At this point, a familiar objection usually appears.
If behaviour is constrained by value, shaped by ecology, and actualised from an already-structured space of possibilities, then how can anything genuinely new ever occur?
Isn’t novelty the signature of creativity, insight, or imagination?
This post answers no.
Novelty does not require creativity.
The intuition we need to resist
We are strongly inclined to think that new behaviour must be invented.
In human life, novelty often is:
imagined,
planned,
deliberately produced.
This makes it tempting to project the same structure onto animals.
But once again, this intuition mistakes a human mode of novelty for novelty as such.
What novelty actually consists in
Novelty is not the appearance of something uncaused or unconstrained.
It is the actualisation of a possibility that has not previously been taken.
Nothing about this requires foresight or invention.
It requires only that:
the space of possibilities be rich,
the constraints be dynamic,
and the system be sensitive to perturbation.
Why constraint enables novelty
Constraint is often thought to limit behaviour.
In fact, constraint differentiates behaviour.
By ruling out vast regions of possibility, constraints:
sharpen viable trajectories,
stabilise some coordinations,
and make others newly accessible when conditions shift.
Novelty appears when the constraint landscape changes.
Perturbation as opportunity
Animals live in worlds that are constantly perturbed:
weather shifts,
surfaces deform,
conspecifics behave unexpectedly,
bodies age and tire.
These perturbations do not require interpretation.
They reshape the space of what can happen next.
When a new trajectory becomes viable and is actualised, novelty occurs.
Exploration without insight
Many animals exhibit exploratory behaviour.
This is often misdescribed as curiosity or problem-solving.
But exploration need not involve goals or hypotheses.
It can be understood as:
movement through a space of possibilities,
under value-driven constraints,
with feedback stabilising what works.
New behaviour need not be sought.
It can simply be selected into actuality.
Learning revisited
Learning is where novelty accumulates.
But what accumulates is not knowledge.
What accumulates is:
reshaped constraint structure,
altered sensitivity to perturbation,
stabilised new coordinations.
Once again, novelty is conserved without creativity.
Why this feels unsatisfying
For human readers, this account can feel deflationary.
The discomfort arises because we are accustomed to equating novelty with meaning.
Biological systems do not share that equation.
They do not need to understand novelty in order to enact it.
Novelty as consequence, not achievement
From this perspective, novelty is not an accomplishment.
It is a consequence of:
rich coupling,
dynamic constraint,
and ongoing actualisation.
Animals do not create novelty.
They participate in systems where novelty is unavoidable.
The next turn
We are now in a position to see why animal behaviour so persistently confounds us.
We keep looking for intelligence, creativity, or meaning.
What we find instead is something quieter and more powerful:
competence without meaning.
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