A Short History Of Creativity
“Define creativity,” somebody once asked me. Gods, that's a terrible dinner question.
Yet, it is such a good question.
It’s the kind of thing you can’t answer without staring into the middle distance for a bit. Maybe pretending to swirl a glass of wine in the fleeting hopes you’re about to say something profound. But truth be told, it’s a lot harder to define than I like to admit.
We throw the word around all the time. “Oh, that was soooo creative,” we say, as if we’ve unlocked the mysteries of the universe because someone painted a wall purple. But ask ten people what creativity really is, and you’ll get ten different answers.
What if history has just as many different interpretations of creativity? Throughout time, people didn't always perceive creativity as a human trait at all. In fact, many ancient civilizations believed that true inspiration came from the gods, not from within.
Then, the perception of creativity changed. And again.
Down the rabbit hole I go, exploring how our understanding of creativity has shifted. First it was mystical, then it became something deeply human, and now, possibly, to something that is no longer ours.
The Ancient Ideology To Creativity
In ancient civilizations, creativity wasn’t something you cultivated within yourself. It was a gift given upon you and you either had it or didn’t. The Greeks, for instance, credited the Muses with every stroke of poetic genius or musical brilliance.
To create was to channel, not to invent.
The perception was that the Muses were the actual artists. Not the humans. They were just lucky enough to catch their whispers.
But the Greeks were not alone in this view. The ancient Egyptians thought of the Pharaohs as divinely inspired. People didn't attribute their ability to dream up monumental structures and intricate art to human ingenuity. Similarly, Mesopotamian deities like Enki were believed to give humans with their skills in craftsmanship and innovation. Creation was never a solo endeavor, it was a partnership between a mortal and the gods.
Yet, this wasn’t purely religious thinking; it was philosophical, too. In Plato’s view, creativity wasn’t something of this world at all. It was a peek into a higher reality. Plato’s Forms were the perfect versions of everything, existing beyond the messiness of human life. Artists weren’t creating; they were observing the divine and trying their best to copy it.
Over time, though, the perception shifted. Philosophers like Aristotle pulled creativity down from the heavens and planted it firmly on Earth. He argued humans didn’t need divine intervention to create. People just needed observation, reasoning, and technique. Here, creativity was less about waiting for divine inspiration and more about honing your craft.
In other parts of the world, creativity remained closely tied to the divine or cosmic forces. In ancient China, for instance, poets didn’t wait for muses to whisper in their ears; they sought harmony with the universe. Creativity was about aligning oneself with the natural flow of yin and yang.
In Aboriginal Australians, creativity wasn’t an individual act. Their Dreamtime Paintings were deeply spiritual, retelling the creation of the world and their connection to the land. Creativity was about community, tradition, and the spiritual forces that bound them. Not about the individual.
It was only much later that we celebrated creativity as a distinctly human trait. And even then, the echoes of those ancient beliefs still resonate today.
The Renaissance
By the time the Renaissance rolled around, the perceived source of creativity had changed. No longer solely the domain of gods and muses, it settled into the hands of individual humans. For the first time, figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo weren’t just being praised for their technical skills, but for something more.
We labelled them as “genius”.
If the Renaissance started celebrating the individual, the Enlightenment practically canonized them.
Thinkers like Kant and Locke elevated creativity beyond mere artistic expression. It was now about reason, intellect, and the power of the human mind. Kant believed artists could go beyond the limits of reason, crafting works that tapped into something sublime.
However, the Enlightenment’s obsession with reason didn’t exactly foster wild, creative freedom. The emphasis on structure, proportion, and order often confined creativity to strict rules. Music had to follow certain harmonies, art had to maintain symmetry, and writing had to conform to rational ideals.
It was a double-edged sword for creativity: reason opened up new possibilities while adhering to definitions, but it also boxed it into a corner.
Arguably, it was the first time that culture imposed very specific and scripted rules for creative works of art.
And then there’s the issue of the ‘genius.’ By the late Enlightenment, the idea of the solitary, misunderstood creative genius was in full swing.
Almost fetishized.
Beethoven, for instance, was a musical titan whose creativity transcended the ordinary. But this myth of genius is as misleading as it is captivating. Beethoven wasn’t a lone wolf, as he was part of a highly structured musical tradition. Moreover, his success was a result of a society that celebrated and funded certain types of creativity.
This fetishization of the ‘creative genius’ narrows the view of creativity. More concerningly, we still carry the hangover today. It suggests that only a select few possess this elusive quality, ignoring how accessible the creative traits really are. This problem carried on into the Romantic Era.
The Romantics And The Genius
Romanticism emerged as a reaction against the rigid rationalism of the Enlightenment. Think of it as a cultural pendulum swing. The structured, logical ideals of the Enlightenment were limiting, so let's do the opposite. Most of the creators during this time felt it was too mechanical for a humanity that was brimming with raw emotion and unpredictability.
Artists like Beethoven, Byron, and Turner weren’t just creating art; they were baring their souls, turning the act of creation into something almost sacred. Maybe even divine.
Creativity became celebrated as a deeply personal endeavor. People tied the expression of creativity to the very core of their emotional experience.
But this shift also introduced a dangerous idea: that suffering was the price of genius. The ‘tortured artist’ became a cultural icon, celebrated for their ability to turn personal pain into creative brilliance.
Creativity became something elusive. It was a gift given only to those who suffered, to those who felt deeply. This idea, while intoxicating, set up an expectation that creativity required pain, that genius was somehow linked to turmoil.
In truth, Romanticism’s legacy is more nuanced. Yes, it broadened our understanding of creativity by embracing emotion and self-expression. But it also distorted the idea of creativity, making it seem like a privilege of the few rather than an aspect available to everyone. It placed creativity on a pedestal, suggesting that only the geniuses who are emotionally tormented could access it.
The Romantics may have opened the door to creativity’s emotional depths, but they also made it harder for the rest of us to walk through.
A Modern Reaction
Modernism brought another redefinition and approach. Gone were the days when art was about mimicking reality or revealing deep truths as the modernist approach was to tear down those very assumptions. Artists like Pablo Picasso and writers like James Joyce turned creativity into something fragmented, chaotic, and often, intentionally disorienting.
This was not art for beauty, it was art that reflected their fractured world.
The early 20th century was a time of immense upheaval. Holy hell, in the space of fifty years, they saw two world wars, economic depression, and rapid technological advancements left societies behind. For the first time, the very idea of what it meant to be human was under scrutiny. And with it, the role of the artist was also up for debate. No longer was creativity tied to divine inspiration or individual genius. It became a response to the chaos of the times.
Surrealism turned the creative lens inward. Sigmund Freud’s theories on dreams and the unconscious inspired artists like Salvador Dalí to explore realms far removed from conscious. Art no longer had to make sense in the traditional way. Art could be bizarre, irrational, even absurd, as seen in movements like Dadaism.
But this evolution also invited a larger cultural question: if art could be anything, was there still any value in it? Modernist creativity sometimes alienated audiences, replacing the emotionally resonant with the intellectually cold. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land captures this problem. It was a poem so fractured and dissonant that it felt more like a puzzle than a narrative. Creativity became about reflecting the disintegration of meaning, not necessarily offering solutions.
It kind of feels like creativity was attempting to ask, “if there is a point, what then?”
By the mid-20th century, the post-modernists had pushed these boundaries further. Jean Baudrillard famously argued that, in the age of mass media and hyperreality, society cannot distinguish between reality and its representations.
For the first time, creativity became an act of deliberate deconstruction. Artistic expression questioned not just what art is, but whether originality itself even existed. Andy Warhol’s pop art, with its endless reproductions of cultural icons, exemplified this shift. Creativity wasn’t about invention. It was about remixing and repurposing what already existed.
So what did modernism leave us with? A complex legacy, where creativity is no longer confined to beauty, truth, or originality. Instead, it’s become about questioning, disrupting, and exploring the multiplicity of meanings. Modernism started an age where creativity is as much about the process as it is the product. But in doing so, I have to ask, “if creativity can be anything, what does it really mean?”
Here comes AI
When generative AI emerged, it immediately became a hotly passionate debating ground.
AI’s defenders argue these machines are simply expanding the boundaries of what’s possible. After all, contemporary creativity is often about recombination. Artists take existing ideas and forming something new. AI excels at this, piecing together patterns from vast amounts of data to create something. But while AI can remix and generate, can it truly be creative?
Emotions, memories, and subjective interpretations that influence our creative output fill the human experience. Machines, however, operate on data and calculations, with no sense of the world beyond their programming.
Critics argue that this distinction is crucial. Human creativity is intentional as we reflect our struggles, triumphs, and perspectives.
People consider creativity to be deeply personal, often the result of laborious effort and a desire to communicate something meaningful. But AI offers speed and efficiency but morphs that premise. It can churn out a thousand variations of an image or a story in minutes, and without a human hand guiding those choices, does any of it matter?
When an artist paints, every brushstroke is a decision, a reflection of their inner thoughts and emotions. When AI generates a painting, it’s merely following probabilities, calculating the most likely outcomes based on its training data.
So, is that creativity, or just mimicry?
We haven’t really answered that as we haven’t really needed to ask that before.
Yet, others argue that AI is simply a tool. Just as people once saw photography as a tool. In its early days, people dismissed photography as a mechanical process that couldn't never ever rival painting. But over time, society recognized it as a valid creative medium. So, is it possible that AI follows a similar path?
The conversation around AI and creativity ultimately comes down to a question of value. Are we willing to redefine creativity to include machine-generated work? Or does creativity require human experience and emotional depth? As AI continues to develop, this question becomes more pressing. Deep down, it’s not just about what AI can create. It’s about what we are willing to accept as creative expression.
Just like each period of humanity has redefined what creativity is, we are going through the same cycle today.
For now, AI holds its place in the creative world because it is so accessible and profound. But whether it will ever fully gain acceptance remains up for debate. The challenge lies not in AI’s can do, but in our willingness to redefine what creativity is.
What is next?
We’ve taken creativity from divine inspiration to the hands of individual geniuses, then to collective culture, and now, apparently, to the circuits of machines. But what comes next? Are we on the verge of something entirely new, or will we find ourselves retreating back to the origins, to some higher force for guidance?
It’s a strange thought. After all, if AI can compose symphonies, paint, and write poetry, where does that leave us? Maybe we’ll hand creativity back to the gods, or perhaps we’ll just accept that creativity doesn’t need to be this mysterious, deeply personal experience we’ve always believed.
But that feels… off.
Maybe we’re moving toward a phase where human creativity isn’t replaced but redefined. Creativity tends to be more about collaboration than competition with AI. Perhaps the divine inspiration we once sought isn’t entirely gone, just filtered through new tools. Or maybe, just maybe, we’re headed for a full-circle regression. Who knows?
Maybe the gods are watching, sipping their ambrosia, waiting for us to figure it out.
Either way, it’s bound to be creatively interesting.
Would you consider a follow?
https://asymmetriccreativity.medium.com/
