The Patterning Instinct and Creativity
Image created by the author using the Stable Diffusion text-to-image generation tool.
The world is a confusing and turbulent place, but we make sense of it by finding order. We notice the regular cycles of day and night, the waxing and waning of the moon and tides, and the recurrence of the seasons. We look for similarity, predictability, regularity . . . We try to break down the complex profusion of nature into simple rules, to find order among what might at first look like chaos. This makes us all pattern seekers.
— Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does.
Pattern-seeking has been on my mind, partly because it plays a significant role in generative AI, which I’ve also been thinking and writing about. However, I have been reflecting on the impact of patterns on the creative process for longer than I’ve been thinking and writing about generative AI. This is because patterns are also crucial in the creation and appreciation of art.
The phrase "the patterning instinct" refers to our innate tendency to identify patterns, connections, and relationships in the world around us.* This urge to find order in what seems like chaos has played an important role in human evolution by enabling us to:
Learn to adapt to our environment more effectively.
Develop language and communication skills.
Create social structures and cultural systems.
Understand complex systems and phenomena.
Solve problems and innovate new technologies.
Discover abstract principles and scientific theories.
Develop aesthetic values, create artistic works and traditions, and appreciate a wide range of artistic experiences.
Artists often manipulate our instinct to create patterns by either satisfying our urge to establish order out of chaos or intentionally delaying and even thwarting our need to find and establish order. Some of the patterns that feel "natural" to us are inherited through the culture we grew up in. For instance, if you grew up in a Western culture, you would expect to see the horizon line in a landscape painting in the lower half of the canvas. Western cultures tend to value analytical and logical reasoning, and focus on individuals and the impacts of their actions. A low horizon line provides space on the canvas for the objects that are usually the focus of Western landscape paintings, allowing for the analysis of cause and effect.
On the other hand, if you grew up in an East Asian culture, you would expect to see the horizon line in the upper half of the canvas. East Asian cultures tend to promote holistic and dialectical reasoning, focusing on the effects of external events that are beyond our control. A high horizon line provides room for the contextual details that inform dialectical and holistic thinking.**
An artist can fulfill the expectations of his or her inherited aesthetic patterns or intentionally undermine them. For example, the landscape below by Richard Diebenkorn has a very high horizon line. Even though it’s a landscape, it doesn’t feel expansive because it defies our cultural expectations for a landscape. The focus isn’t on an object per se, but on the dialectical tension between the encroaching city buildings and the open fields.
Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape #1 (1963). Copyright The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.
In “Learning How to Un-See,” I wrote about how the brain processes images and introduced the seven primary principles of gestalt theory: symmetry and order, similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, the figure/ground principle, and synchrony. These principles “help us understand that we don’t just see with our eyes. What we see is shaped by the instinctual processes our mind uses to manage the visually rich and complex visual environment around us.” Diebenkorn consciously manipulates our physiological and cultural instincts to enable us to perceive a tension that’s only apparent when you switch perspectives, when you shift from focusing on a single foreground object to two background forces, the growing (and foreboding) tension between them—and the faultline that runs between the two vertical halves of the painting.
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
— Alfred North Whitehead (philosopher), Dialogues (1954).
Our patterning instinct is not only a byproduct of our cultural heritage but also an expression of our lived experience. Have you ever listened to a new piece of music and "heard" the next note of the composition in your head before it's even played? Or watched a movie and felt certain about what the next scene would be before the current scene ended? If so, you have experienced your patterning instinct making predictive guesses that are similar to those made by generative AI systems.
Both you and the AI system are predicting what comes next based on what you already know: you based on your inherited cultural expectations, learned knowledge, and lived experience, and the AI system based on its training. Your ability to form and create patterns is far more sophisticated than even the most advanced generative AI system. However, it’s interesting to note that patterning is such an important part of the way we comprehend and create that it’s the driving force behind one of our most important and advanced new technologies.
Patterns and Forms
As specific aesthetic patterns take hold in a culture, they often evolve into named forms (such as the sonnet) and genres (such as the mystery novel). A pattern becomes an established form (a mental model) when it meets a specific cultural need. For centuries, the sonnet was one of the dominant poetic forms in Western culture. The form originated in thirteenth-century Italy and was popularized in the fourteenth century by the Italian poet Francesco Petrach. His influential book, Il Canzionere (Song Book), is a collection of poems in praise of a woman named Laura. Most of the poems are about unrequited love—the speaker in the poem seeks, but never attains Laura’s affections. The form reached England in the 1530s through Sir Thomas Wyatt’s translations of Petrach’s sonnets and was quickly adopted.
Why did the sonnet form gain popularity, particularly in English? Apart from the widespread appeal of poems about unrequited love, the sonnet is a concise and adaptable framework that embodies Western culture's inclination towards logical and analytical thinking. In an English language sonnet, the most familiar patterns are the use of iambic pentameter and rhyme. However, the most crucial element of a sonnet is the "volta" (known as the "turn" in English), which necessitates a shift in the speaker's argument. Think of the turn as the "if-then" moment in a sonnet, where conditional logic is imposed on the speaker's thoughts, emotions, and observations. The turn can occur at various points in different forms of the sonnet, but it is the fundamental requirement of the form. The turn transforms the sonnet into a mental model.
The appeal of the sonnet may be related to the way its proportions mirror those of the human face, writes poet Peter Sacks:
Quite literally, we could add that the measured way in which many Renaissance sonnets about the loved face descend from eyes to mouth is closely matched by facial proportions as depicted in several contemporary works by Duürer, Leonardo, Holbein, Titian, and others—in which the ratio between the distances (1) from the top of the forehead across the eyes down to the tip of the nose and (2) from the tip of the nose across the mouth to the bottom of the chin, is that of eight to six.
— Peter Sacks, The Face of the Sonnet (from the anthology Green Thoughts, Green Shades: Essays by Contemporary Poets on the Early Modern Lyric).
Sacks adds “Without the image of the personal face the sonnet would be less equipped to generate its images of a mind behind the face; still more opposingly, it would not be as equipped to suggest the hidden depths of the heart.”
The sonnet form is incredibly durable. The poet Edward Hirsch has commented, “there must be something hardwired into its machinery—a heartbeat, a pulse—that keeps it breathing.” It’s not uncommon for poets to refer to various forms of poetry as “thinking machines.”*** Our established and enduring forms of expression are deeply intertwined with our strongest and longest-held cultural patterns of thought.
The Boundless Boundaries of Genre
When a particular form gains popularity and becomes widely imitated, it often evolves into a genre. By definition, genres possess a well-established set of conventions that are socially accepted and recognized. A significant aspect of engaging with a work within a specific genre lies in the gratification derived from discovering how the creator adheres to and/or challenges the genre's conventions. The emergence of genres is a natural reaction to our intrinsic need for structure and familiarity. They provide a framework for comprehending and classifying the stories that resonate with us.
Genre is a box, a set of boundaries, something the creative person can leverage against. The limits of the genre are the place where you can do your idiosyncratic work. To make change happen, the artist must bend one of those boundaries, one of those edges. Generic is a trap, but genre is a lever.
— Seth Godin, The Practice.
The creative process is often depicted as a free-flowing, unrestrained journey that allows artists to express themselves without any limitations. However, the value of resistance, in the form of working within established structures or forms, is well-recognized. Embracing constraints can not only encourage innovation but also guide creators towards the flow state—the ultimate state of creativity identified by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, in which "The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one . . . Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."
Choosing to adopt a set rules or the framework of a genre challenges you to invent innovative ways of conveying your ideas, push the boundaries of what’s deemed possible in the genre, and elevate your craft to new levels. The dynamic tension between fulfilling and subverting expectations fuels the growth of both the individual artist and the genre itself.
It is also essential to acknowledge the significant role genres play in the circulation of creative work. The process of discovering, distributing, and consuming a piece of work is significantly more efficient when it belongs to a specific genre. The marketplace mirrors our innate desire to categorize and optimize. While a creative work does not need to belong to a genre to achieve success, works that fit within an established channel often have an easier time navigating the marketplace.
Pattern Recognition
In his influential 1970 essay “A Way of Writing,”**** poet and teacher William Stafford said, “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them. That is, he does not draw on a reservoir; instead, he engages in an activity that brings to him a whole succession of unforeseen stories, poems, essays, plays, laws, philosophies, religions, or—but wait!” He goes on to describe his daily writing process, which is based on the “richness” he experienced when he first began writing, when “one thing would lead to another; the world would give and give.”
Every morning, he sits with a pen and paper, glances out the window, and waits. Stafford likens his process to fishing, to waiting for a nibble. When he does get a nibble (which usually doesn’t take long), he accepts anything that comes to mind. Then he waits for the next idea to surface, and accepts that thought with the belief that the second nibble is connected to the first, even if the connection isn’t immediately apparent. “If I let the process go on,” he writes, “things will occur to me that were not at all in my mind when I started. These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected. And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen.”
Stafford recognizes that his creative process, rooted in continuous openness, carries a certain risk: “I must be willing to fail.” He resolutely proceeds forward without judgment, acknowledging that others, and perhaps even he himself, will judge his work later. For the moment, the sole criterion he applies is, “it occurred to me.” At times, he notes, his writing develops coherence as he adds successive elements. Other times not. “But I do not insist on any of that; for I know that back of my activity there will be the coherence of my self, and that indulgence of my impulses will bring recurrent patterns and meanings again.” (Emphasis added.)
I began this essay by discussing the patterning instinct and its cultural implications, on the development of forms and genres. I would like to conclude by commenting on pattern recognition and its impact on your creative process and growth. Stafford’s creative process is anchored by two insights of profound pattern recognition. First, his recognition that his initial discovery process requires the removal of any formal constraints or expectations. And second, his absolute trust in the eventual coherence of his impulses, as well as the recurring patterns and meanings they reveal.
The recurring patterns in our inner lives provide a sense of coherence and continuity, shaping our creative processes and work. By recognizing these patterns, we also come to understand the interconnectedness of our own experiences. Our emotions, memories, and dreams are inextricably linked, forming a complex web of associations that influence our creativity. Identifying patterns in our lives not only fuels our creative drive but also assists us in making sense of our own existence. These recurring patterns reveal the evolving narratives shaping our lives, the themes we are developing consciously or unconsciously, and our self-limiting and self-empowering beliefs. Through this understanding, we come to know ourselves, our creative identities, and the possibilities that reside within our minds and souls.
Footnotes
* The phrase “the patterning instinct” is also the title of a book by Jeremy Lint on how culture shapes our values, and those values shape history (The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning).
** See “How High Is Your Horizon” (Psychology Today) for more on how Landscape drawings and paintings reflect cultural habits of thought.
***The poet William Carlos Willams wrote: "A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words." In her article “A Poem as a Machine”, poet Margaret Rhee elaborates on this idea.
**** William Stafford, “A Way of Writing” from his collection of essays Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer’s Vocation.