The Becoming of Possibility: 6 Creativity and the Emergence of the New

If technology accelerates possibility, creativity explains how genuinely new possibilities appear at all.

Creativity is usually treated as an inner capacity: imagination, inspiration, talent, genius. Novelty, on this view, originates inside minds and is then expressed outwardly. From a relational ontology perspective, this picture is not just misleading — it actively obscures how novelty actually arises.

Creativity does not come from inside us.

Creativity happens to systems.

The Problem of Novelty

Novelty poses a genuine philosophical problem.

If everything is constrained by prior structures — biological, social, linguistic, technological — where does anything new come from? How does the future avoid being a mere rearrangement of the past?

The answer is not inner invention. It is relational recombination under constraint.

Creativity as Recombination

Nothing appears from nothing.

What we call creativity arises when existing relational patterns are brought into contact in ways that have not previously stabilised. New configurations become possible when:

• previously separate domains interact

• constraints shift or loosen

• technologies alter the speed or scale of coordination

• value systems reweight what is worth pursuing

The “new” is not created ex nihilo. It emerges when the space of possibility is reconfigured.

The Event of Creativity

Creativity is not a trait that some people possess and others lack. It is an event that occurs when conditions align.

A creative event is marked by:

• the appearance of a configuration that was not previously available

• immediate recognisability after the fact

• rapid uptake, imitation, or resistance

• retrospective narratives of origin

Crucially, the event precedes the explanation. We recognise novelty after it happens, not before.

Why Novelty Is Recognisable

A paradox often goes unnoticed: if something is truly new, how do we recognise it at all?

We recognise novelty not because it matches an internal image, but because it fits — it connects, resonates, solves, provokes, or reorients. Novelty is legible because it reconfigures existing relations rather than ignoring them.

A new idea works because it is constrained, not because it is free.

The Myth of the Creative Genius

The myth of the creative genius locates creativity inside exceptional individuals. This narrative is emotionally appealing — and empirically false.

Creative breakthroughs reliably coincide with:

• dense networks of exchange

• shared tools and techniques

• prior failed attempts

• institutional support or pressure

• technological affordances

The “genius” is typically the visible node where multiple trajectories converge. Attribution follows visibility, not causation.

This does not diminish human contribution. It relocates it.

Distributed Creativity

Creativity is distributed across:

• practices

• materials

• languages

• technologies

• communities

• historical moments

No single element is sufficient. Remove the surrounding conditions, and the same person will not produce the same novelty.

Creativity belongs to the system, not the individual.

Aphantasia and the Myth of Imagination

This perspective returns us neatly to aphantasia.

If creativity depended on vivid inner imagery, those without a “mind’s eye” would be systematically disadvantaged. The evidence suggests otherwise. People with aphantasia create, innovate, and imagine — just not through interior pictures.

This is not surprising once imagination is understood correctly.

Imagination is not inner cinema. It is the capacity to navigate possibility using whatever relational resources are available — linguistic, motor, affective, diagrammatic, social.

Creativity does not require images. It requires access to patterns.

Imagination Without Interiors

What imagination actually does is explore counterfactuals: what could happen if relations were reconfigured?

This exploration is often external:

• sketches

• models

• gestures

• conversations

• prototypes

• metaphors

The mind is not a workshop. The world is.

Creativity and Constraint

One final misconception must be dropped: that creativity thrives in the absence of constraint.

In practice, creativity requires constraint. Without resistance, nothing stabilises long enough to count as new. Constraint sharpens selection, not suppresses invention.

The most generative systems are not the freest, but the most productively constrained.

The Cut Ahead

If creativity is the emergence of new possibilities within constrained systems, then the future is not something we predict or choose — it is something that forms through interaction.

To understand this properly, we must confront the status of the future itself.

The next post will therefore be:

The Future as an Open Field, Not a Destination.