Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889
Vincent van Gogh, (1853-1890) The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Licensed via Adobe Stock; GiorgioMorara - stock.adobe.com
ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
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Can Evolutionary Processes Explain Human Creativity?

Episode
2062
With
Andrew McDiarmid
Guest(s)
Robert J. Marks
Duration
00:38:53
Download
Audio File (53.4 mb)
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On this ID The Future, we’re sharing a conversation that first aired on Mind Matters News, another podcast from the Discovery Institute that focuses on the intersection of artificial and natural intelligence. In this episode, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes engineer Dr. Eric Holloway and professor Robert J. Marks to discuss the information cost of creativity. The conversation is based on a chapter in the recent volume Minding the Brain, authored by Dr. Holloway and Marks.

Essentially, Holloway and Marks are addressing the following question: Can the marvels of human creativity, like novels, speeches, and ideas, really be explained by random processes and brain chemistry alone? As the two men explain, even allowing for the computational capacity of the entire universe (and a hypothetical multiverse!), the probability of randomly generating a short, meaningful phrase is astronomically low. This suggests that human creativity cannot be fully explained by natural, random processes, and may require a non-material or external source of information and guidance.

Join Flynn and his guests as they climb the metaphorical mountain of information to address the origins of human creativity!

We’re grateful to the Mind Matters News team for permission to share this conversation on ID The Future. Enjoy more episodes of Mind Matters News here or wherever you enjoy podcasts.

Dig Deeper

  • Learn more about the connection between human creativity and intelligent design: