What we admire about nature and history is the on-going open-endedness of their creativity. In the case of nature, all the buzzing, blooming abundance, the dense complexity, the rich variety around us, and all that same kind of plentitude which once existed but does no longer, is the result of a step by step process of adaptive irrevocable change, that is evolution, going on for millions of years, producing things of interest, and shows no sign of winding down. The same is true of human history over a shorter span.
Most AI creativity programs that try to reduplicate this persistently productive open-endedness quickly converge on solutions, or get stuck, or get boring. Nature and history never do, and perhaps never will.
This open-endedness has come into being over time through a process of evolution, each development providing a platform for a whole range of others, and the whole alive and dynamic, new things coming into being, others disappearing, indefinite possibilities becoming definite actualities and serving as new initial conditions, the launching pads, for other set of possibilities.
This open-endedness, sometimes driven by natural selection and random drift, and other times by intention and inspiration, produces more and more complexity and novelty as time goes on, while retaining traces of its past progress. Genera and civilizations come and go, but evolution goes ever onward
This tireless generation, this ever-astounding creativity, also characterizes the progressive consummation of creation going on in the transcendent, a consummation which we further and to which we contribute, with every encounter we have.
Evolution proceeds by the occurrences of no-going-back events which change the world and create new realities. These events occur at different stages of the encounter process. Each participant is always making spontaneous internal changes expressed in new perceptions and decisions, including decisions to encounter. Each encounter is a unique and open-ended event which leaves its mark on both participants. Each participant also has an impact on the community she or he belongs to.
Encounters are hybrid events, occasions of entanglement of the mundane with the transcendent worlds, These occasions are inspired and joined by transcendent freshness which as much a participant in them as we ourselves. The transcendent aspect of encounters contribute to the progressive consummation of creation, as mutations and decisions in nature and history as they do.
The mundane aspect of encounters are limited by locality and mortality, but their transcendent aspect is not. So what is interesting arising in encounters, that is, what is impressive, or intriguing, or touching intimately, is never and has never been lost, and what is new and interesting is ever arriving and ever will be.
So where in the biological we see a succession of new designs, new strategies, and new emergent properties, and in the historical, new concepts and modes of perceptions, new technologies, new social structures, in the evolution of encounters we see new expressions of friendship, hospitality and exploration, new kinds of projects, and novelties, and that just in the mundane.
The history of life has left its traces in the genome of each individual. Likewise, regarding the history of mankind, the truism is that the past is not dead, and not even past. The ‘genetic’ thread of their encounters is encoded in each of the participants while they live, but also kept alive in transcendent freshness and forever.
Fitness on the biologic level is a measure of adaptation to conditions of the physical and biological environment. On the cultural/social level, fitness measures adaptation to the symbols of the culture and the norms of the society. On the encounter level, fitness measures adaptation of the transcendent to the mundane and the mundane to the transcendent.
Every adaptative evolutionary change is a solution and an opportunity, and solutions don’t exhaust opportunities, but opens new field of problems to solve, new projects to pursue. Open-endedness is built on the basis of prior evolutionary changes. Open endedness, even in the transcendent, evolves with every encounter.
The wonderful scope of this prospect of ever-expanding, ever-richer, ever-innovative, ever-interesting evolution in the transcendent heartens me, fills me with wonder every day.