Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law–and–order alternatives. (Paul Feyerabend)

The idea of the genius, the mad scientist, the enlightened person – often times displaced from society – who has the most interesting and creative ideas from bolts of lightning of genius is consolidated in popular culture, whether in films, comics or in science fiction books. In the 1980s, the film “Back to the Future” (1980) marked a generation as it chronicles the adventures of the teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and his friend, the eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd), who brilliantly transforms a DeLorean car into a time-capsule powered by plutonium stolen from Lebanese terrorists. It is not necessary to tell the plot to the new generations that have not watched it yet, but rather to emphasize the character of the genius who always has solutions for all situations, almost always involving high technology.Footnote 1

Recently, the cartoon “Rick and Morty” – whose first season was in 2013 – once again featured a duo formed by a mad, and in this case fairly cynical, scientist (Rick) and his gullible teenage grandson (Morty). The two embark on adventures that unfold on different planets, breaking interdimensional barriers. The series originated as an animated spoof of the “Back to the Future” franchise, and has been acclaimed by both critics and the public. Rick takes to extremes the figure of the brilliant mind, who stands out without making any apparent type of intellectual effort and who always has at his disposal a vast set of tools and theories ready to be put into action. It is interesting to point out that in addition to all that, Rick is an alcoholic who is constantly drunk.

In all these cases, and in many others found in popular culture, emphasis is given to the idea of the hero with razor-sharp intelligence, always accompanied by a high level of creativity that defies any kind of logical pattern or law, accentuating a feature of popular beliefs: That creativity is a wild, lawless territory that few professions or people, including artists in general and scientists, can fathom out. This is the point I want to address in this text: Is creativity something that really evades logic? Is there something that characterizes, in logical terms, what we call creative genius? To shed some light on these questions, starting with these wonderful characters from the world of fiction and popular culture, I resort to some ideas from the broad theoretical framework of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914).

Perhaps, in popular imagination, Peirce could be confused with these eccentric geniuses from the films. Living his last days practically as a recluse in Milford, a small town of Pennsylvania, our philosopher was the son of Benjamin Peirce, an important professor at Harvard and the most respected North American mathematician of his time. The Peirce family was well connected in the academic and scientific circles, and Charles grew up in an environment surrounded by esteemed intellectuals, having been, since childhood, considered a prodigy in the scientific and philosophical fields, and being even more brilliant in mathematics than his father.

Although during his lifetime Peirce counted among his friends and admirers philosophers, mathematicians and important scientists such as William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey and Ernst Schröder, it is only after his death that his work has been recognized and even nowadays most of his more than 90,000 manuscripts remain unpublished. After a short period (1879–1884) as part-time lecturer in logic at Johns Hopkins University, Peirce retired prematurely and forcibly in 1891 from the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, where he was responsible for experiments involving gravity. Failing to get another regular job, he devoted the rest of his life to writing incessantly. In the late nineteenth century he set about trying to publish his philosophy program and mathematical and logical findings, but he was unable to muster any support to complete such a task.

Despite all the setbacks, Peirce left an impressive range of works, covering different fields such as logic, mathematics, physics, astronomy, geodesy, metrology, linguistics, philology, history and psychology. Over 20 years after his death, and only after the Harvard Philosophy Department released a small collection of his articles, did scholars begin to realize the importance and depth of his thought:

By 1936 Alfred North Whitehead would describe America as the developing centre of worthwhile philosophy, and identify Charles Sanders Peirce and William James as the founders of the American renaissance: ‘Of these men,’ Whitehead said, ‘W.J. is the analogue to Plato, and C.P. to Aristotle (EP2, xx).

Darwin’s influence on Peirce’s thought is remarkable, since the latter considered that the laws of nature are not absolute, but evolutionary, hence the statistical nature of these laws. According to Peirce, scientific principles, in turn, do not end up as strict formulas, but are always provisional, in the sense of being subject to continuous change.

This is an aspect that will act as a hook to explain the phenomena involved in creativity based on Peircean conceptions, since creativity can only exist in environments where there is some kind of uncertainty, where there is room for change. Creativity finds its basis, for Peirce, in a type of reasoning that he calls abductive, characterized by a kind of inference that introduces new elements to the already existing arguments. Creative mental actions do not spring up out of nowhere, from a vacuum that lets the inventiveness unfurl, but are governed by laws of a logical order, in which abductive reasoning is present.

From this perspective, creative mental actions originate from thought connections conducted through the insertion of new ideas that had not previously been related to this reasoning. Creativity is thenceforth conceived as a syntactic logic that creates unique syntaxes with elements that already existed, giving rise to new semantics, new ideas, new forms and formulas, a process that expands our already structured sets of beliefs. For Peirce (CP 1.383), there is an inner compulsion that leads the mind to unite disparate ideas, with the intention of achieving a greater intelligibility of reality through the connections of ideas executed in the mind. Thus, the author states: “The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly different from that of the scientific man.” (CP 1.383).

Thus, the first observation to be remembered is: The concept of creativity for Pierce is associated with a specific type of logical reasoning, called abductive. To understand the logical nature of abductive reasoning, it must be understood as a kind of inference, or the controlled adoption of a belief, because of some other knowledge (CP 2.442). The structure of creative reasoning is based on abduction. The abductive process is set in motion following the perception of anomalies, surprises and questionings regarding what is already known, triggering the search and creation of hypotheses that may solve the problems in question. The need for a repertoire for creativity to emerge becomes ever clearer, as prior knowledge is needed for the advent of new situations.

In “Lawnmower Dog”, the second episode of the first season of the series “Rick and Morty”, Rick, the creative genius, comes up with a device that allows the intelligence of the family dog, Snuffles, to be augmented. The problem that triggers the creative process is simple: Snuffles, whose canine intelligence seems to be limited, constantly widdles on the family’s living room carpet, which infuriates Jerry, Morty’s father and Rick’s son-in-law. The creative device forged by Rick to solve the problem makes Snuffle so clever that he not only stops peeing on the carpet but also develops high cognitive abilities, such as the ability to communicate using human languages, leading him to lead an entire canine revolution, which creates new problems that need to be solved creatively. This episode demonstrates the mutability of an established belief, modified by creative processes that arise from problems to be solved. It also indicates the constant degree of dissatisfaction that characterizes creative minds, always leading them to encounter problems to be solved. The only way to completely eliminate abduction would be to create an absolutely perfect universe, where everything would be in absolute order. Obviously, such a need is more illusory than the adventures experienced by Rick and Morty or by Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, as such a mythical and perfect universe would mean the end of the process of semiosisFootnote 2 and, consequently, creative processes would become needless, because our interpretation would accord in all respects with the objectively determinate character of this ideal universe (Parker 1998, 221). Technically speaking, in this flawless scenario we would have a fully comprehension of every single aspect of the universe, i.e., our minds would become what Peirce calls a “final interpretant” (EP2, 496).

Peirce says that when something we believe in – which he calls “belief” – is embraced as true, this something turns into a habit, a source of reliability determined by its predictive nature, as what we can expect from an acquired habit is for its behaviour to be predictable. The mind is a dynamic system whose main activity is the production of habits. Beliefs are strongly consolidated habits: “For belief, while it lasts, is a strong habit, and as such, forces the man to believe until some surprise breaks up the habit” (CP 5.524).

It is at the very moment that a behavioural habit begins to reveal insecurities, alterations in its known pattern due to the resistances that reality imposes on it, that an opening for creative opportunities arises. Doubts begin to crop up regarding the validity of such behaviour as it is no longer predictable. The feeling of surprise produced by the perception of an anomaly is the first step of abductive reasoning, which stimulates the mind to initiate an investigation process until these anomalies disappear, making way for new beliefs.

When acquiring and establishing a new set of beliefs, a dynamic movement begins, one of adjustment and expansion of pre-existing concepts, articulating the three logical inferences described by Peirce: the already familiar abduction, deduction and induction. Although I have focused solely on abduction in this introductory text, it is important to mention that these three modes of reasoning enable us to think in a structurally logical and formal manner. Abduction generates hypotheses which must be justified and tested in the development of the two other modalities of reasoning.

For Peirce, the composition of reasoning’s cognitive structure is not static, but rather formed by layers of processes that gradually gather, forming a network that relates the inferences of abductive reasoning to empirical conditions, in other words, to induction, the act of being accustomed to rules, and to deduction, the exercise of predicting and controlling external conditions, such as nature.

The process of experimenting creatively, that is, abductively, forms the logical basis of any rational process, since whenever one acts in a rational way, one acts according to a conviction that is guaranteed by an experimental phenomenon (CP 7.337). The creation of new convictions and new knowledge starts with abductive reasoning, which triggers experimentation processes that test new conditions that may or may not become a reality. Among the three types of logical inference already mentioned, the abductive is the most original, but also the most likely to fail, but nevertheless, it is the only one capable of generating new hypotheses. Because it is fallible, it is the kind of logic always popularly associated with genius, with what is not yet established, to creativity, what is to come. As it is something new, abductive inference cannot guarantee its validity as a general law of behaviour, being only a logical method that guides the mind in its attempt to rid itself of doubts. Peirce states that abduction’s characteristics are distinct from the other two types of inference in that it is not based on prior knowledge, but rather on an experimental process.

Abduction is, therefore, the form that rational thought takes when, for example, it begins the study of a new scientific field that has not been previously addressed or of which we have little knowledge. According to the author, “all the ideas of science come to it by the way of abduction. Abduction consists in studying facts and devising a theory to explain them.” (CP 5.145). This type of reasoning is also essential for activities linked to art.

Obviously creative processes can lead to disastrous results if they are not well founded and put to the test by deduction, establishing themselves as inductive belief. In “Rick Potion #9”, the sixth episode of the first season of “Rick and Morty,” the abduction process that motivates Rick to create a love potion requested by Morty, the purpose of which would be to make Jessica, his crush, reciprocate Morty’s love for her, makes the whole of humanity fall in love with Morty. Trying to reverse this problem, Rick creates a disastrous sequence of new potions whose effects spread like viruses and lead to the population having genetic mutations worthy of those in the films of David Cronenberg, the film director, and thus being dubbed “ Cronenbergs”. Rick’s solution is no less creative: Unable to fix the genetic disaster his potions have created, Rick finds another dimension where he and Marty have succeeded in creating an antidote to the viral potion. But this solution is still not enough, because how can this reality host, at the same time, two distinct pairs of “Rick and Morty”? Well, Justin Roiland, the episode’s also highly creative screenwriter, finds a solution to this space-time problem, which I will not reveal here so as to not further spoil the surprise that the episode presents to readers who have not yet watched it.

Returning to our philosophical path, the kind of reasoning that we find in the sciences begins with the creative invention of hypotheses – abductive reasoning – that must be put to the test by examining and reviewing the consequences that it can engender in relation to the reality of the facts. This dynamic encompasses all three types of reasoning. The deductive argument gives rise to suggestions that revolve around what something should be, induction deals with what something currently is, while abduction pertains to what something can be, free from any other hypothesis or judgment.

Peirce presents abductive reasoning as the sole logical operation capable of introducing new ideas, explaining that the mind’s creative capacity springs neither from nothing nor from an innate ability, but rather from this cognitive structure pointed out by the philosopher (CP 5.171). It is important to emphasize that creativity, this mental faculty that is based on abductive reasoning, is linked to the creation, change and expansion of a set of beliefs that form habits. The creative process is triggered when a form of creative mind – for example human – is confronted with a problem, causing surprises and uncertainties that initiate the abductive process, which will select possible hypotheses to solve the problems in question.

As a conclusion to this brief introductory text to a subject of the degree of complexity involved in the logical mechanisms governing creative processes, it can be stated that, according to Peirce, creativity is a logical mental property that guides the expansion of our beliefs. Far from being a magical attribute that resides in some unknown place and is invoked by crazy scientists and artists, keepers of the words that awaken the genius of creativity, the creative process is a logical mental attribute that is triggered whenever a problem needs to be resolved or some kind of order needs to be re-established. Creativity is therefore an attribute of all and any kind of mind, and not just that of our heroes or anti-heroes, found in the most diverse products of popular culture. Peirce extensively analysed these logical attributes that govern creativity, and his writings – especially those found in the two books of the series “The Essential Peirce” (EP) and in the famous “Collected Papers” (CP) – are a rich source for those who wish to study creative mechanisms.