Liane Gabora is a professor of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan. She is known for her theory of the "Origin of the modern mind through conceptual closure," which built on her earlier work on "Autocatalytic closure in a cognitive system: A tentative scenario for the origin of culture."

Career

Gabora has contributed to the study of

cultural evolution Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation ...

and evolution of societies, focusing on the role of personal creativity, as opposed to

memetic Memetics is a theory of the evolution of culture based on Darwinian principles with the meme as the unit of culture. The term "meme" was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', to illustrate the principle that he ...

imitation or instruction, in differentiating modern human from prior

hominid The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); '' Gorilla'' (the ...

or modern ape culture. In particular, she seems to follow

feminist economists Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers include academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitio ...

and green economists in making a distinction between creative "enterprise", invention, art or "

individual capital Individual capital, the economic view of talent, comprises inalienable or personal traits of persons, tied to their bodies and available only through their own free will, such as skill, creativity, enterprise, courage, capacity for moral example ...

" and imitative "

meme A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that Mimesis, spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying c ...

", rule, social category or "instructional capital". Gabora's views contrasts with that of

memetics Memetics is a theory of the evolution of culture based on Darwinian principles with the meme as the unit of culture. The term "meme" was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book '' The Selfish Gene'', to illustrate the principle that h ...

and of the strongest

social capital Social capital is a concept used in sociology and economics to define networks of relationships which are productive towards advancing the goals of individuals and groups. It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interper ...

theorists (e.g.

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

or Paul Adler) in that she seems to see social signals or labels as markers of trust invested in individual and instructional complexes, rather than as first class actors in themselves. Some of her more recent work is controversial in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

and goes against the particle physics foundation ontology. "Honing Theory: A Complex Systems Framework for Creativity" is her publication, which suggests that culture evolves through social interaction and exchange between minds that self-organise and modify based on their environment. Creativity arises due to the possibility of uncertainty and disorder, resulting in arousal and a process of novelty and originality until the arousal dissipates. This in turn feeds the cultural norm which in turn feeds further creativity resulting in part the evolution of culture.

Works

*Gabora, L. (1997) ''The origin and evolution of culture and creativity''. Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission, 1(1). *Gabora, L. (1995) ''Meme and variations: A computer model of cultural evolution''. In (L. Nadel & D. Stein, Eds.) 1993 Lectures in Complex Systems. Addison-Wesley. *Gabora, L. & Aerts, D. (2002) ''Contextualizing concepts''. Proceedings of the 15th International FLAIRS Conference (Special Track 'Categorization and Concept Representation: Models and Implications'), Pensacola Beach FL, May 14–17, American Association for Artificial Intelligence. *Gabora, L. (2002) ''The beer can theory of creativity''. In (P. Bentley & D. Corne, Eds.) Creative Evolutionary Systems. Morgan Kaufmann. *Aerts, D., Aerts, S., Broekaert, J., & Gabora, L. (2000) ''The violation of Bell inequalities in the macroworld''. Foundations of Physics, 30 (9). uant-ph/0007041 *Gabora, L. (2010). Revenge of the 'neurds': Characterizing creative thought in terms of the structure and dynamics of human memory. Creativity Research Journal, 22(1), 1-13. *Gabora, L. (2017). Honing theory: A complex systems framework for creativity. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 21(1), 35–88.

References

External links

Liane Gabora's previous website at Free University of Brussels (VUB)Liane Gabora's Current WebSite at University of British Columbia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gabora, Liane Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century Canadian psychologists Academic staff of the University of British Columbia Okanagan