Welcome to Emerging Futures -- Vol 129! Creativity Without Cause or Causality?
Good morning immanent propensities sitting at the edge of the knowable/unknowable next,
This week, we are keeping things light and fluid…
For this newsletter, what this amounts to is not a fully worked out "answer," but a looser exploration and testing of some propositions that intrigue us. Just to be clear, here we mean “propositions” in the sense Whitehead activates the concept—less something to be judged as right or wrong—and more what he calls “a lure for feelings"—a lure for a feeling of relevance, and a “lure” in the sense of something that draws us out from where we have become contented.
For us this week, we have a small pause between big projects. So we have been taking the moment to be curious and speculate a little more wildly on some bigger questions that keep us joyfully engaged in testing ways of joining alternative path-making efforts in regards to creativity.
Mainly, what this looked like was a lot of reading, discussing, and diagramming around the terrain of causality.
Much of this joyful (and very much far-out-on-a-limb) speculation prompted a happy confluence of events: our recent newsletters, our last set of workshops, a question from John Tielman upon reading the last newsletter, and our ongoing re-reading of the work of François Jullien – a philosopher who has devoted his career to studying the creative divergences between “Western” and Chinese conceptual systems.
Jullien is a very interesting thinker in regards to critically interrogating many of the assumptions we in the “West” take for granted and as universal in regards to change, process, creation, and creativity. But discussing all this now will take us further afield than we wish to go at this moment from the question of causality; we’ll come back to him and his work at the end of the newsletter.
So what about causality and creativity?
Here are the two speculative questions that we got wonderfully caught up in:
This first question might seem both unnecessarily radical—a classical case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater—and a stretch from what we have been exploring over the last few weeks. But it is not really either (or at least we are willing to experimentally go there).
Let’s start with the latter: how the question of “moving beyond causality” connects to the last newsletter's explorations:
Over the last month, we’ve been exploring the question: how can we understand & engage in the full process of creative making?
And last week in the newsletter, we focused on one aspect of this: Once we recognize that innovation is far more ecosystemic, dynamic, irreducibly relational, and emergent—often we are still too fixated on discreet tangible things: individuals, tools, materials, practices, environments, and most especially on tangible properties as outcomes. In a nutshell: we are still privileging discreet tangible things over relations, fields, and processes.
But this fixation on the discreet and the tangible means that we miss a critical aspect of what the emergent process gives rise to: a semi-stable virtual field of possibilities. Ultimately, the discreet tangible outcome is not all that is produced when an assemblage comes together. (Last week, we used cooking an egg as our example.) This assemblage—the kitchen + cook + tools + practices + egg—gives rise to a virtual field of possibilities, of which the tangible outcome that emerges from the process (e.g., a boiled egg) is simply the actualization/realization/instantiation of one possibility of this far larger and more varied virtual field and dynamic emergent process.
Creative emergent processes give rise to both virtual and actual (actualized properties) outcomes, both of which are real. The virtual field exists as the emergent propensity of the assemblage.
These immanent fields/propensities can be co-evolved further via experimentation: What else can this assemblage do?—and then, what else can it do? The virtual fields of possibility multiply and transform with these experiments. And none of this is in our heads, nor is it “in” anything. And certainly, no one can rightly claim to have invented them. These fields/propensities are the emergent achievements of the relational dynamics of the assemblage (ecosystem), where the emergent processes are inherently relational and have a global creative influence on the whole of the assemblage. Which is to say the irreducibly relational components are themselves transformatively influenced by the whole.
And this is where the question of causality comes in—or rather, perhaps, where it does not:
Is it still useful to talk about causality—even complex causality—in such a context?
To quickly put this in context: in the larger space of creative processes, we are trying to speculatively suggest that, on the surface, it would seem that we do not need to speak of causality to engage with creative processes. And perhaps a turn to causality—even complex causality—risks returning us to the situation of an absolutely false view of creativity—one where we can return to saying “someone or some thing created or caused this to come about.”
For us, the crux of our curiosity is, that rather than saying either “someone created (caused) this” or even “some dynamic nonlinear emergent system created (or caused) this," are there more resources and potentialities to explore if we approach creativity without causality thus:
“We have a dynamic irreducibly relational coherent event that is giving rise to productive constraints, self-regulating, self-influencing processes such that certain propensities become self-sufficient.”
This is where re-reading François Jullien comes in (though he is certainly not the only one to make this argument): Causality is not a stand alone concept; our general approach to causality is interwoven with a vast set of concepts. And to shift to an immanent, emergent, irreducibly relational processes approach to reality and creativity can open us up to the experimental possibility of diverging qualitatively from the whole of this logic.
To get a sense of why this might be beguiling, let's go back in time. But first, a simple definition:
Causality, as a model of understanding and explanation, seeks to trace an occurrence back to its source—its cause.
The Greeks circa 400-300 BCE co-emerged with the concepts of cause (critical here are Plato and Aristotle). But this concept does not stand alone. For the concept of causality to work, it required a series of related concepts:
Now, this interwoven set of concepts has profoundly co-influenced both implicitly and explicitly, much of our Western contemporary landscape of action and creativity (with related tools, techniques, and infrastructure). And to quickly get to the point: a processes based emergent systems approach has no use for these concepts. Intrinsically, relational systems have no essence, first cause, independence, individuality, source, etc. Emergent approaches are equally irreducible and non-decomposable.
But that is not the end of it—far from it. As one traces the threads of causality further out across the “Western” conceptual landscape, one quickly touches upon the related concepts that explicitly rely upon and emerge from the logic of causality: freedom, the individual, explanation, universality, potential, choice, agent/agency, will, free-will, will power, determinacy, essence, subject-object, understanding, communication, etc. (and all of their opposites). Here, if one wishes to go deeper into this argument, we can suggest Jullien’s From Being to Living: A Euro-Chinese Lexicon of Thought.
And these interwoven terms are precisely what the classical approach to creativity relies upon: causality, individuality, freedom, choice, determinacy, will, agency, essence, etc. (Here it is useful to bring to mind any heroic story of creativity—whether it be the story we referenced of Alan Turing decrypting the German secret codes, Steve Jobs doing whatever, or Alexander Flemming inventing penicillin—they all rely on the totality of this interwoven cloth of concepts.
It is in this context that the development of new approaches to causality (non-linear causality, emergence, complex adaptive systems, process philosophy, ecological psychology, etc.), and the provincializing of European and Western conceptual systems to allow for a consideration of other traditions as ontologically distinct and valid have opened up a meaningful divergence from (linear conceptualizations of) causality (and all that this co-emerges with).
But, what we were asking ourselves speculatively this week was twofold:
Perhaps the divergences needed to leave a classical world of causality are far more extensive?
And:
Are there other ontologically distinct landscapes that have nothing in common with causality, freedom, individual, universality, etc. (or their opposites!) – that are already emerging?
We answer these questions with a tenacious yes—we do need to diverge from this interwoven landscape—and there are many existing or historical worlds that do just this.
It is important to be clear at this juncture: the creative challenge in opening up to the propensities of a qualitative divergence from causality cannot be confused with a move to the mere opposite. Which is to say the move away from causality, freedom, the individual, universality, essence, subject-object etc. is not a move towards its opposite: non-causality, slavery, determinism, the collective, the local, non-essence, etc. We are not anti-individualistic, or anti-freedom, or anti-free-will, or anti-causality. No, we are curious about what it could mean to wander away from both causality and its opposite. To leave both individuality and its opposite. To leave both free-will and determinism. This is what it would mean to actually experimentally diverge from causality. And for us, this is what it would entail to be open to and participate in the emergence of something qualitatively different from the larger ecology of this interwoven world of causality.
A second challenge is not to conceptualize this radical divergence as some form of a rupture or a clean break. Or to turn it into yet another pre-existing model. The radical creativity of change is far less visible and far more quiet, and as something genuinely novel, it eludes easy prediction and modeling.
The thing with radical difference and change is that we rarely recognize radical change for what it is. The problem is that we wake up each day and cannot help but “make the new do the work of the old,” as Whitehead put it…
Jullien takes this further:
“If you begin by constructing a model, your only possible relation with the future takes the form of a projection (and anything that will not fit into the project has to be relegated to the domain of chance). But if your starting point is the potential of the situation, your relation to the future is one of anticipation. Sticking closely to the regulatory curve of its evolution and detecting in the existing situation a sign of the beginning of the change that will happen, you have, logically enough, a head start over its unfolding.
So, rather than detect omens in the universe, interpret their meaning, and deploy their symbolism-in short, rather than behave hermeneutically (Western hermeneutics being linked to the origins of divination)—a Chinese general pays close attention to the least indications-premonitions of change. This implies a fundamental difference in the status of the invisible in Greece and in China. What is invisible in a Greek model-form (eidos/ideas) belongs to the order of the intelligible, the "mind's eye," or theory. Meanwhile, the kind of invisible that interests the Chinese is that which is not yet visible in the undifferentiated basis of all, way upstream from any process. The intervening stages of "the subtle" and "the infinitesimal" make the transition possible, and it is on these that the sage/general relies to orient himself. Thus, even though he knows that there are no rules or norms to codify the future, since the flow of reality is constantly innovating, he feels no anxiety (in contrast to the latest Western mode of ideology – which is concerned with "uncertainty," "turbulence," and "chaos"...). François Jullien A Treatise of Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking.
Let's end here for the week with a final speculation and question:
Creative transformations have no cause. And creative practices can be engaged practically and effectively without a causal language, method or outlook. And the full terrain of causality has the propensity to move us toward wholly wrong and ineffective approaches to innovation. So…
What new practices, orientations, and concepts could emerge when we actively experiment with creative processes that allow for certain propensities—without causality as our landscape and horizon?
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We would be curious to hear how you might be speculating with similar propositions. Please send us an email or reach out via your favorite channels.
Till next week, enjoy dwelling with “close attention to the least indications-premonitions of change…”
PS – If curious about the works of François Jullien, the two books mentioned are:
From Being to Living: A Euro-Chinese lexicon of thought
A Treatise of Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking
and The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China
are great starting points in regards to causality and creativity.
The book From Being to Living opens with a wonderful short essay: Propensity (vs. Causality). It makes an ideal starting point for further exploration and is the direct inspiration for our use of the term (propensity).
Till next week,
Keep Your Difference Alive!
Jason and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab
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