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The Production of Novelty 67

Collective

Individual

Mind

The unconscious

Selective activation Conscious evaluation
Neural reflection and Perception of action outcomes Communication with other individuals
patterns

Insight: transition of a
knowledge element into
consciousness

Figure 3.2. The four envelopes of selection in generate-and-test. each envelope con-
tains a generator and an evaluator, which together constitute the generator for the next
envelope.

conscious processes of combination and selection. Such a nested generate-and-
test mechanism is more powerful than a single-level mechanism; see Figure 3.2.
at each level, the combination process works with elements that have already
been subject to selection at the lower levels. evaluation is carried out by succes-
sively more encompassing envelopes of selectivity: in the first envelope, uncon-
scious ideas pass into consciousness as a function of hard-to-describe mental
filters like beauty, stability, interestingness and so on; in the second envelope,
new conceptual combinations are evaluated via conscious reflection; and in the
third envelope, a new thought is articulated into a discourse, prototype, sketch
or other type of product that is subject to evaluation by the judgments of peers
or teammates and, when relevant, by its material consequences.
The articulations of the combination principle proposed by Poincaré, by
Simonton, and by Finke, Smith and Ward share some similarities, but they also
differ from one another in some respects; see table 3.1 for a comparison. This
type of theory answers two of the four creativity questions: Novelty is possible
because cognitive elements can be combined in for all practical purposes infi-
nitely many different ways. Creative thinking differs from noncreative think-
ing in that the former results in novel cognitive combinations while the latter
works with previously produced combinations.