ABSTRACT
Creativity is hard to explain, like the weather. As science has made progress with the latter, it will make progress with the former as well. Complexity is a practical, transient obstacle, not an in-principle one. This chapter directly criticizes only the obscurantist concept of creativity. The results, however, shall cast doubt on the exceptionalist concept too. The chapter defends two claims to demystify creativity: the claim that creativity cannot be explained at all wrongly identifies creativity with what one call metaphysical freedom; and the Darwinian approach to creativity, a prominent naturalistic account of creativity, fails to give an explanation of creativity because it confuses description with giving an explanation of the respective phenomenon. Finally, the chapter talks about the philosophical status of and differences in explanations available in contemporary cognitive science. Some theorists in creativity research have given up searching for an extraordinary process underlying creativity.
