Evolution and creativity

Creativity reveals a similarity to biological evolution: both act through the production of variations and selection (Campbell, 1960; Simonton, 1988; Martindale, 1989). As Csikszentmihalyi (1999: 316) explains, "Evolution occurs when an individual organism produces a variation which is selected by the environment and transmitted to the next generation [...]. The variation that occurs at the individual level corresponds to the contribution that a person makes to creativity; the selection is the contribution of the field, and the transmission is a contribution of the domain to the creative process [...]. Thus, creativity can be seen as a special case of evolution; specifically, it is to cultural evolution as the mutation, selection, and transmission of genetic variation is to biological evolution." See also Memes.