A prolegomenon to a semiotic theory of creativity

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate creativity in a semiotic perspective and encourage researchers of the engineering community to a broad discussion of the creative process. After an introduction to the modern study of creativity, we argue that although semiotics is often seen as opposed to cognitive science, these two different ways of approaching creativity phenomena are complementary. We then show that the creative process can generally be described in terms of sing systems and morphisms that allow for formal and unambiguous interpretation of both semiotic and cognitive aspects in development of conceptual spaces. Fundamental laws of creativity dynamics are discussed, and several illustrative examples from engineering and science are given.