Creativity and discovery as blind variation and selective retention: Multiple-variant definition and blind-sighted integration.

Abstract

In 1960, Donald Campbell proposed that creativity and discovery involve blind variation and selective retention (BVSR). Over the past half century, his proposal has continued to provoke controversy. The principal focus of this debate has been on whether ideational variations are blind or sighted. Although some progress has been made in providing a more formal definition of what constitutes a blind variation, these recent developments have assumed just two variants. In this article, both blindness and sightedness are defined for any number of hypothetical variants. This definition provides the metric for a blind-sighted continuum applicable to any set of variants for a given problem. The definition also yields a six-fold typology of ideational variants that differ in blindness and vary in their likelihoods of being selected for retention. With only minor modification, this definition is demonstrated to apply to sequential as well as simultaneous variation-selection. These formal definitions provide the means to integrate both blindness and sightedness into a single conception, thereby undermining the present tendency toward an exclusive, either-or debate. Even so, if creativity and discovery are defined as the generation of ideas that are novel, useful, and surprising, then all three criteria are more likely to be met when the generated ideational variations fall toward the blind end of the blind-sighted spectrum.

Una Nueva Medida de la Creatividad Científica: El estudio de sus propiedades psicométricas

“…This re-union has been originally motivated by the debates on the creativity field (general versus specific domain). And, later, it has been followed by other debates on scientific creativity and its assessment, in which it was evidenced the need to be creative in the area of the sciences to reach scientific competence and expertise, as the creative process results in a creative product (Simonton, 2011). In some studies it has been questioned the assessment criteria used to measure scientific creativity; in this sense, the following characteristics have been proposed to consider a product as a creative one: appropriateness, functionality and originality (Cropley, 2005;Cropley & Cropley, 2008;Haller, Courvoisier, & Cropley, 2011;Runco, & Charles, 1993).…”

Foresight, insight, oversight, and hindsight in scientific discovery: How sighted were Galileo's telescopic sightings?

“…More than a half century ago, Campbell (1960) proposed his classic blind-variation and selective-retention (BVSR) theory of creativity (Simonton, 2011b), Simply put, creative ideas are discovered by generating and testing "thought trials" tiiat may or may not prove useful because the creator cannot know beforehand what will prove fruitful without engaging in some trial-and-error procedure, Stemberg (1998) later introduced the term "sighted" to describe the opposing point of view that creative ideas do not require any BVSR, In this contrary position, tiie application of basic cognitive processes to an acquired domain-specific expertise enables a creator to bypass the supposed need to generate and test alternative solutions or concepts (Weisberg, 2006), Too often, the debate between "blindness" and "sightedness" is expressed in polarized terms when the two properties are better conceived as labels for the opposite ends of a bipolar continuum (Simonton, 2011a;cf, Kronfeldner, 2010), In fact, it is possible to devise a mathematical meastire of variation sightedness that varies from 0 = totally blind to 1 = totally sighted. '* One useful consequence of this measure is the formal demonstration of a seeming paradox.…”

“…On tiie other hand, highly sighted ideas cannot be highly creative! The resolution of this paradox is that highly creative ideas are most likely to appear at the lower "blind" end of the blind-sighted continuum (Simonton, 2011a), These "nearly blind" ideas have low probabilities but high utilities. Because the formal definition is too technical to be useful in the following analyses, I propose informal definitions that should suffice for tiie present interpretative purposes, Sightedness.…”

“…Blindness. Some degree of blindness occurs when ideational probabilities are not highly correlated with their corresponding utilities (Simonton, 2011a(Simonton, , 2011b, This lack of correlation manifests itself two principal ways. First, the probabilities of certain ideas may be roughly equal although the usefulness of those ideas may be very unequal (viz,, only one idea in the set of ideas actually works).…”

The Creativity Crisis (is not) as Plain as the Nose on Your Face: A Few Introductory Comments

“…Wide, grand theories (Baer, 2011) are sometimes useful as paradigm-builders, but simultaneously are rarely testable and -as a result -too often end by being more a kind of ideology in science than the science itself. Rarely, for sure too rarely, grand theories are effectively translated into research programs -the only one, relevant to creativity, which comes to my mind at this moment is Campbell-Simonton's Blind Variation Selective Retention Theory, which has been vigorously tested, thanks to the continuous work of Dean Simonton (1998Simonton ( , 1999Simonton ( , 2011, see also Simonton, this issue). More generally however, grand theories are often much more fruitless than scholars -especially those humanistically oriented -would ever admit.…”