Can you imagine a bunch of giraffes jumping in the water? On surprise, curiosity, and imagery (creativity)

Sir Ken Robinson links to a fun film where giraffes jump from a springboard into the water (Deveaux). It evokes the emotions of surprise and curiosity. The film can be created because of something called imagery - the ability to work out scenarios for our inner eye. This ability arose (1) after our ancestors started eating bone marrow and meat that expanded their prefrontal cortex, (2) after [at least] two major climate changes. In 1840, Elizabeth Ricord wrote that using imagination to combine conceptions was the highest level of the intellect. In the early 20th century, physicists, mathematicians and psychologists reasoned about the same. Link to my appearance at the 2012 Science Festival on creativity. The neurological and psychological dispositions of our species, which enable creations like the video showing giraffes jumping, arose as a consequence of animal-based food and significant climate change. Note. The same mental ability underlies all artifacts (things that do not occur in nature). 7 pages.

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Sir Ken Robinson links a fun thing from Youtube. Nicolas Deveaux, Cube Creative Production et Orange have made a film that shows a bunch of giraffes jump from a springboard into the water.

The rational part of our mind is defined by the distance of thought from the optimal as defined by a normative model (Stanovich, 2011):

“When a cognitive scientist terms a behavior irrational, he or she means that the behavior departs from the optimum prescribed by a particular normative model” (s. 344).

We understand that giraffes can't do jumps, but it arouses emotions like surprise and curiosity. Even for me, who has spent decades in the sport of trampoline as a coach, education manager and international judge, as well as in emotion and creativity research (Österberg, 2001, 2004, 2012 b).

Surprise. The legendary emotional psychologist Silvan Tompkins (1911-1991) is said to have claimed that surprise is a neutral emotion that purifies the psyche from both negative and positive charges. This leads to us becoming more open-minded to learning when we are surprised. (Fenker och Schütze, 2008) shows that surprise triggers a cyclic dopamine communication between the hippocampal nuclei (there is one in each hemisphere), Ventrala tegmental area, and Substantia nigra - we are drawn to explore to discover or learn new things.

Curiosity. The attentive person will notice that Deveaux has included curiosity in the film's opening - the giraffe looking into the surveillance camera in the hallway.

Curiosity. High diving giraffes, Nicoals Deveaux, Cube Creative Production et Orange

Imagery. Our species has a unique ability to work out scenarios (fantasy) ahead of time (Barkley, 2001; Gilbert och Wilson, 2007; Moulton och Kosslyn, 2009; Tomasello, 2000). Before the animator commissioned others to write the program code behind the film, he or she must have seen the image of jumping giraffes in front of his or her so-called inner eye.

In the mid-19th century, Elizabeth Ricord wrote:

“The highest development of the Intellect is in the power it has of combining its conceptions, so as to form creations of its own; a world within itself. This is the province of Imagination” (Ricord, 1840, p. 284).

Note that Ricord wrote this 15 years before Alexander Bain (1818 - 1903) published Senses of the mind, almost 20 years before Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) och Alfred Russel Wallas (1823-1913) published their respective theories of non-random evolution through adaptation and sexual selection, and just over 30 years before Darwin published his book on the psychology of emotions - the kiosk-turner The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals 1872.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was somewhat fashionable among Gestalt psychologists, physicists and mathematicians to reason about combinatorial thinking (Duncker, 1945; Hadamard, 1945/1996; Poincare, 1908, 1910; Wertheimer, 1945).

During the 1980s, some interesting studies were published. Partly Farah (1985) which shows that when you fantasize about something, the same area in the brain is activated as when you see the same thing, and partly Finke, Pinker and Farah (1989) who shows how mental rotation can give rise to convergent thinking; e.g. how by presenting the letters J and D you can make the respondent's psyche create an internal image of a known object, e.g. an umbrella. I have used the same model to test the opposite - divergent thinking.

In 2011, I was asked by the administration of the Science Festival in Gothenburg if I “could do something about dance and creativity” at the 2012 Science Festival? The answer was actually no, so I said yes.

In late summer 2011, I went to Gothenburg twice to plan what seemed to be the main attraction of the Festival. It was decided that I would make two appearances, one in the school program and the other in the general program in collaboration with the Gothenburg Opera.

Based on Finke, Pinker and Farah (1989), I designed a creativity test - which compared the mind's ability for combinatory thinking  when sitting still in the classroom and dancing (Österberg, 2012 a). See also my doctoral thesis on leadership style that affects social creativity for problem solving (Österberg, 2012 b).

I returned to the Science Festival in 2014 with the lecture Kan musik påverka dig att bli mer kreativ? och 2016 med The Talk: ett evolutionsperspektiv på kreativitet? (skolprogrammet och det allmänna programmet).

How did humans become creative?

It seems that this psychological ability arose as a combination of dietary change and climate change (note. Pluralis).

About 3.5 million years ago, our ancestors changed their diet - putting bone marrow on the 'plate' (McPherson et al 2010). Later they added meat (Pobiner, 2013). This nutrient-dense diet triggered a reduction in their intestines and an expansion of their brains. (Aiello och Wheeler, 1995). Part of this expansion involves the anterior cingulate cortex:

“ ... the anterior cingulate cortex is a specialization of neocortex rather than a more primitive stage of cortical evolution. Functions central to intelligent behavior, that is, emotional self-control, focused problem solving, error recognition, and adaptive response to changing conditions, are juxtaposed with the emotions in this structure” ... “The anterior cingulate cortex contains a class of spindle-shaped neurons that are found only in humans and the great apes, and thus are a recent evolutionary specialization probably related to these functions. The spindle cells appear to be widely connected with diverse parts of the brain and may have a role in the coordination that would be essential in developing the capacity to focus on difficult problems. Furthermore, they emerge postnatally and their survival may be enhanced or reduced by environmental conditions of enrichment or stress, thus potentially influencing adult competence or dysfunction in emotional self-control and problem-solving capacity” (Allman et al. 2001).

New mental abilities emerged: social cognition, executive functions, including imagery for working out scenarios ahead of time, and language (Adornetti, 2016; Ardila, 2008; Diamond, 2013; Kaku, 2014; Pringle, 2013; Coolidge and Wynn, 2009).

Anthropologists have been able to figure out that our ancestors were almost wiped out about 140,000 years ago and 70,000 years ago, respectively, due to significant changes in the climate.

Climate change 1:

“We almost didn’t make it: an amazing recent analysis of DNA by genetic anthropologists indicates that sometime around 140,000 years ago, a catastrophic event—probably related to climate change—decimated the ranks of modern humans, all of whom then lived in Africa. During that period, the entire population of our subspecies plummeted.

But then we underwent another transformation, one that gave us astonishing new mental powers. It does not seem to have been due to a change in our physical anatomy, not even in the anatomy of our brain. Instead it seems to have been a reworking of how our brain operates. However it happened, it was that metamorphosis that enabled our species to produce scientists, artists, theologians, and, more generally, people who think the way we do” (Mlodinov, 2015, p. 24).

Climate change 2:

A little over 70,000 years ago, two supervolcanic eruptions occurred in Indonesia. In addition to decimating our species to a few thousand survivors, it seems that the brain and psyche underwent a revolution - that the psyche was simply rewired and introduced constructive memory (Ambrose, 2010; Schacter och Addis, 2007).

The first manifestation of creativity is the Lion Man, discovered in Germany in 1939. The Lion Man has the body of a man and the head of a lion. This means that the person who created the figure must have been able to apply combinatorial thinking.

Picture 1. Löwenmensch figurine or Lion-man (Link).

Conclusion. The neurological and psychological disposition of our species, which enables creations like the video showing giraffes jumping, arose as a consequence of animal-based food and significant climate change. Note. The same mental ability underlies all artifacts (things that do not occur in nature).

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