What Makes Something Creative?

Imagine walking along a beach and finding a beautiful arrangement of stones, carefully balanced in a shape that looks like a spiral. You’d probably think someone made it, and you might call it creative. But what if you discover that the stones were actually moved into that shape by wind and waves, not by any person? Would you still call it creative? Most people would say no. The sunsets and snowflakes can be beautiful and new, but we don’t call them creative.

This leads to a strange question: What exactly does “creative” mean? We use the word all the time—for people, for processes, for the things they make—but philosophers still argue about what creativity actually is. Let’s look at what they’ve figured out so far.

The Basic Idea: New + Valuable

Most philosophers and psychologists agree that for something to count as creative, it needs to be both new and valuable. A meaningless string of random letters might be new, but it’s not creative because it’s worthless. A boring math worksheet isn’t creative even if it’s useful. You need both.

But this raises more questions right away. What counts as “new”? When Isaac Newton invented calculus, he didn’t know that Leibniz had already invented it years before. Was Newton’s calculus creative? Most people would say yes. Philosophers call this “psychological novelty”—it was new to Newton, even though it wasn’t new in all of human history. If a student today figures out for herself that freedom might be compatible with fate, that idea might be thousands of years old, but it’s still creative because she came up with it on her own.

The Tricky Cases: Can Bad Things Be Creative?

Here’s where things get uncomfortable. Imagine a brilliantly designed torture device, something completely new that inflicts maximum suffering. Is it creative?

Some philosophers say no—creativity is a good word, a compliment, and we shouldn’t compliment evil things. But others point out that “evil creativity” doesn’t seem like a contradiction. We talk about creative criminals, creative scams, creative ways to hurt people. One philosopher, Berys Gaut, suggests that something can be “good of its kind” without being good overall. A murder method might be good as a murder method—effective, clever, original—even though murder is wrong.

Other philosophers go even further. Imagine someone builds a new torture device that’s so badly designed it kills its victim instantly, giving no suffering at all. The device fails at its purpose. It’s not valuable in any way—not to the victim, not even to the torturer. Could it still be creative? Alison Hills and Alexander Bird say yes, as long as it’s new and was produced in the right way.

So what is “the right way”?

How Does Creative Stuff Get Made?

Most philosophers agree that creativity isn’t just about the final product. It’s also about the process. Four main ideas have been proposed about what the creative process requires:

Surprise. Margaret Boden thinks creativity requires surprise. She says there are three kinds. First, combinatorial creativity: putting old ideas together in new ways, like combining a horse and wings to get Pegasus. Second, exploratory creativity: working within an existing system (like English grammar) to find new possibilities within it (like Dickens describing Scrooge with seven adjectives in a row). Third, transformational creativity: changing the rules of the system itself, like Schoenberg inventing atonal music by dropping the rule that music must stay in one key.

Originality. Maria Kronfeldner says creativity requires originality, meaning you can’t just copy. That’s why Newton’s calculus counts as creative even though Leibniz got there first—Newton didn’t copy. He came up with it independently.

Spontaneity. You can’t fully plan a creative act. If you knew exactly what you were going to make and exactly how to make it before you started, then you wouldn’t need to be creative. Creative insights often feel like they come out of nowhere—“Eureka!” moments.

Agency. This is the one that rules out snowflakes and sunsets. To be creative, something has to be made by an agent—someone who intends to make it. If you accidentally make a cool pattern while snowboarding and never even notice, you didn’t create it.

Can You Learn to Be Creative?

Some famous thinkers said no. The poet Edward Young (1700s) thought creativity was like a vegetable—it grows naturally from genius, and learning only gets in the way. Immanuel Kant said genius “cannot be communicated” and “dies with him.”

But Berys Gaut argues this is wrong for a simple reason: plenty of people have learned to be more creative. Creative writing manuals exist. Math teachers teach problem-solving heuristics (rules of thumb like “try a special case” or “draw a picture”). These aren’t rigid algorithms that kill creativity; they’re flexible strategies that leave room for judgment and choice.

The key difference is between an algorithm (a step-by-step recipe that guarantees the result) and a heuristic (a guideline that helps but doesn’t control everything). Following algorithms prevents creativity. Following heuristics can actually help it.

Can Science Explain Creativity?

For a long time, people thought creativity was mysterious and could never be explained by science. Plato said poets were “possessed” by divine madness—the gods spoke through them, so there was nothing scientific to explain. Later thinkers like Kant and Schopenhauer kept the mystery, saying genius doesn’t follow rules and can’t be taught.

But modern psychology takes a different approach. Researchers have found that creativity involves several stages: preparation (years of learning and practice), generation (producing new ideas, often unconsciously), insight (the “aha!” moment), evaluation (deciding which ideas are worth keeping), and externalization (actually making the thing).

Brain scans show that when people have creative insights, specific patterns of activity occur—a burst of high-frequency brain waves over the right temporal lobe. Neuroscientists have identified a “default mode network” that’s active when you’re daydreaming or letting your mind wander, and this seems to be important for generating new ideas.

None of this explains creativity completely, but it shows it’s not magic. It’s something real that brains do, and we can study it.

The Biggest Question Yet: Can Computers Be Creative?

If creativity is something brains do, could a computer do it too?

Some computers already produce things that look creative. There’s a program called AARON that makes paintings displayed in museums. Another called EMI composes music that sounds like Bach or Mozart. DALL•E and Midjourney create images from text descriptions. These systems produce things that are new and often valuable. If you didn’t know a computer made them, you might think a human did.

But are they really creative? It depends on which process requirements you accept.

Consider AlphaGo, the program that defeated the world champion at the ancient game of Go. AlphaGo taught itself by playing millions of games against itself. Its moves were surprising—even the best human players didn’t see them coming. It wasn’t just following pre-programmed rules; it was learning and adapting. Philosopher Marta Halina argues that AlphaGo shows originality and spontaneity.

But here’s the sticking point: does AlphaGo have agency? Does it “give a damn” about whether it wins? Most people would say no. The credit for AlphaGo’s achievements goes to its programmers, not to AlphaGo itself. Praise and blame don’t apply to computers the way they apply to people.

So the question of whether computers can be genuinely creative comes down to whether agency is essential to creativity. If it is, computers aren’t truly creative yet—and maybe never will be. If it’s not, then we might already have artificial creators among us.

Where This Leaves Us

Philosophers still argue about all of this. They disagree about whether value is required, whether agency is necessary, whether computers can qualify. But they agree on one thing: creativity is puzzling, and worth thinking hard about.

The next time someone calls something “creative,” you might ask: New in what way? Valuable according to whom? Was there a real person behind it, intending to make it? And would we still call it creative if we found out the answer was no?

Key Terms

Term	What it does in this debate
Psychological novelty	New to the person who creates it, even if someone else already did it
Historical novelty	New in all of human history
Standard definition	The common view that creativity = new + valuable
Agency	The idea that only beings who can intend and be responsible can be creative
Heuristic	A flexible rule of thumb that can help creativity, unlike a rigid algorithm
Insight	The “aha!” moment when a creative idea suddenly appears in consciousness
Default mode network	A brain system active during daydreaming that seems important for generating ideas

Key People

• Plato (ancient Greek philosopher) — Thought poets were possessed by divine madness and couldn’t explain their own creativity
• Immanuel Kant (1700s German philosopher) — Said genius is an innate natural capacity that can’t be learned or taught
• Margaret Boden (contemporary British philosopher and cognitive scientist) — Argued there are three types of creativity (combinatorial, exploratory, transformational)
• Berys Gaut (contemporary British philosopher) — Argues creativity can be learned through heuristics, and that agency is required for creativity
• Maria Kronfeldner (contemporary German philosopher) — Argues creativity requires originality (not copying) and spontaneity (not mechanical procedure)
• Ada Lovelace (1800s English mathematician) — Pioneering computer programmer who said machines can never originate anything

Things to Think About

1. If a computer program writes a poem that moves people to tears, is that poem creative? Does it matter whether the computer “understands” what it’s doing?

2. You come up with an idea for a story, then find out your friend had the exact same idea yesterday. Is your idea still creative? What if you find out someone in ancient Greece already wrote that story two thousand years ago?

3. A student carefully copies a famous painting, but adds one small change that makes it subtly different and interesting. Is that creative? What if the change is an accident—they just slipped with the brush?

4. If scientists could fully explain how creativity works in the brain—down to which neurons fire and when—would that make creativity less special? Or is understanding something different from diminishing it?

Where This Shows Up

• In school: When teachers say “be creative” on an assignment but also give rubrics and guidelines—are those helping or hurting?
• In art and music: Debates about AI-generated art, and questions about who “really” created it
• In science and technology: Patent law has to decide what counts as a genuine new invention versus an obvious extension of existing ideas
• In your own life: Every time you have to solve a problem in a new way, or make something that didn’t exist before, you’re wrestling with these same questions