. But this formulation than the simple suggestion that creatives are a is an algorithmic definition, and another definition might be a little crazy, and one that, with a few exceptions (Frank Barron measure of how hard it is to put something together starting in 1995 and Edgar Morin in 2008) has not been fully explored from elementary parts. Complexity has also been described as a in terms of its general implications for psychological health, recognition of complex causality, where complexity entails the nurturing of creative potential, the importance of supportive a shift in our description of phenomena, which at minimum environments for creativity, the role of ‘positive disintegration,’ recognizes the cybernetic dimension of mutual, recursive, and and the role of disorder in the generation of novelty. Creative circular causality. Central to our understanding of complexity individuals, with their preference for apparent disorder, draw is that it emerges out of the inclusion of relationships as a on disorder, in the form of the unconscious and the irrational dynamic, constitutive process dimension of the phenomena as sources of novelty in their own work. Rather than fear we want to understand rather than viewing them as static disorder, they actively court it and believe an encounter with elements in isolation from their environment. it can allow them to generate a higher, more inclusive ordering principle. Key Concepts Cybernetic Epistemology System Cybernetics evolved into in what came to be known as ‘second- Central to the systems approach is the concept of system. Tradi- order cybernetics,’ which went beyond the useful but mecha- tionally, science saw the world as made up of ‘things,’ reduced nistic concepts of negative and positive feedback. Second-order to the smallest significant variables, such as atoms or indivi- cybernetics moved from the study of observed systems to duals. Both atom and individual mean indivisible or that which the study of observing systems. The fundamental role of the cannot be broken down further – the smallest significant vari- observer or inquirer in every inquiry became central, as cyber- able. Scientific inquiry involved finding the smallest significant netics moved into the field of epistemology. Cybernetic episte- variable and isolating it from its environment to study it, mology was later to make a considerable impact in the field of preferably in a laboratory setting. With general system theory, family therapy, and in the sociology of Niklas Luhmann. the concept of system emerged as an alternative. A system is Cybernetic epistemology holds that every statement is always defined as a group of interrelated elements that make up a made by somebody. The speaker/knower cannot be left out of complex whole and exists in an environment. Open systems Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy 416 Systems Approach interact with their environment, exchanging matter, energy, the exception. Historically, the dominant view of creativity and information. Closed systems do not interact with their reflected this position. environment in any meaningful way. Rocks, for instance, are Once we start seeing the creative process as occurring in a closed systems. They do not take in matter, energy, or informa- network of open systems, our understanding of creativity and tion. Living systems need interactions and exchanges with their change are transformed. From a systems approach, it is not the environment for their survival. case that open systems change. Systems are change. The prob- In a systems approach, the individual is understood as a lem is that our traditional way of knowing does not allow us to system, interacting with a number of other systems, which may see that, because we have seen individuals and organizations as include family, workplace, neighborhood, and so on, depend- fundamentally static, and creativity change as an exception. ing on the nature of the research and the context. An under- Open systems have an ongoing relationship to their envi- standing of the various systems an individual is embedded in is ronment, and have to react to, or initiate changes in, that necessary in order to understand how a creative idea in some- environment. As they face environmental challenges, they body’s head becomes a product. In order to understand crea- experience periods of disequilibrium. Traditionally, it was tivity in organizations, for instance, we need to look at a series believed that equilibrium was a vital goal for any living system, of interacting complex systems: the individual, the group, the and disequilibrium was viewed as a temporary aberration to be department, the organization as a whole, the wider business avoided. In a systems approach, the role of disequilibrium is environment (e.g., economic climate, trends, competition), viewed as potentially constructive. An excessive focus on equi- and so on. librium stresses the importance of staying the same, and not The traditional scientific reductionistic view saw the world changing. But research has shown that periods of disequilib- made up of atoms, or things, that were not interconnected. The rium are essential for change, creativity, and innovation for all world was made up of what the systems approach would call systems, whether they are individual persons or organizations. closed systems. Closed systems do not require any exchange of In 1995, Frank Barron wrote that we should think of “the matter/energy or information with their environment. Their person as a dynamical natural system, bounded yet open, that is context and interactions are not significant or epiphenomenal. in a continual state of disequilibrium (p. 11).” He went on to A closed system view is inappropriate in the study of living argue that the creative person, process and product were “Each, in systems, because no living system can be a closed system. Every a sense, is a ‘field within a field’ – a field that never closes, for we living system exists in a network of relationships and interac- really are talking about open systems, delineated for purposes tions with its environment. of abstraction as product, process, and person.” (1995: 32). The concept of open systems offers us an entry point to Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1997, 1999) has been a promi- understand the role of change and creativity. Open systems nent proponent of a systems approach in creativity research. tend to be far less stable than closed systems, which are by His ‘DFI model of creativity’ has three systems as its major definition systems in equilibrium, with no exchange with their components: the domain (D), the field (F), and the individual environment. The openness of the system leads to constant (I). Culture, he writes, is made up of a set of domains such as interactions and exposure to difference and novelty, and there- music, engineering, religion, and so on. What is considered fore potential disequilibrium. The equilibrium of open systems creative in these domains is decided by the field, which is made is only relative because this structure is gradually, and some- up of the gatekeepers who decide what is and is not creative. times quite rapidly, transformed by exchanges with the envi- Both domain and field are necessary to understand what we ronment, leading to alternating periods of equilibrium and mean by creativity. disequilibrium. The more complex the systems, the further The visual arts are a ‘domain,’ and connected to this from equilibrium they become, which means they are increas- domain is a ‘field,’ made up of gallery owners, art critics, ingly unstable, and therefore require great adaptability and museum curators, important buyers and other key figures who resilience. This is especially true of human systems, which are decide what is and is not creative and valuable. They make the modified by their experiences with their environments. judgments that matter. These ‘gatekeepers’ are the individuals In a systems approach, everything that exists, exists in an and groups who decide whether an idea is worth pursuing or environment. The traditional (or reductionistic) approach to not. They play a key role in the life or death of an idea, and inquiry focused on understanding the subject of inquiry by learning how to influence these gatekeepers is often a necessity removing it from its environment. The ideal setting for research in organizational life. Having an idea is not enough – the idea therefore was the laboratory. A systems approach stresses that also has to be “sold” and accepted, and this entails both social every system is part of a larger series of systems. Every part and influence processes. This view has lead some researchers to exists in a larger whole, which in turn is part of a larger whole. argue that the 4Ps of creativity research – person, product, In an organizational setting, the individual is a part of a group, process, and press (the environment) need to be augmented which is part of an organization, which is part of a national by persuasion, the process whereby an idea is convincingly economy, which in turn is part of the larger global system. presented to the field. The 5P view extends the concept of Every system is part of a larger system, in a series of endlessly creative process to include not just the emergence of an idea, nested systems. but the larger process whereby that idea makes an impact in the Closed systems are in equilibrium. They do not change, field in order to be accepted as a creative contribution. grow, or transform. The traditional view, dating back to Another related implication of the systems approach is Newton, held that the Universe was made up of closed systems. that creativity training which focuses exclusively on the devel- And from a perspective that views all systems as essentially opment of individual creativity provides only a partial solution closed, equilibrium is the norm. Change and creativity are to the task of fostering creativity in organizations. If an Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy Systems Approach 417 organization wants to become more creative, it is not enough creative groups, and most notably in the ‘paradoxical person- for individuals to have more creative ideas. If management ality’ of creative person. Summarizing the extensive research on does not support creativity, and the gatekeepers are very risk- the characteristics of the creative person, Csikszentmihalyi averse, or believe that “we’ve always done it this way, and stated in 1996 that: there’s no need to change,” then training individuals with 1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, workshops that foster creative thinking may actually be coun- but they are also often quiet and at rest. terproductive and frustrating, because the ideas may never see 2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naı¨ve at the the light of day organizational creativity and innovation are same time. systemic processes. 3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or Focusing on only one part of the system is not enough to responsibility and irresponsibility. foster organizational creativity. A systems approach is transdis- 4. Creative people alternative between imagination and ciplinary. It does not reduce creativity to one discipline or fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality. dimension. Using the DFI model requires going beyond psy- 5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. chology and into such disciplines as the sociology of art, aes- 6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. thetics, cultural studies, and more. Focusing on one dimension, 7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role such as the role of brain hemispheres in creative thought, or the stereotyping. group process of an R&D group, without taking into account the 8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. larger organizational systems they operate within, provides us a 9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, partial view with potentially limited applicability. yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. A systems approach does not necessarily shift the focus on 10. Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often expose the sociocultural dimensions of creativity. Gruber’s evolving them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of systems approach focuses on three interacting systems that in enjoyment. their interaction make up the creative act, namely knowledge, purpose, and affect which is essentially a cognitive approach. Central here is the fact that these characteristics are not Amabile’s three interacting systems of intrinsic (or task) moti- commonly found together in individuals. We usually say a vation, creative thinking, and expertise, form a componential person is either conservative or rebellious, passionate or objec- model that can also be viewed as a system mode. tive, humble or proud, not both. When these characteristics are found together in one person, the term paradoxical is used to describe them. The term paradox means ‘contrary to received Beyond Either/Or: The Cybernetic Paradoxes of Creativity opinion’ or self-contradictory. In other words, this is not what A systems approach stresses the limitations of an either/or, we are used to, it goes against our expectations, and it is essen- binary logic, and emphasizes a cybernetic, recursive, process tially puzzling to us because unusual and hard to understand. way of thinking. A reductive approach isolates and separates, The paradoxical nature of the creative personality and the whereas a systems approach distinguishes and unites. When creative process have been well established, and confirm that we separate A and B, we state that there is no connection creativity involves a cybernetic process that goes beyond simple between them – they are literally separated. When we distin- dualities (Mark Runco in 2007). Barron argued that, “The guish between A and B, when we make a distinction as opposed paradoxical must be accepted as part of human design. With- to a disjunction, we say there is a difference between A and B, out stability, we can have no flexibility; without discipline, no but they are not necessarily separate or opposed. Between A freedom; without knowledge, no creation; without subjectiv- and B there may be a spectrum of possibilities, in the same way ity, no objectivity” (1995: 35). that to say night and day are separate or opposites does not Paradox, in other words, is an aspect of humanness, that take into account the entire 24 hours, and ignores, for instance, is highlighted in creativity. Instead of holding key systems dusk and dawn. When researchers who are methodological dimensions such as equilibrium and disequilibrium, order individualists argue that a person’s environment is epiphe- and disorder, as opposites, with an either/or logic, a systems nomenal to our understanding of his or her creativity, they approach views them as having a cybernetic relationship of are essentially arguing it is not relevant to the inquiry and will both/and. In the traditional view, which originated in moder- not help us understand that person’s creativity. There is a strict nity, equilibrium, and disequilibrium, order and disorder were separation between ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ and inside is where viewed in a hierarchical opposition, with equilibrium and the action is. An inquiry informed by systems approach would order privileged, and disequilibrium and disorder considered argue that while it is possible to emphasize the cognitive pro- to be problematic. A systems approach shows they are interre- cess, eliminating the importance of the context completely lated like yin and yang, and provide a potentially generative provides a partial and arguably mutilated view of the phenom- interaction. Complexity theorists in particular have been enon. The individual is always interacting with his or her showing that this cybernetic relationship between order and environment, and those interactions are significant and have disorder is central to the more interesting natural and social an impact on the person’s ‘internal’ process. phenomena (Morin, 2008). The now popular term ‘on the One fascinating characteristic of much of the creativity edge of chaos’ shows how far this relationship has been research is on the role of paradox. This is found in the creative taken, a cybernetic process of navigating on a razor’s edge of process in so-called Janusian thinking which involves holding chaos, and has remarkable parallels to the way which creative seemingly opposed or self-contradictory ideas, or in the need individuals explore a wider range of human experience and for both convergence and divergence, in the characteristics of appear to have more dramatic highs and lows, greater mental Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy 418 Systems Approach health yet higher scores on psychopathology, more destabiliz- creative group process. When new teams are brought together ing experiences and yet using them to reach higher and more to work on a task, they have a tendency to self-organize. There integrated equilibria. may be a desire to control or micro-manage them, but in the Creative individuals have a generalized preference for dis- context of creativity and innovation, self-organization refers to order, and see in disorder (the unconscious, the irrational, the a system’s capacity to develop its own values, criteria, and ways unknown) the source of potential novelty. Creativity research- of working. A tightly controlled and micro-managed team can ers have criticized the focus on equilibrium and frictionless, work well for routine tasks, But in the case of creative, nonrou- self-esteemed adaptation, and argued that in the healthy and tine tasks, self-organization means allowing the system’s mem- creative individual, order needs to be confronted and challenged bers to develop their own ways of doing things, their own ways by disorder to lead to growth and creativity. of getting from A to B. In the same way, rigid programming of A systems approach assumes that all open systems in an our lives without being open to the possibility of change and environment must adapt to environmental changes, and there- widely differing perspectives, without being open to what fore undergo periods of disequilibrium in which a new level emerges in the relationship between self, our task, and our of adaptation is found. This suggests that living systems engage environment, can drastically limit the potential for creativity. in an ongoing process of learning and change. They are not The concepts of emergence and self-organization both static, but in a constant process. Open systems do not just res- reflect a recognition and valuing of spontaneity. This is not to pond and change in response to their environment: they also be confused with chaos. A comedy improvisator group has a initiate change. They change their environment. They do not clear task, to be entertaining and funny. The group’s perfor- only respond to unforeseen changes in their environment, but mance emerges as the group members interact and surprise they also cause events that for others are unexpected and each other. In those situations the group members have to unpredictable. self-organize, and know when to take risks, try new things, The traditional approach to scientific inquiry and social and at times react to challenges and opportunities without science focused on prediction and control. This reflects an even the time to think. Spontaneity and improvisation require understanding of the world, and of the organization as a stable, a generative framework for the group to operate in, and both equilibrium-oriented, predictable machine. Machines are individual and collective skills. Jazz has provided a particularly designed to be predictable and controllable, and are reliable rich source of examples of self-organization, spontaneity, and because they are not supposed to deviate from very clearly emergence for social scientists. set parameters. With input A, they reliably deliver output B. Emergence and self-organization are characteristics of Clearly such an approach is problematic when applied to open systems that are adapting to their environment in new creativity, where the whole point is the generation of surprise ways. These two concepts move the emphasis away from emergent properties. Tellingly, the subtitle of a major book on centralized, hierarchical leadership in groups and organi- complexity theory, John Casti’s Complexification is Explaining a zations to more distributed leadership and interactions. paradoxical world through the science of surprise. This gives us a clear Emergence and self-organization are also characteristics of cre- indication of the shift from a Newtonian view, and shows how ative processes. In the context of human organizations, these these new sciences are aligned with creativity research in its concepts pose challenges to the traditional notions of predic- many forms. tion and control, and suggest that managing creativity at all systems levels requires a recognition of greater openness to outcomes, unpredictability, individual and collective responsi- From Control to Self-Organization bility, and trust in the creative process and in the systems The systems approach has introduced the important concepts involved in that process. of emergence and self-organization. The term emergence is related to the popular systems concept that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” The whole is an organized Science, Systems, and Creativity network, and as such has characteristics that cannot be reduced to single individuals. It is also true that the whole can be less The systems approach connects individual creativity to the than the sum of its parts. Indeed, it is clear that historically in larger cosmic context, according to Frank Barron: the United States, unlike in Europe and Japan, groups have The human person is a form in constant process of change. From been viewed as less than the sum of their parts. Whereas there birth to death, that process is a creative one. It partakes of the is a sizable literature on creative individuals, it is not until creative process in all Nature. It is evolutionary as the forms of recently that there has been an interest in creative groups, Nature are. In the individual case we speak of development and and to this day there is still a strong trend in creativity research growth, in the general case we speak of evolution, but both are that holds individuals working alone are fundamentally more aspects of creativity. Indeed, psychogenesis is best understood in the context of cosmogenesis. (1995: 30) creative than groups. The assumption is that groups lower creativity – and therefore that the whole is less than the He goes on to state that: sum of its parts. Regardless of whether the whole is less or more than the sum of its parts, the whole is an emergent property The psychology of creativity specifically, by asking how and under of the interactions of the members of a group or, more generally, the what conditions the phenomenon of distinct novelty may appear in interacting parts of a system. human psychical functioning, links itself to the general scientific The importance of control is challenged by the phenome- enterprise of describing the evolution of forms in the natural world. (1995: 33) non of self-organization and gives some insights into the Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy Systems Approach 419 The psychology of creativity is therefore part of a larger winding down, moving toward degradation and decay. A new enterprise of situating human beings in the cosmos, and the paradigm has emerged in the last 50 years. This paradigm is systems approach has been instrumental in creating this con- not of a static nor of a decaying universe, but of a creative nection. It has also been central to a shift in the sciences universe. The stress is on interactions, innovation, and organi- toward a view of the Universe itself as a creative process. In zation. There is not just a different understanding of the uni- the traditional Newtonian scientific paradigm, order was king, verse, but a different way of thinking about, and inquiring into privileged above disorder, chaos, and ‘noise.’ Our understand- the universe. The interconnected, dynamic, changing phenom- ing of the relationship between order and disorder was in ena science is exploring require a different way of thinking, and terms of a binary opposition, and indeed a hierarchical binary cannot be addressed solely by analysis. There is a new perspec- opposition. Disorder was viewed as a function of human igno- tive on the world, one that is fundamentally systemic. rance, something that would, eventually, with better knowl- The three scientific paradigms described above reflect dif- edge, be integrated in the larger master-plan. ferent views of the world. In Newtonian mechanics there is a Order came from the Creator’s master-plan. A perfect order worldview based on necessity. The clockwork by necessity is unchanging. But Darwin’s theory of evolution documented requires certain specific mechanisms to be in motion. With change: in fact, it was all about change, and how it occurred equilibrium thermodynamics we see a worldview based on over time. We have to keep in mind that before Darwin the chance. Decay leads to randomness and dispersion. The study assumption was that the design of all of the planet’s creatures of far-from-equilibrium systems leads to a worldview of was God’s doing. The design did not change over time. The creativity. new, emerging worldview articulated by scientists and even several leading theologians today has a radically different The Newtonian Paradigm perspective on the role of order, organization, and the nature of creation. Creation is not the result of God’s design, but of The Newtonian revolution represented the first real coherent the generative interactions between species and their environ- triumph of what we now call science. With his Principia, pub- ment in a form of creative self-organization. lished in 1687, Newton presented in the form of mathematical A number of important works in theology have stressed the equations the three laws that govern the motion of material importance of creativity, in many cases drawing on the work of bodies. Newton’s work was particularly important because it Alfred North Whitehead in whose ‘process’ vision of the world presented Universal Laws of Nature. These laws seemed to give creativity played a central role. In 2004, Harvard theologian a window into the functioning and nature of Nature itself. Gordon Kaufman in his provocatively titled In the beginning . . . Particularly powerful in Newton’s work was its focus on pre- Creativity, argues that the notion of a Creator simply does not diction, order, and determinism. With Newton the universe hold up to modern science, whereas placing creativity at the became a gigantic clockwork mechanism, and each part had to center of creation seems much more congruent. In both the play its role without fail. sciences and theology there is therefore a substantial move- The laws and principles created the foundation for general ment, infused with a systems approach, not only to address theories and predictions that could be tested through experi- creativity, but to make it central to both the scientific and the ments. These experiments conducted following the scientific religious underpinnings of our world and indeed the universe. method, consisted of breaking systems down to their simplest It is for this reason that we will explore the relationship components, a method now referred to as reductionism. This between cosmology and scientific worldviews, and the way reflected an assumption that the world was made of basic human beings in the West have conceptualized creativity in building blocks called atoms. The underlying assumption was their lives. that these atoms exist in isolation from their environment, and that knowledge of the behavior of the atoms could be used to The Cosmic Context predict the future of the system as a whole. Two fundamental things make up the Newtonian world: At the beginning of the twenty-first century there is an ongoing matter and energy. Matter and energy exist in the emptiness scientific revolution. Two of the central factors in that revolu- of absolute space and time. Matter is composed of atoms tion are a systems approach and the role of creativity. A systems and even subatomic particles such as electrons and protons. approach to the study of nature and the universe as a whole has Knowing the location, mass, and velocity of all the particles in led to a new understanding of the universe and nature not as a the universe, the assumption of the Newtonian worldview was clockwork, a machine, or as decaying, running down, but as that it would be possible to predict the future. With progres- fundamentally creative. This means creativity is not a remark- sive improvement in scientific knowledge, in other words, it able and relatively exceptional phenomenon, but rather at the was believed that eventually it would be possible to predict very heart of existence. In order to understand this shift we every event. The Newtonian world was therefore deterministic. need to understand the history of our cosmology, or our scien- Every event had to happen by necessity. Once set in motion, the tific study of the Universe and our understanding of what the universe unfolds following precise laws. The assumption Universe is. was that fundamentally, the Universe is governed by simplicity and simple rules. There is an unquestionable order to the Three Paradigms universe, and anything we consider disorder or complexity The Newtonian paradigm emerged in the seventeenth century. was simply a function of our limited knowledge. Simplicity, It portrayed the universe as a giant clockwork. In the thermo- predictability, and determinism were central to the Newtonian dynamic paradigm of the nineteenth century, the Universe was worldview. Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy 420 Systems Approach The Newtonian world was also ‘reversible.’ This means that industrialization, came out the arts and humanities. It was time exists so that we may assess the interval between events. much more open to exploring the plight of the creative indi- But past and future have no significance. Nothing can be said vidual, but did so in a way that was much more poetic and to actually happen in such a universe. This is a particularly eventually contributed to the mythologization of creativity interesting feature that defies common sense, but made perfect and the creative person and process. Some of the myths that sense in the Newtonian world. Interestingly, it reflects the same emerged with Romanticism include ‘genius without learning,’ static view of the world before Newton, which was considered which became the idea that the genius did not need to work a perfect, preordained, God-given hierarchical order: nothing hard or study because naturally gifted, and the notion of the actually happens, because the Laws of Nature are the Laws of misunderstood ‘lone genius,’ working in isolation from the God, and these laws are perfect, therefore no change occurs, is rest of the world (see Alfonso Montuori and Ronald E Purser necessary, or even possible. in 1995). The Newtonian worldview had very clear implications for the nature of thinking. The power of prediction and control The Decaying Machine that the scientific method provided was staggering. The tech- The second revolution in science was ushered in by the second nology driving the Industrial Revolution was the result of the law of thermodynamics. It addressed the issue of irreversibility. application of the new scientific method. Who, in the middle Irreversibility is a very basic feature of the world from our every- of this explosion of human power, could argue against it? The day point of view. You cannot become young again, unbreak an social sciences and the management sciences wanted to import egg, ‘take back’ an unkind comment, or ‘unlose’ your lost keys the scientific method, in order to enjoy the same legitimacy as (you can find them in the future, of course). Literally we cannot real sciences, and the same successes. Being a real science was go back in time to undo or reverse an action. And yet the defined largely by the capacity for prediction and control. The Newtonian world was ‘reversible.’ Time as such played no role scientific method led to technology and industry, which in in it. Everything essentially stayed the same, and the movie could turn were the engine of progress. be played forwards or backwards with no visible difference. The notion of progress became central to modernity. The With the second law, Rudolf Clausius in 1850 brought us belief was that the scientific method offered a way to get at the familiar concept of entropy. In a nutshell, the second law of truth in a way that was empirical, testable, and gave the user thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy never power. It’s important to understand that before the scientific decreases, where entropy is defined as energy that is unavail- method was applied, human beings simply did not think this able for work. Entropy is the disorder or randomness in a way. Before the scientific method, what was considered the ‘high- system. So as a machine worked, some energy became unavail- est’ or most evolved form of thinking on a social level was a able for work. What this brought us is a view of the universe as mixture of Aristotle, the encyclopedic Greek philosopher who a decaying machine, a closed, mechanical system struggling had written about everything from logic to theater to biology, against the forces of corrosion and decay. A machine, yes, but and the writings of St Thomas, which informed theology, drawn a machine that is running down, and inexorably moving from the bible. In this premodern view, Aristotle and the bible toward the end. Time was introduced into the picture, and its were seen as unquestionable sources of wisdom. The concept of role was essentially to tear away at the primal perfection. experiment that would give empirical proof as to whether a As a machine worked over time, it would gradually lose energy. particular hypothesis was, or was not the case, was unheard of. But along with this loss of energy there also seemed to be another It is ironic that the worldview associated with the emer- process at work that was not accounted for in Newton’s Perfect gence of science and technology, with the Industrial Revolu- Clockwork paradigm or in the paradigm of the Decaying tion, and an incredible outpouring of creativity, could not itself Machine. Decay was not the only direction time seemed to lead account for creativity. Creativity was still considered a ‘gift’ of to. There was a parallel time that seemed to defy the Universe’s genius, a moment of ‘inspiration,’ but not something that winding down. It was a time not of machines, but of Life. could be understood without stepping completely out of the discourse of science. In fact, creativity was not really addressed The Universe and Creativity at all in science. Despite its title, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery the influential philosopher of science Karl Popper’s It was Charles Darwin who added a completely new wrinkle to 500 page work essentially dismissed the possibility of under- our understanding of the world. Before the emergence of sci- standing the process of conceiving or inventing a theory, argu- ence, it was generally thought that the world had been created ing that there was no logic or rationality – essentially no rhyme in 4004 BCE, and everything on the planet was the result of or reason – to the creative process. In doing so, Popper sug- God’s plan. This meant that every creature on the planet had gested that studying scientific discovery was essentially a futile been placed there by God, in the ‘Great Chain of Being,’ and process, stressing instead the context of justification, or the nothing had really ‘changed,’ because that would mean a devi- defensibility of theories. This reflects the scientific position ation from God’s plan. Darwin, on the other hand, suggested that creativity was essentially a process that could not be that life on the Earth had started quite simply, and evolved into understood and should therefore not be addressed by serious more complex forms. scholars. This marginalized creativity and reflected a modern Darwin’s world was not Newton’s world, or Clausius’s opposition between rational, logical inquiry, and allegedly world. Newton’s world was static. Clausius’s was running completely irrational or arational creativity. down. Darwin’s seemed to be getting more and more com- Romanticism, a parallel movement in European thought plex, indeed, ‘evolving.’ Darwin’s original image of the that articulated a strong critique of modernity and particularly evolutionary process was very much a product of his times. Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421  Author's personal copy Systems Approach 421 Darwin presented a third scientific perspective – neither perfect person, and the process of personal integration, and to creative machine, nor decaying machine, but rather an explosion of groups. From a systems approach, premature articulation and life, reproducing itself and changing and adapting as it did so. selection of a solution is a way of reducing the disequilibrium And in this process, time played an active, creative role, created by a problem. This disequilibrium can be experienced because things changed as they reproduced, and as they came as anxiety, fear, impatience, frustration, or irritation. Tolerance into contact with each other. The principle of natural selection for ambiguity involves staying with the disequilibrium until a suggested that interactions between organisms and their envi- generative solution can emerge. The systems view also suggests ronment played a central role in evolution. why creative people, being more open to experience, and hav- ing a preference for complexity, might willingly disturb their own equilibrium in order to be challenged and stimulate their Self-Organization and the Role of Disorder own creativity. The emergence of a new idea arises out of a One of the most interesting shifts in recent scientific thinking, process of self-orgaization. This demonstrates the applicability in particular because of the sciences of cybernetics, and then of a systems approach at various levels of granularity. chaos and complexity, has been a deeper understanding of the mutually constitutive relationship between order and disorder, information and noise. This shift also reflects a transition Conclusion from a fundamentally static view of the world to one that is process oriented. Rather than seeing order as fundamental The implications of a systems approach to creativity are pow- and unchanging, we are now seeing an ongoing process of erful. Not only does such an approach shift the research agenda order–disorder interaction organization that is the hallmark to a more relational, open systems view, but it also situates of self-organization. In the creative universe, disorder not only creativity in a larger context, namely the context of cosmic crea- destroys structures, systems, and organizations but it is also tivity, which includes cosmology and evolution as well as social central to their development and regeneration. The interaction change. The application of the systems and complexity sciences of order and disorder can be generative of new forms of orga- to creativity is very promising. Because of the interconnected, nization, and any order is the result of an ongoing process, not paradoxical nature of creativity, these approaches may be able of preestablished forms. to address some of the vexing problems confronting researchers, Self-organization has been defined variously as making and shed light on hitherto ignored dimensions of creativity. meaning out of randomness, or the spontaneous emergence of a coordinated and collective behavior in a population of elements. One of the key aspects of self-organization is the See also: Domains of Creativity; Evolving Systems Approach; creation of order out of chaos, the integration of elements Innovation; Janusian, Homospatial and Sepconic Articulation perceived as disorder into a larger, more encompassing organi- Processes; Mental Health: Affective Disorders; Organizational zation. We might think of paradigms in science as an analogy. Development; Social Psychology. What is inside the paradigm is considered order, what is out- side is disorder. Anomalies on the edge of the paradigm, what the paradigm cannot account for, may initially seem like noise, disorderly phenomena that cannot be accounted for. Indeed, Further Reading the history of chaos theory itself shows how turbulent phe- nomena such as water flowing from a faucet were rejected out Barron F (1995) No Rootless Flower: Towards an Ecology of Creativity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. of hand as subjects of study for the longest time because they Bocchi G and Ceruti M (2002) The Narrative Universe. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. seemed simply inexplicable. Yet it is the study of these anoma- Borgo D (2006) Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age. London: lies that led to the development of the new science of dynami- Continuum. cal systems, also known as chaos theory. In this sense, chaos Ceruti M (2008) Evolution Without Foundations. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. Csikszentmihalyi M (1996) The creative person. Psychology Today 36–40. (July–August). theory as a field of study was itself a creative self-organizing Csikszentmihalyi M (1997) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and process, the spontaneous emergence of a coordinated and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. collective behavior in a population of elements (researchers), Csikszentmihalyi M (1999) A systems perspective on creativity. In: Sternberg R (ed.) making meaning out of (apparent) randomness. Handbook of Creativity, pp. 313–335. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The term self-organization refers to a spontaneous emer- Kaufman GD (2004) In the Beginning . . . Creativity. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. gence of collaborative behavior among elements in a system. The Montuori A (2003) The complexity of improvisation and the improvisation of order out of disorder that emerges in an open system’s interaction complexity. Social science, art, and creativity. Human Relations 56(2): 237–255. with its environment is subject to fluctuation. When certain Montuori A, Combs A, and Richards R (2003) Creativity, consciousness, and the levels of fluctuation are created by increasing complexity, a criti- direction for human development. In: Loye D (ed.) The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution. Albany, NY: SUNY. cal or bifurcation point is reached. At that point the system can Montuori A and Purser RE (eds.) (1999) Social Creativity, vol. 1. Cresskill, NJ: move in any one of several directions until a new and more Hampton. complex order may be established after a period of turbulence. Morin E (2008) On Complexity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. If a higher order of organization does not emerge, the system Peat FD (2000) Blackwinged Night. Creativity in Nature and Mind. Cambridge, MA: returns to a previous, lower level of organization. Perseus/Helix Books. Peat FD (2002) From Certainty to Uncertainty. The Story of Science and Ideas in the Creativity theorists have drawn parallels between the 20th Century. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press. systems processes and the creative process, applying self- Runco M (2007) Editorial. Correcting the research on creativity. Creativity Research organization to the emergence of new ideas, to the creative Journal 19(4): 321–327. Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition (2011), vol. 2, pp. 414-421