Why Is Man Creative?

[Geminex]

Well, when Sith said "tools" he didn't just include tie-a-rock-to-a-stick style contraptions, he also mentioned

Language and art

Unless my bio teacher was bullshitting, evoluion of our large brains was largely driven by a need to interact and communicate with our tribes. The ability to build axes, make fire and gradually destroy our environment with one, the other, or both was just a fun extra.

[greed]

Originally Posted by Mauve Mage

Take the example of the crows in Japan who learned to drop nuts into crosswalks to let passing cars crack the shells. The nuts aren't their only food source-- finding ways to crack them open wasn't something they needed to do to survive.

I once saw a crow lever some food out of a crack in a tree trunk it couldn't reach with it's beak using a stick. The scary part? After the stick didn't work by itself, it placed a pebble underneath to use as a fulcrum. That worked. I've also seen them dunk corn chips in water to make them soft enough to eat. And apparently the ones in Queensland Australia have figured out that the eyes of cane toads aren't poisonous, so they eat the eyes and leave the rest alone. Those things are smart.

People like to talk about how smart parrots are, but crows are pretty scary when it comes to logic.

[Toast]

Originally Posted by Geminex

This is interesting... but how would you define "creative" in the first place? ... the fact that the most intelligent members of human society aren't always hugely creative, and vice versa, doesn't really support that.

Whether people are always hugely creative or not really does hinge on the definition of creativity you're using. If your definition of creative has to include a product (a physical object that is created) then you're probably right. If that product then has to have an impact and be widely recognized within its domain (genre) then you're even more right. That's a very narrow way to view creativity, although it apparently is a very common theoretical view.

If creativity is a process of building new information out of known facts and observations, then we're doing it all the time. Of course, that can readily be argued to be too broad a definition as well.

One might argue that our need to be creative and express ourselves evolved as a way to reduce stress and solve more complex problems we might face. One might also suggest it is a biproduct of our species evolving more advanced brains.

I think this is the most likely reason why creativity developed. Could you imagine how utterly boring the world would be without fiction? I've always thought that man's first dabbling with spirituality was just fiction that caught on.

[Sithdarth]

The actual problem is that we developed these huge brains before we started exploiting tool use heavily and before they were seemingly useful.

Yeah see you've fallen for the same fallacy almost all of us fall for. Size is almost entirely unimportant in terms of capability. I mean yeah sure bigger helps but true brain power comes from structure. For example, even bees have a bullshit detector. This scientist did an experiment where he took bees out in a boat with pollen in it and when they went back to the hive and told the other bees there was food in the middle of a lake not a single one believed it. There was a parrot that could do math. There are several species that can recognize themselves in a mirror. There are monkeys that can use currency and other monkeys that can tell the difference between a picture of an apple and an apple instantly from a distant. (That last one even human babies have trouble with for awhile.)

Our brain might have been big but it wasn't wired for the kind of abstract creative thinking we do now until tool use became an integral part of our survival. That is when we moved onto the plains, started walking on two legs, and started stealing meat from predators. Our hands where free all the time to hold and make better tools and we needed better organization just to stay alive in the open. Thus those of us with brains wired for more and more creativity survived. Plus the extra energy from the meat really helped power a more active brain. Which is why we beat out some of the other early plains primates that were largely vegetarian but otherwise quite like us.

As for modern humans; everyone is creative in the sense that everyone can think of abstract things that don't exist. (Except maybe those with Autism.) Some people are just better at it than others. Of course even back when we first developed creativity there must have been people much better at it than other people. The only difference is back then they had a better chance of living and producing offspring than the less creative and now that isn't really a problem. Evolutionarily speaking people with very little creativity aren't as well adapted for survival. (Which would probably include me as I am no artist. Although I can be creative with problem solving so who knows.)

[BitVyper]

Yeah see you've fallen for the same fallacy almost all of us fall for.

To be fair, I think he meant size figuratively. It's just easier to refer to our "giant brains." Also our brains definitely are a lot larger than those of our ancestor species. Not the point, I know, but I'm just sayin.

Our brain might have been big but it wasn't wired for the kind of abstract creative thinking we do now until tool use became an integral part of our survival.

Out of curiousity, when would you say that was? I mean, I'd say it seems like it was pretty important before Homo Sapiens was even a thing. Homo Ergaster (sp?) had Acheulian tools, which take a fair bit more thought than what came before. It's still not super-complex, but it shows refinement already, and makes it more likely that tools were being carried around for everyday use, since you couldn't just make them on the spot.

[Sithdarth]

I'm not sure anyone knows exactly when it happened. I'm relatively sure that it was probably when the climate changed and we moved onto the plains at least. That's when we had to go upright and when we had to significantly change how we survived. It seems like a good bet for when tools became really integral to survival.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

No they had a pretty good idea when it happened and it was well before it was needed.
The leading idea was that climate change was one of the key factors in seperating the species in that those with more creative potential started to survive because they needed it. Brain varation happened before this though.
While the climate change was probably the selector there is a struggle to explain why some variations of humans created such massive brains before they were needed (and in this case, size actually is a reasonably indicator of complexity- somewhat total size but more importantly number of connections) as there was vastly more energy needed to create them.
Well this is me takig it on faifth from a guy I met at a conference but he was a leadign theoretical biologist so I trust that he knew what was he talking about.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

As for modern humans; everyone is creative in the sense that everyone can think of abstract things that don't exist. (Except maybe those with Autism.)

Might depend on how severe a case of autism we're talking about.

[Sithdarth]

(and in this case, size actually is a reasonably indicator of complexity- somewhat total size but more importantly number of connections) as there was vastly more energy needed to create them.

Exactly how did they manage to determine connections from bone records? I know you can make a reasonable guess based on size and how the brain folds, i.e. the wrinkles we have on our brains. However, I was under the impression significantly wrinkled brains didn't show up until after we where out on the plains. At the very least Dolphins and Chimps also have crazy wrinkly brains in their own right. Large wrinkly brains are a good indicator that something is smart but you can't really tell how smart just from that. You need actual behavioral evidence.

Further, I would posit that tool use started as an enhancement to survival. Thus even when we were still in the trees the smartest ones survived the best. Everyone else survived too but not as well. More intelligence is always better for survival even if you aren't making stone axes yet. Then later a true brain explosion occurred when being smart wasn't just a matter of surviving better but surviving at all.

[CelesJessa]

I'm just going with "art" because "creativity" is too obscure (because then you're bringing in things like creative problem solving, etc).

As far as art is concerned, it originally came about as a method of record keeping, I believe. Before written language, things such as cave paintings were used to chronicle things (and they tell us a lot about prehistoric cultures.) In languages like Chinese, those pictures eventually turned into their written language.

Because people back then were hunters and gatherers and would be traveling a lot, the oldest art was very large in size and left in the places so I imagine one could say that it was kind of a way to mark our territory, or at least to say that we had been there. Later cultures that were more permanently settled would make art that was more functional (like pottery). And a lot of art was made as deity worship.

(Yay art history?)