COMMENTARIES

Abstract

In his interesting and provocative target article Simonton (this issue) argues that a remarkably broad range of creative human achievements can be accounted for by a very general process of blind variation and selective retention, which he traces back to Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. According to Simonton, genuine creativity involves blind variation, which is antithetical to the control exhibited in expert performance and thus raises issues regarding the nature of creative expertise and the possibility of intentional creative achievements. In this commentary I take issue with Simonton’s argument that it is impossible to produce creative achievements with some reasonable degree of consistency and, in addition, that creative expertise differs fundamentally from other types of expert performance in domains, such as chess, music, sports, and medicine. In some recent articles (Ericsson, 1996, 1998; Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996), my colleagues and I have proposed how the expert-performance framework can offer a promising account of the necessary conditions for creative achievements and their rare occurrence in domains of expertise. These proposals also identify acquired mechanisms that can explain the “huge … individual differences in creative behavior”—an unresolved paradox within Simonton’s proposal for creativity as blind variations.