Organic Creativity and the Physics Within is not a collection of single contributions but a full integration or better co-creation of knowledge and ideas put forth by a most diverse and top quality group of people. This effort was not “academics only.” Science profited largely from the experience of practitioners such as designers, artists, and entrepreneurs. It was not “professors only.” Fresh ideas came from students and novices alike. Due to the multitude of disciplines – from mathematical physics to arts, history, and philosophy – there were ample opportunities for creativity to transpire and so it did.


The contribution is unique in that it explicitly connects the creativity found in physical nature to the creativity found in organisms, in particular, humans. The tenets of the theory are three-fold: Creativity is combinatory, focused on the complementary of features, and susceptible to fractal emergence. The beauty of this approach is that it leaves room for playfulness and intuition but that the account is mathematical, including combinatorics, fuzzy logics, and fractal algorithms. The main difference between creativity in the physical world and human creativity is that the first is largely based on coincidence (‘serendipity’) and that humans can harness and accelerate that serendipity more efficiently through a deliberate and more systematic search of the solution space.


The book is for scholarly and practical use. It is a brief introduction and first push into a transdisciplinary view on creativity. Because it was written by academics, artists, students, and practitioners, it is fit for academics, artists, students, and practitioners. The style is accessible but the contents are bewildering.
The authors joined their names in a pseudonym: Mea M. M. Lowcre. This stands for Lorentz Workshop on Creativity: Meaning, Mechanisms, Models, the heading under which we gathered at Leiden University.