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Creativity in Western Civilization: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Causes

Author(s): Dean Keith SimontonSource: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 628-630Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/676764 .

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628 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [83, 1981]Chambers, Erve, and Alvin W. Wolfe1978 Legal and Ethical Problems in Client-oriented Field Research. Paper presentedat the 1978 Annual Meetingsof the Ameri-can Anthropological Association.Trend, M. G.1978 Freedom, Confidentiality, and Regu-lations: A Dissent. Human Organization37:88-89.1980 Applied Social Research and theGovernment: Notes on the Limits of Con-

fidentiality. Social Problems 27:342-349.Submitted 23 May 1980Accepted 24 February 1981

Creativity in Western Civilization:Intrinsic and Extrinsic CausesDEAN KEITH SIMONTON

University of California, DavisKroeber's Configurations of Culture Growth(1944) posed a significant problem: Why docreatorsin any discipline, and in any civilizationarea, cluster into Golden Ages that areseparated by Dark Ages? In a series of paperspublished in AA, Edward Gray (1958, 1961,1966) attempted to address this question by pro-posing an epicyclical model. Simply put, theups and downs in creativity which formKroeber's configurations are the effects ofunderlying cycles in the political, economic,and social milieu. When the peaksof these threecycles converge, the outcome is a period of greatflorescence in the arts and sciences. Provocative

though Gray's theory may be, Taagepera andColby (1979) have recently offered evidence inAA that the changes in creativityare dominatedby an upward exponential trend. Whenmeasured as deviations from this massive up-ward secular movement, Gray's epicycles justvanish. Taagepera and Colby suggest that thisexponential growth in creativitymay be partial-ly due to general population growth and to thetendency to discount earlier historical events.Although I am in basic agreement withTaagepera and Colby's reanalysis of Gray'sdata, Kroeber's original question remains. Asthey point out, the departures from the ex-ponential trend still tend to fall into crests andtroughs--into configurations. So what causesthis creative clustering? There are two major

though not necessarily mutually exclusivepossibilities. On the one hand, these aperiodicfluctuations may be the outcome of intrinsicordialectic properties of creativity. Kroeberhimself suggested this explanation when hespoke of creators first building upon and thenexhausting a given cultural pattern, paradigm,or tradition. And Sheldon (1979) has proposedan interesting "cybernetic" model in whichcreativity s either encouraged or discouragedbythe communication networksoperating betweensuccessive cohorts of creators. On the otherhand, fluctuations in creative activity may beascribed to extrinsic or environmental forces.Gray'smodel assumessuch an explanation whenhe argues that creativity results from the coin-cidence of favorable economic, political, andsocial conditions. Yet there is no special reasonto postulate that these environmental circum-stances fall into neat cycles. Instead, researcherscan simply measure those sociocultural eventsthought to nurture creativity and then test forany hypothesized correlation. A good illustra-tion of this alternative approach is a pioneerstudy by Naroll and his students (1971) whichapplied cross-cultural methodology to trans-historical research. After tabulating Kroeber'screativity data into 100-year periods for fourcivilizations (European, Islamic, Indian, andChinese), Naroll assessed such potential predic-tors as wealth, political fragmentation, geo-graphical expansion, governmental centraliza-tion, and optimal challenge. The ups anddowns in creativitycould be partly attributed tounderlying fluctuations in political fragmenta-tion, that is, to changes in the number of in-dependent states into which the civilizationwasdivided. Significantly, the movements inpolitical fragmentation tend to be described bylarge aperiodic trends reflecting the immenseamount of inertia in socioculturalsystems.Alex-ander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Napoleonnotwithstanding, large and stable empires arenot usually built overnight.The above two potential explanations inmind, the question now becomes how to inte-grate the various possibilities into a singlepredictive equation which concomitantly makesall due allowance for the exponential trenddemonstrated by Taagepera and Colby. In aseries of papers published mostly in psycholog-ical journals I have tried to exploit econometricmethods in order to accomplish just such a con-solidation (e.g., Simonton 1975, 1976, 1977,1979). I would specifically ike to mention an ar-ticle which set up a dynamicstructuralequation

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REPORTS AND COMMENTS 629for time series of creativity in Graeco-Romanand Western civilization (Simonton 1975). Afterupdating Kroeber's extensive listings, creatorswere assigned to one of 127 consecutive 20-yearperiods or "generations" according to the same40-year floruit employed by both Kroeber andGray. Fluctuations in creativity were assessed asthe deviations from an overall exponentialtrend. Then several extrinsic, environmentalpredictors were operationalized, includingpolitical fragmentation, political instability, im-perial instability, and war. In addition, the con-cept of role-model availability or social learning(cf. Kroeber's "imitation") was the basis of ahypothesized intrinsic or dialectic influenceacross successive generations of creators. In par-ticular, the number of creators at generation gwas presumed to be a function of the number ofcreators at generations g-1 and g-2, yielding asecond-order autoregressive dynamic model.Finally, numerous control variables were de-fined to handle potential methodological ar-tifacts such as certain dating biases (see Simon-ton 1975, Table 1, p. 1127).The resulting equation shows that both in-trinsic and extrinsic causes are responsible forthe aperiodic fluctuations about the exponen-tial trend line. Part of the clustering of creatorsinto configurations is due to the dependence ofcreative development upon the presence ofcreative role-models in the previous two genera-tions. Another portion of this same temporalcontiguity of creators results from the depen-dence of creative development upon environ-mental forces which are not randomlydistributed over time. On the one hand, theamount of creativity at generation g is a nega-tive function of the amount of political instabili-ty at generation g- 1, where political instability isdefined by a weighted index of military revolts,coups-d'etat, dynastic conflicts, political assas-sinations, and the like. On the other hand, im-perial instability, or revolts and rebellionsagainst large empire states, has a positive im-pact on creativity in the next generation.Because both political instability and imperialinstability exhibit aperiodic fluctuations orquasi cycles, creativity would be expected tofollow a roughly similar course.

Although it is clearly too early to say whetherKroeber's question has been fully answered, itseems safe to argue that an econometric ap-proach which employs both intrinsic and extrin-sic factors may provide a good place to start. Atleast this methodology can do much to silencethose who have criticized the quantitative study

of creativity in Western civilization (e.g.,Barber 1981). Not only do dynamic structuralequations offer a more sophisticated response tothe theoretical issues involved, but additionallyby calculating reliability coefficients I haveshown that the data are of sufficient quality tojustify the exploitation of these advancedanalytical tools. And it is definitely encouragingto report that the initial dynamic equation, forall its first-approximation character, explainsabout 72% of the variance in creativity over thehistory of European civilization.References CitedBarber, Russell J.

1981 Comments on the Quantitative Studyof Creativity in Western Civilization.American Anthropologist 83:143-144.Gray, Charles E.1958 An Analysis of Graeco-Roman Devel-

opment: The Epicyclical Evolution ofGraeco-Roman Civilization. American An-thropologist 60:13-31.1961 An Epicyclical Model for WesternCivilization. American Anthropologist 63:1014-1037.

1966 Measurement of Creativity in West-ern Civilization. American Anthropologist68:1384-1417.

Kroeber, A. L.1944 Configurations of Culture Growth.Berkeley: University of California Press.Naroll, R., E. C. Benjamin, F. K. Fohl, M. J.Fried, R. E. Hildreth, and J. M. Schaefer1971 Creativity: A Cross-Historical pilotsurvey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychol-ogy 2:181-188.Sheldon, John C.

1979 Hierarchical Cybernets: A Model forthe Dynamics of High Level Learning andCultural Change. Cybernetica 22:179-202.Simonton, Dean Keith1975 Sociocultural Context of IndividualCreativity: A Transhistorical Time-SeriesAnalysis. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology 32:1119-1133.1976 The Sociopolitical Context of Philo-sophical Beliefs: A Transhistorical CausalAnalysis. Social Forces 54:513--523.1977 Eminence, Creativity, and GeographicMarginality: A Recursive Structural Equa-tion Model. Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology 35:805-816.1979 Multiple Discovery and Invention:Zeitgeist, Genius, or Chance? Journal of

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630 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [83, 1981]Personality and Social Psychology 37:1603-1616.

Taagepera, Rein, and Benjamin N. Colby1979 Growth of Western Civilization: Epi-cyclical or Exponential?American Anthro-pologist 81:907-912.Submitted 18 April 1980Revised manuscriptsubmitted 5 February 1981Accepted 16 March 1981

Reply to Matthew CooperFRANK A. SALAMONEWenner-GrenFellow57 Linden Avenue

Middletown, New York10940I am pleased to note that my article on theepistemologyof fieldworkhas generated interestwithin the profession. However, Cooper'srecentcritique (AA 82:385-387, 1980) confuses mydiscussion of common assumptions regardingfieldwork in early anthropology with my ownopinions. By doing so, he misses my essential

point; namely, that only through careful use ofexplicit theories and derivablehypothesestestedthrough carefully obtained field data would an-thropological theory advance. Such a position isdiametrically opposed to that of logical posi-tivism, which holds that universal anthropolog-ical laws are derivable via induction from thedata themselves. But it is compatible withCooper's own restatement of Hempel's positionas well as with an interest in both the internaland external conditions of fieldwork.I argue for advance through theory testing.Anthropologistsshould become aware of the in-ternal and external constraints on fieldwork. Ido not argue for what Bateson (1980) terms asterile objectivity, a goal impossible to achieveand undesirable in any case. However, my posi-tion agrees with Bateson's goal for fieldwork-"disciplinedsubjectivity"for the integrity andobjectivity of a discipline are not based on thegoodness of its practitionersbut on its structuresand controls. Anthropologycannot be expectedto furnishtruth, but it must be expected to sup-ply a means towardunderstandingwhat it takesto be its field of study, and that is the functionof theory-based fieldwork. Cooper's commentshave helped solidify my thoughts on these mat-ters.

References CitedBateson, Mary Catherine1980 Continuities in Insight and Innova-tion: Toward a Biography of MargaretMead. American Anthropologist 82:270-277.Submitted 29 December 1980Revised manuscriptsubmitted 12 February 1981Revised manuscriptsubmitted 23 March 1981Accepted 5 April 1981--

Response of Deer to HumanBlood Odor

M. CHRISTOPHER NUNLEYSouthern Methodist UniversityIt was with great interest that I read KathrynS. March's AA 82:125-126, 1980)reporton hertest of the responseof nonhuman animals (deer)to menstrual odor. An examination of the liter-ature (see Delaney, Lupton and Toth 1976;Ford and Beach 1951; Frazer 1951; Hays 1964)reveals that some form of prohibition towardmenstruating women is virtually universal.Many of these "taboos' are based on the ra-tionale that menstrual odor is offensive to the

game animals which contribute in some degreeto subsistence (see Driver 1969:99). An in-vestigation of whether these taboos are indeedbased on empirically demonstrable animalbehaviors would offer valuable information onpsycho-social universals regarding women andtheir status. That the form and function ofthese proscriptionsmay have changed over timewould not negate the authenticity of what mayhave been associated with empirical observa-tion.This position is supported by March'sstudy,which indicates that menstrual odor does in-deed produce an avoidance response in white-tailed deer. However, that such a response inprey animals is due to distinctly emale odor (asargued by Dobkin de Rios [1976:261] ) ignoresthe influence of natural selection. It is generallyconceded among cultural anthropologists thatthere is little evidence, among extant popula-tions, of women playing a significant role inhunting. (However, Griffin [1978] has reporteda substantial amount of hunting by Agta wo-men of the Philippines.) Nor does the ar-