Abstract
Creativity is the process of emergence of an alternative trajectory of human conduct, unfolding within irreversible time, mediated by signs. The theory of semiotic dynamics of human conduct situates the moment of emergence of novelty in the creation of sign hierarchies that either guide the person into previously known trajectory of feeling, thinking, and acting, or into a new trajectory not experienced before. This emergence is initiated by the person who strives in some direction, and utilizes signs as regulators and catalysts for bringing about innovative moments in one’s experience. Semiotic catalysis at the bifurcation point of the trajectories sets up the uncertainty of emergence of the new on the basis of past experience. Catalytic signs are field-like in their nature and occur in sign complexes that make possible the direction of affective meanings into variable pathways. Such sign fields can be observed to be encoded into symbolic resources—iconic images or re-narrated myth stories of memorable scenes that are set up to be maintained over generations and guide renewal of meaningful understandings of the world.
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Notes
- 1.
Between 1755 and 1770 Kant earned his living from lecturing 20 hours a week, being paid directly by his students. The considerations about the beautiful and the sublime (Erhabene) bear the marks of lecture-based discussions relating with the work of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Rohlf 2014).
- 2.
This thought model has been canonized by the statistical methodology use, based on the Gaussian curve where variability indicates deviation from the “true” (average or prototypical) condition. That this model is inadequate for living systems is long known but rarely implemented (Valsiner 1984).
- 3.
Born 1902, died 1992.
- 4.
One can easily see the powerful effect of the values-framing of this act if one were to present a bouquet of flowers to a loved one, with a cheerful comment “These are the very best beautiful flowers I could pick up for you on my way here, passing through the cemetery”.
- 5.
Ranging from very brief time moments (e.g., improvisation in ongoing music performance; see Klemp et al. 2008) to life-time credo of an artist, for whom art is: “an exercise in re-creating a non-reality which turns into a credible reality in my pictures. It is not a picture for tourists nor a costumbrista scene. It is something far more profound. It is a world which I have re-invented, unreal, because it does not exist; this is what realism in true art always is. … Our need for poetry makes us see reality through the eyes of art” (Botero 1980).
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Acknowledgment
The writing of this chapter was supported by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant from Danske Grundforskningsfond. Editorial suggestions from Vlad-Petre Glăveanu on a previous version of this chapter are gratefully acknowledged.
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Valsiner, J. (2016). A Semiotic Approach to Creativity: Resources for Re-contextualization. In: Glăveanu, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture Research. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46344-9_9
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