p.380 This paper proposes to examine creative thought within the framework
of a comparative psychology of knowledge processes, and in particular with regard to one theme recurrent in most knowledge
processes. This theme may be expressed as follows:
1. A blind-variation-and-selective-retention process is fundamental
to all inductive achievements, to all genuine increases in knowledge, to all increases in fit of system to
environment.
2. The many processes which shortcut a more fully blind-variation-and-selective-retention
process are in themselves inductive achievements, containing wisdom about the environment
achieved originally by blind variation and selective retention.
3. In addition, such shortcut processes contain
in their own operation a blind-variation-and-selective-retention process at some level, substituting for overt locomotor
exploration or the life-and-death winnowing of organic evolution.
p.381 In the instances of such real gains, the successful explorations
were in origin as blind as those which failed. The difference between the successful and unsuccessful was due to the
nature of the environment encountered, representing discovered wisdom about that environment.
The general model for such inductive gains is that underlying
both trial-and-error problem solving and natural selection in evolution, the analogy between which has been noted by several
persons (e.g., Ashby, 1952; Baldwin, 1900; Pringle, 1951).Three conditions are necessary: a mechanism for introducing variation,
a consistent selection process, and a mechanism for preserving and reproducing the selected variations. In what follows we
shall look for these three ingredients at a variety of levels.
p.385 [Souriau] There is something mechanical, so to speak,
in the art of finding solutions. The truly original mind is that which discovers problems.
p.386 [Souriau] New ideas cannot have prototypes:
their appearance can only be attributed to chance.
p.391 the difference between a hit and a miss lies in the
selective conditions encountered, not in the talent differences in the generation of the trials.
p.396 [Sewall Wright] The theory is deterministic only in an exceedingly
limited sense. It is essentially a theory of the conditions favorable for an ever continuing process that is essentially unpredictable
in its details. There can be no formula for serendipity.
p.397 Ceteris paribus [other things being equal], a creative solution is more likely the longer a problem is worked upon, the more variable the thought trials, the more
people working on the problem independently, the more heterogeneous these people, the less the time pressure, etc.
p.397 This paper has attempted to make the psychological and epistemological
point that all processes leading to expansions of knowledge involve a blind-variation-and-selective-retention process.
p.398 The model is not in disagreement with
the bulk of the Gestalt description of problem solving, nor the work on heuristically programed problem-solving computers.
