Donald Campbell's Model of the Creative Process: Creativity as Blind Variation and Selective Retention

This special issue honors Donald Campbell, who died on May 6, 1996. Although Campbell became best known for his methodological contributions, he also published a classic 1960 paper in which he developed a blind-variation and selective-retention model of the creative process. Not only does this Darwinian model accurately describe Campbell's own creative modus operandi, but in addition it may provide the basis for a comprehensive theory of creativity. The articles collected for this special issue are devoted to evaluating Campbell's theoretical proposal from the hindsight of nearly 40 years of research and thinking on the creative process.     

Toward a Theory of Creativity in Diverse Creative Women

ABSTRACT: Little is known and limited research has been completed about creative women, their creative processes, and the decisions they face about their own creative productivity. Few books or even articles suggest how creativity can be better developed, enhanced, or increased in a diverse population of girls and women. The social and political movement focusing on women during the past five decades has provided some understanding of women's creative processes as well as the creative roles that women have played in our society and the forces that shape those roles. In this article, current research is analyzed, focusing on the development of women's creativity and the classification of this research into major themes. Internal and external blocks to creativity in women are discussed, as is current research on these blocks, and an explanation is suggested for different types of creative productivity exhibited by women. A theory is proposed regarding the diversion of women's creativity into multiple areas in their lives, including relationships, work related to both family and home, personal interests, and aesthetic sensitivities. This diversion of creative efforts may result in different levels of creativity applied to work, as well as the existence of very different patterns of creative productivity in creative women.     

In Defense of the Jurisdiction Theory of Rights

This essay critically examines three theories of moral rights, theBenefit, the Interest, and the Choice theories. The Interest andChoice theories attempt to explain how rights can be more robustthan seems possible on the Benefit theory. In particular, moralrights are supposed to be resistant to trade-offs to supportprincipled anti-paternalism, to constitute a distinct dimensionof morality, and to provide right holders with a range ofdiscretionary choice. I argue that these and other featuresare better yet provided by a fourth theory of moral rights, theJurisdiction theory.     

从财富论到资源论:对老年人力资源问题的再认识

联合国第二届世界老龄大会提出了许多新的思想和认识.其中,最为重要和意义深远的就是老年资源论.用这个思想审视老年人力资源问题,将会推动我们深化对老有所为等问题的认识.     

诠释的创造性与"创造的诠释学"

自施莱尔马赫奠定现代诠释学以来,经过了一个多世纪的发展,已发展成为一股令人瞩目的世界性哲学思潮。如今,这股思潮突破语言的界线,延伸到了具有悠久历史传统的中国哲学领域。一批海外华裔学者率先对此作出了回应,而美国天普大学傅伟勋教授建立的“创造的诠释学”尤为引人注目。它虽发端于释老之学,然又融会了西方哲学的诠释方法论,在诠释学方法规则的制定上具有独特的建树。在这个意义上,它是融合中、西思想的诠释学形态。其宗旨是构建一个诠释的方法论规则体系,以现代化地重建传统哲学。     

Wish,Need, Drive: Motive in the Light of Dynamic Systems Theory and Edelman's Selectionist Theory

Almost all psychoanalytic theorizing posits some basic and presumably built-in motivational thrusts. The goal of this paper is to present an alternative way of thinking about the beginnings of motivation. I go into some detail about recent contributions from two areas of research: dynamic systems theory as applied by Esther Thelen to infantile motor development and Gerald Edelman's (1992) theory of “Neural Darwinism.” What emerges are two interlocking hypotheses: The first is that what we infer as drives or other versions of “basic” motivations are already a late development of motivational organizations that started out from a collection of rather primitive biases. The second hypothesis, based on dynamic systems thinking or complexity theory, is that a great many developmental features that appear to be driven by a built-in genetic program or design, are, in fact, the spontaneously emergent, and therefore the never completely predictable, resultant of the interplay of embedded, embodied, and environmental elements. It is also hypothesized that, just as motivational systems lead to the emergence of new capacities and functions, so too do new capacities beget new motivational derivatives in an ever-more complex developmental spiral. Early experience plays an enormously important and highly individual role in the creation of conative patterns that eventually crystalize into what we, as observers and theoreticians, begin to categorize into systems of motivation. Depending on the observer and his or her frame of reference, certain motivational systems are held to be superordinate to others; these then are held up as basic motives. As psychoanalysts we currently find ourselves in a situation of competing organizational systems vying for prominence. The multiplicity of such systems speaks to our uncertainty and the need for further study to clarify the many questions that this line of thinking evokes. The second section of this paper explores the relations among need, wish, impulse, and defense as varieties of motivational systems that have already crystalized out of the early beginnings of motivation.