Physics of Life Reviews 7 (2010) 186187

www.elsevier.com/locate/plrev

Comment

BVSR as an abstract schema for universal selection theory

Comment on Creative thought as blind variation and
selective-retention: Combinatorial models of exceptional creativity
by Dean Keith Simonton, this issue
Thomas Nickles 1
Philosophy Department, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA
Received 30 April 2010; accepted 3 May 2010
Available online 4 May 2010
Communicated by L. Perlovsky

Keywords: Universal selection theory; Substrate neutrality; Evolution; Creativity

The remarkably large domain of application of universal selection theory as articulated by Donald Campbell and
others derives from the generality of the BVSR (blind variation plus selective retention) schema. That generality has
been both a blessing and a curse, both bad news and good news. The bad news is that the abstract formulation is too
vague and general to tell us much about any particular system. As Dean Simonton [1] points out in his excellent review
article, we need to put some concrete flesh on the abstract skeleton, in his case when dealing with human creativity.
Progress requires translating the BVSR approach into precise, testable models and mechanisms. Achieving progress
of this sort is never an easy task. His combinatorial models are a good start.
And this brings me to the good news. Darwin was, in an odd sort of way, fortunate to be ignorant of the mechanisms
of variation and hereditary transmission. (He possessed empirical evidence for their existence.) His admitted ignorance
forced him to state the core of his theory of descent with modification in an abstract manner, treating those two
mechanisms as black boxes. He claimed to understand only the middle mechanism of natural selection. Thus,
although his subject matter was biological evolution, Darwin himself came close to formulating the core mechanism
in a superordinate way, to use Simontons term, or in a substrate neutral manner, to use Dan Dennetts term. As a
result, Darwins theory has held up surprisingly well through 150 years of rapid progress in biology. Moreoverand
this is truly joyous newsthe very generality of Darwins formulation invited attentive readers from William James
to Campbell, John Holland, Richard Dawkins, Dennett, and beyond to find many new biological applications of it
(as in the mammalian immune system)and nonbiological applications as well. So far computer scientists have been
most successful in this latter endeavor (genetic algorithms, evolutionary computation). Thousands of scientific and
engineering papers per year report using selectionist problem-solving methods.

DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.plrev.2010.02.002.

E-mail address: nickles@unr.edu.
1 Tel.: +1 775 784 6717, fax: +1 775 327 5024.

1571-0645/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2010.05.001
 T. Nickles / Physics of Life Reviews 7 (2010) 186187 187

Any system, living or nonliving, that combines these three mechanisms (variation, selection, transmission) in the
right sort of way, in a reasonably stable environment with selection pressures, will evolve! BVSR is not an intrin-
sically biological process. Rather, Darwins discovery of this process and its creative power (by which more design
creatively emerges from less) opened the door to a large domain of selectionist processes (as well as providing the key
to nonreductive emergence across many fields). Thus it is surprising that otherwise well-informed critics continue to
complain that non-Darwinian applications of selection theory fail to be exact analogues of Darwinian biology. Most
recently, Maria Kronfeldner [2] levels this irrelevant charge more than a dozen times. To be sure, selectionists do
claim that BVSR processes possess a similarity of structureindeed, an identity of structure at the abstract level.
That is precisely the point of general selection theory. And it may be that analogies with Darwins theory heuristically
motivate some investigators attempting to develop other applications, as in computer programming or (closer to Si-
montons human creativity theme) in meme theory. But the adequacy of the resulting model does not depend on such
an analogy.
Although Simonton is correct to say that more precise models of human creativity are needed to articulate the
universal selectionist paradigm for that interesting field, general selection theorists need make no apology for the lack
of specificity of the paradigm itself. And since it claims to account for all cases of adaptive fit (as Campbell says), a
great many of which will have domain-specific or substrate-specific BVSR processes not analogous to Darwins own,
it is hardly a fatal objection that this rapidly developing approach has not yet been fully spelled out for the zillions of
cases to which it potentially applies.

References

[1] Simonton DK. Creative thought as blind-variation and selective-retention: Combinatorial models of exceptional creativity. Physics of Life
Reviews 2010;7(2):15679, this issue.
[2] Kronfeldner ME. Darwinian blind hypothesis formation revisited. Synthese, in press.