Uniqueness and creativity. Column in ComputerreOnline #79
Manifestations of natural creativity — are evolution, the development of the biosphere and ecosystems, ontogeny, the formation of personality, and simply the process of history. The human himself — its result.
In the previous column I concluded with a characterization of two criteria important for considering an object ethically valuable, valuable not because of its cost or utility, but because of some other moral reasons. One of these axes is uniqueness, the connection with creativity.
At first approximation it is clear to you that uniqueness is non‑reproducibility, singularity in its kind. This word comes from Latin unicus – single, which in turn derives from unus – one. We easily distinguish unique and non‑unique (standard; ordinary; serial; commonplace; …?) objects. The Mona Lisa is unique, the number of the "State Tender Bulletin" – not; the Saint Sophia Cathedral is unique, a drab nine‑storey building from late‑Breznev construction – not. However, if we want to compare the uniqueness of different objects, we will need some common scale. The uniqueness of a text is easy to calculate: a measure of mismatch of character sequences compared with available analogues is computed. Yet when trying to assess the uniqueness of complex objects we immediately encounter a paradox.
A unique object is the only one of its kind. How can it be compared with another if, by virtue of its uniqueness, it is incomparable with anything? Can the uniqueness of a person be compared with the uniqueness of an incunabulum? Fine, let us take comparable objects and compare the Isaac I and Kazan cathedrals.
Why not proceed as with a text? We isolate a set of properties that is typical for these two cathedrals and for many others, and evaluate it in one way; the traits they share with few objects we evaluate as “more valuable”. Then we consider the truly unique remainder; we try to assess to what extent it reflects the epoch and its singular circumstances. We recall which personalities were linked with the history of these objects, how unique historical circumstances influenced their design and construction. We isolate a set of criteria; determine their relative importance; conduct an expert assessment for each (at least by ranking); compute an integral measure…
A concrete numerical measure of uniqueness cannot be obtained in this way. Nevertheless, establishing “greater‑lesser” relations is difficult but possible.
But does every non‑reproducibility of an object make it truly unique, possessing ethical value? Take a handful of outwardly identical coins and examine their structure in detail. It will surely turn out that although all these coins were minted from the same die, from one model, there are many small differences between them, for example related to the distribution of surface defects and the crystal lattice of the metal. This is a consequence of noise, stochastic effects in production and use of these coins.
Thus, not every non‑reproducibility is valuable to us. So which non‑reproducibility is valuable?
The version of the answer that Maryna Kravchenko and I gave while inventing the concept we called RPE – rational nature‑conservation ethics – is as follows.
True, ethically valuable uniqueness arises as a result of creativity.
And what is creativity? “A productive form of human activity and autonomy.” Is the work of a die‑cutter producing coins at a mint creative? In the typical case, probably not.
A brief search online yields many definitions of the concept “creativity”. Many of them contradict each other. Most (in my view unnecessarily) associate this concept exclusively with human activity. But in my reasoning I use the following thought.
“Creativity – in the literal sense, is the creation of something new. In this meaning the word could be applied to all processes of organic and inorganic life, for life is a series of continuous changes and everything that renews or newly arises in nature is a product of creative forces. Yet the concept of creativity implies a personal origin – and the corresponding word is used primarily in reference to human activity.” Brokhaus and Efron
Thus, more often the concept “creativity” is applied to our activity, but it is evident that it is kin to the natural process of life development.
I think the phrase about man being created in the image and likeness of God should be understood first and foremost by referring to the notion of God as Creator. Within us there is that creative capacity that is closely related to the force that created our world. Of course, scientific study of this creativity with respect to “all processes of organic and inorganic life” made reference to God unnecessary for their understanding. It is not God who creates us in His likeness, we construct Him, personifying that creative capacity whose manifestations we see in the world around us. How to reflect these likenesses in our perception of our life? One can believe in a God whom we can know thanks to our own capacity for creativity. One can feel oneself part of this world, the result of that very evolution that created its unique features and itself reflects the ability to create something new…
I digressed. In any creativity there is a basis, quite logically determined by external circumstances, the frameworks within which it occurs. Yet, probably, we value the results of creativity not for those results that were unequivocally predetermined.
Thus, unpredictability (more precisely, partial unpredictability) is the most important property of creativity. The question of whether the world is predictable (and whether Laplace’s demon is possible) is a complex topic that I do not wish to delve into now. Apparently, at the quantum level the world is indeed unpredictable; apparently, this unpredictability also breaks through in human behaviour, despite its determinism by external circumstances.
Vivaldi’s music is determined by his epoch, his faith, the lifestyle of 17‑18th‑century Venice, the contemporary level of compositional and performance practice. And yet, however deeply we take these circumstances into account, a part remains that cannot be reduced to them, a part that is the product of the unique personality of the creator of these works. It is this living, unpredictable part of the music of the “red‑haired priest” that made Vivaldi himself immortal, it is this that allows today’s listener to feel the movement of the soul of a person who lived three centuries ago.
The senior contemporary of Vivaldi was Tommaso Albinoni. In his music one hears much of what is reflected in Vivaldi’s music, but there is also his own wave, the imprint of another unique personality. By the way, both Vivaldi and Albinoni were unlucky. Vivaldi is now known primarily as the author of the four “Seasons” – beautiful but overly played violin concertos, while the other works, not inferior (and sometimes, in my opinion, superior; consider at least the penultimate concerto of Op. 11, RV 202; in my favourite performance its three movements are scattered here). Yet Vivaldi at least really wrote those concertos himself…
Albinoni was undervalued both by his contemporaries and by later generations. A significant part of his archive was destroyed during World War II in the Allied bombing of Dresden, in the fire of the Dresden Library. In love with Albinoni’s creativity, his biographer and populariser Remo Giazotto claimed to have found in the ruins of the Dresden Library a burnt fragment of paper with a general‑bass part. Supposedly it became clear to him that this was a solo part of an instrumental work, and using Albinoni’s favourite techniques he “reconstructed” the piece. “Albinoni Adagio” for organ and strings, simultaneously tender and tragic, became one of the most popular works, and this was not helped by the fact that Giazotto found no fragments at all and composed it himself, imitating the style of his beloved author. (Listen to a simple and transparent Andante by Albinoni – actually Albinoni! – from the 5th concerto in Op. 10). Thus, Albinoni is known for a work he did not write. Oh, if only it were performed less – it would seem fresher…
Sorry, I have gone off‑track. But the topic that distracted us provides a vivid example of the painful experience of an irreversible loss of something irreplaceable. I do not often listen to Albinoni (more often – the inexhaustible Vivaldi); many of his works survived, but it pains me that his burnt compositions will never be heard again. They have truly perished… The surviving musical texts possess ethical value for me. And for Giazotto they possessed, as did the memory of their author – he even resorted to deception and self‑denial for their sake.
Thus, creativity generates uniqueness and grows out of it. This is what provides the basis for treating uniqueness and creativity as two aspects of a single whole.
In inventing RPE we concluded that the factors influencing any processes, including the formation of any object, can be divided into three groups:
— stochastic (Greek stochasis – guess) – random, undirected, chaotic;
— deterministic (Latin determinare – limit, define) – predictable, law‑governed;
— emergent (Latin emergere – arise, appear) – a priori undefined, arising from the interaction of parts of a developing system.
During the development of a complex system, moments when its development is predetermined by its preceding states alternate with bifurcation moments – a choice of the trajectory of further development from a certain set of alternatives. Stable sections of the trajectory are defined by deterministic factors. At a bifurcation point, stochastic factors, possibly stemming from Heisenberg’s quantum uncertainty, influence the choice of the future trajectory. The more complex the system, the greater the number of bifurcation points it passes through in its development, the more unexpected the outcome may be. Emergent properties arise as a result of stochastic influence on the course of deterministic processes. In any case, it seems to me that we value precisely the manifestations of their action.
It remains to understand what creativity may be. It can be natural and human, with the human himself being the result of natural creativity. Processes of natural creativity are the evolution of life (phylogeny), the development of the biosphere and ecosystems, individual development (ontogeny), the formation of human personality and simply the process of history. Human creativity can be individual (this is what is most often meant by the word) or collective. Epochs in the life of a society are created by what is called “mass creativity”.
Returning to the coin example. Stochastic defects on their surface do not make them valuable. The irreversible destruction of such a coin is a certain loss, but not an ethically significant loss that leaves a feeling of losing something unique. Yet some coins acquire traits that make them truly unique.
A coin from a distant epoch acquires uniqueness, bearing the imprint of a bygone time.
A crumpled coin acquires uniqueness, having stopped a bullet aimed at its owner.
A coin made from a genius’s sketch acquires uniqueness.
Coins that lay in the eye sockets of a buried person, whose grave was examined during archaeological excavations, acquire uniqueness.
A coin tossed by a commander contemplating whether to cross the Rubicon acquires uniqueness.
In these examples the coin’s uniqueness reflects the uniqueness of a rare, low‑predictability event, an unrepeatable epoch, human exceptionality. Uniqueness is transferred to these objects as a result of natural and human creative processes.
A coin is a relatively simple object. It is more difficult to decompose the uniqueness of a person, a species or a biosphere into components. Unfortunately, for our actions it is often necessary to compare the uniqueness of precisely such complex objects. We will not go far with the example. In a number of “Kompyulenta” messages I told about disputes among conservationists. How should we plan our nature‑conservation efforts? Should we focus exclusively on the difficulty of protecting charismatic species such as the giant panda and the Amur tiger, or on removing from economic activity the areas rich in rare plant species and invertebrates?
Uniqueness in the world around us is born and dies at every step. But can we preserve everything we consider worthy of immortality?