Hey, Isaac,
Geoffrey Miller talks about creativity in THE MATING MIND, a book about sexual selection. He argues that creativity is a trait that can up one's chances of reproductive success. It's a better read than that one sentence summary suggests.
He talks about the "handicap principle"---ex, a peacock must be REALLY healthy to be able to drag around such a large, 'useless' tail--and wonders if that may shed some light on artistic creativity. Using forms handicaps us---it's harder to write a page of iambic pentameter than one of prose--but the person who excels at the former is likely more creative than one who can only do the latter. Excelling despite that self-imposed handicap shows great strength. This would attract some people.
Something to think about.
Mark

(over a year ago Pata said the following:
"while..sapience and creativity should not be strangers, unfortunately as a career fine artist it is often my luxury to be witness to a veritable cornucopia of very intelligent and quite sapient people (at least I think they are people) who have not one drop of the impetus to spontaneously make manifest the new in the face of the accepted" )
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Indeed I did, and it was damn well said, but onward!
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I'm wondering what you use to measure intelligence/sapience.
[said aim]

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Ahhhh a tidy little trap you have there...... shall I just... swallow the cheese whole?!
OH you'd like THAT!
Short of completely outclassing the concept and arriving at something sufficiently surpassing in it's scope and application, that I might (Myself) be greater than "Intelligence", that I might therefore encompass it How precisely do YOU sir asking such an innocent question suggest I go about answering your question? Give me a method which is founded in the very nature of the thing and doesn't rupture as it approaches the application of defining the tool with which one might create and uphold all definitions and I shall begin at once oh sage of the impossible!


perhaps I should reach out into the stars and pluck a few for my dinner while I am at it ? Demiurge that I am! Why don;t I just skip the messy part and tie myself to a stone right now so that vultures can eat my liver?

In place of the glaring demonstration of hubris which you request of me I have the the following crumbs to impart as some paltry consolation: That, (as I have said multitudes of times) "the very measure of brilliance is the very brilliance of its imeasurability."~ ME

*thunderbolts and lightning shoot out of fingers*

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Memorizing vast sums of knowledge is a neat party trick, but it does not indicate an ability to USE said knowledge, which really is at the core of sapient existance. If those people are taking the things they've learned, combining the knowledge in new and interesting ways and making it their own, then I would argue that they are most definitely demonstrating creativity. Generating a formula or theory that explains something in a way that no one has considered before takes creativity, just as surely as creating a song, artwork, poem, et cetera..
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Opportunistic combinatorics is NOT a substitute for creativity.

combining and recombining any finite number of preexisting variables within a finite system does not equate to creating that system or any of its variables.

I can scream and dance around for weeks and there is no point at which I will ever be responsible for originating the squawk, the squeak or the skip. The person who plays with the many possible combinations of what already IS, is not creative, they are exploitative at best.
Discovery is not creation either.

Creativity is the capacity to function, and operate both within , outside and in between systems of known variables,unknown variables and large infinite conceptual spaces of nothing by means of a very central virtue, which I have mentioned in a multitude of posts, which I still hold to be the central issue and will continue to till the sun burns out.

Ingenuitas. The Impetus and the drive to invent. It begins in the vacuum of the soul (which works neatly whether you believe in it or not)

If you can originate from nothing within the mind, you can do just anything....
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That brings to mind a new question. What do you consider the mark of creativity? Perhaps what you really mean is focused talent.
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I think that's slightly more than focused talent. what's talent btw?

Now I expect a debate over whether this virtue I claim the existence of actually exists, and if it goes there expect me not to answer, since there isn't much of a point in arguing with the blind about green.

however...having said that perhaps I've circumvented it. (it's a despicable exchange much like debating the usefulness of debate)