Abstract
This chapter describes two studies that help evaluate the combinatorial conjecture that all creativity results from combinations of mental representations. The first study examines 100 examples of great scientific discoveries, and the second looks at 100 examples of great technological inventions. Both studies confirm rather than refute the combinatorial conjecture, but also provide important information concerning the role of visual and other kinds of representations and the extent to which discoveries and inventions were accidental, analogical, and observational or theoretical. The nontriviality of the combinatorial conjecture is shown by discussing views about radical embodiment that are incompatible with it.
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