Modes of Creativity Philosophical Perspectives 1st Edition Irving Singer 2024 Scribd Download

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 60

Get ebook downloads in full at ebookname.

com

Modes of Creativity Philosophical Perspectives 1st


Edition Irving Singer

https://ebookname.com/product/modes-of-creativity-
philosophical-perspectives-1st-edition-irving-singer/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookname.com


Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Three Philosophical Filmmakers Hitchcock Welles Renoir


Irving Singer Library Irving Singer

https://ebookname.com/product/three-philosophical-filmmakers-
hitchcock-welles-renoir-irving-singer-library-irving-singer/

Ingmar Bergman Cinematic Philosopher Reflections on His


Creativity 1st Edition Irving Singer

https://ebookname.com/product/ingmar-bergman-cinematic-
philosopher-reflections-on-his-creativity-1st-edition-irving-
singer/

Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity 1st Edition


Graham Oppy

https://ebookname.com/product/philosophical-perspectives-on-
infinity-1st-edition-graham-oppy/

Sauces Savoury and Sweet 1st Edition Michel Roux

https://ebookname.com/product/sauces-savoury-and-sweet-1st-
edition-michel-roux/
Investigations in Cognitive Grammar 1st Edition Ronald
W. Langacker

https://ebookname.com/product/investigations-in-cognitive-
grammar-1st-edition-ronald-w-langacker/

Gastrointestinal Imaging 1st Edition A. D. Levy

https://ebookname.com/product/gastrointestinal-imaging-1st-
edition-a-d-levy/

The Dental Diet Steven Lin

https://ebookname.com/product/the-dental-diet-steven-lin/

Energy statistics of nonOECD countries 2010 2010 ed.


Edition Oecd

https://ebookname.com/product/energy-statistics-of-nonoecd-
countries-2010-2010-ed-edition-oecd/

The Counseling Practicum and Internship Manual A


Resource for Graduate Counseling Students 1st Edition
Dr. Shannon Hodges Phd Lmhc Acs

https://ebookname.com/product/the-counseling-practicum-and-
internship-manual-a-resource-for-graduate-counseling-
students-1st-edition-dr-shannon-hodges-phd-lmhc-acs/
Service mining framework and application First Edition
Wei Lun ("

https://ebookname.com/product/service-mining-framework-and-
application-first-edition-wei-lun/
Modes of
Creativity
Books by Irving Singer

Modes of Creativity: Philosophical Perspectives


Mozart & Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas with a new preface,
The Irving Singer Library
Meaning in Life trilogy with new prefaces, The Irving Singer Library
The Nature of Love trilogy with new prefaces, The Irving Singer Library
Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up
Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film
Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity
Three Philosophical Filmmakers: Hitchcock, Welles, Renoir
Sex: A Philosophical Primer, expanded edition
Feeling and Imagination: The Vibrant Flux of Our Existence
Explorations in Love and Sex
Sex: A Philosophical Primer
George Santayana, Literary Philosopher
Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique
Meaning in Life:
The Creation of Value
The Pursuit of Love
The Harmony of Nature and Spirit
The Nature of Love:
Plato to Luther
Courtly and Romantic
The Modern World
Mozart & Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas
The Goals of Human Sexuality
Santayana’s Aesthetics
Essays in Literary Criticism by George Santayana (editor)
The Nature and Pursuit of Love: The Philosophy of Irving Singer (ed. David
Goicoechea)
Modes of
Creativity
Philosophical Perspectives

Irving Singer

The MIT Press


Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2011 Irving Singer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by
any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or
information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the
publisher.

For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_


[email protected]

This book was set in Palatino on InDesign by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Singer, Irving.
Modes of creativity : philosophical perspectives / Irving Singer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01492-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Philosophy 2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) I. Title.
B945.S6573M63 2011
128'.3—dc22 2010020603

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my grandson Theo in the hope that, long after he
learns how to read, he will read this book, and go
­beyond it
Contents

Preface ix

1 Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 1

2 The Creative Experience 27

3 The Creative Process 55

4 Three Myths of Artistic Creativity 77

5 Aesthetic Creativity 103

6 Creativity in Expression, Metaphor, Myth 135

7 The Prosaic and the Absurd in Their Creative Context 159

8 Creativity in Practice 187

9 Creativity in Science, Technology, and Mathematics 213

10 Creativity and Reality 241

Concluding Remarks 265


viii Contents

Appendix: On Creativity 271


Moreland Perkins

Notes 289

Index 301
Preface

This book is a sequel to my book Feeling and Imagination: The


Vibrant Flux of Our Existence, which itself developed out of my
earlier efforts in The Harmony of Nature and Spirit. As with most
of my writing, these works are attempts to deal with unre-
solved issues in relevant explorations of mine that preceded
them. The concept of creativity as I approach it in these
­chapters arose from my intervening ideas about imagination,
idealization, consummation, and the aesthetic as well as my
recurrent analyses of love, sex, and compassion. In one way or
another these all intersected with inchoate speculations of
mine about human affect in general. Only after having lived
through the prior investigations was my thinking sufficiently
advanced for me to undertake the further questionings in this
book.
The idea of creativity is nevertheless different from the
concepts with which I grappled in my other writing. In con-
trast to them, it has recurred in almost everything I have
­undertaken as a philosopher and student of human values. In
preparing the new prefaces that I recently wrote for the re-
printing of my trilogies on the nature of love and meaning in
life, I was struck by the many occasions on which I talk about
x Preface

creativity and the nature of what is or is not creative. I noticed


how often the contexts of my remarks yearned for greater
analysis and further insight, which I constantly seemed to shy
away from. In fact, at the time I was writing those books, the
subject was too difficult for me to do much of what I would
have liked to accomplish.
The subtitle of the first volume of Meaning in Life—The
­Creation of Value—was suggested to me by an astute and
­talented editor. I remember feeling at first that this title was
too grandiose, too daring and presumptive on my part. I
­finally concluded that it was just right for what that volume
tried to do. Everything in it centered around the way in which
human beings create the values by which they live. Since I
knew that more was needed to explain the creativity being
discussed and displayed, I could not escape the feeling that
what I had written was still inadequate.
In attempting to overcome that sentiment in subsequent
books and now in this one, I have intentionally avoided any
assurance that a rigorous definition of the relevant terminol-
ogy can truly elucidate this aspect of our existence. Eminent
theorists in psychology and the philosophy of science have
held out the assurance of finding an all-embracing formula-
tion, but in my opinion their theorizing is most profitable
when it issues into fruitful distinctions or empirical discover-
ies that are independent of any proffered definitions. The
­former is what still matters most to me.
I relish the remark of the poet A. E. Housman, who rejected
a request that he define the nature of poetry. As he put it, he
could not do so any more than a terrier could define a rat. In
my own writing as a whole, and above all in the current ven-
ture, I draw upon a methodology entailing concrete analyses
Preface xi

that seek to locate the meaning of a concept worthy of philo-


sophical attention by placing it within a range of relevant
­insights about experiences and human interests to which it
pertains. These are generally humanistic, literary, and, as it
were, anecdotal of human consciousness rather than being
conclusive or strictly scientific. My approach is pluralistic
rather than abstract, dogmatic, or putatively objective. With
respect to the varied and panoramic phenomena that I try to
explain, I am convinced that this kind of orientation can be
very useful for scientists as well as humanists.
In my pluralistic approach, I concentrate upon the diversity
of types of creativity and the alternate ways in which it appears
in our species, across and within all the arts and sciences, and
throughout the ordinary living of life as we know it. I offer a
gamut of reflections that amplify but do not seek to duplicate the
investigations that issue out of related studies in cognitive
­science or neurobiology or psychology. I wish to fortify their
thinking and discoveries about creativity by aligning them to
the aesthetic, affective, and phenomenological framework of
experiential behavior that permeates the human quest for
meaning.
At the same time I must confess that even in the later por-
tion of this book, including the pages on creativity in science,
mathematics, and technology, I bypass to some extent the ex-
cellent research that recent workers in those fields have begun
to do. From their own perspective, neurobiologists, for exam-
ple, have provided splendid studies that are largely empirical
but occasionally theoretical as well. In what I hope will be the
sequel to this book, I look forward to mining the philosophical
implications of their findings. I lay the groundwork for that
possible effort in my concluding remarks after chapter 10—
xii Preface

which itself demands further elaboration and development—


as well as in the notes that supplement the individual chapters,
together with the list of substantive references appended as a
note to this preface.1
Creativity is cultivated and even worshipped by human-
kind because it instigates, while also augmenting, productions
whose meaningfulness we cherish in themselves and in their
vast utility for attaining the good life and a properly examined
one. Within that framework, creativity belongs to a family of
interwoven responses that comprise imagination, originality,
inventiveness, and novelty in what we do or feel or believe. In
common parlance these are often presented as bolstering each
other. For instance, we speak of creative imagination, to which
nineteenth-century Romantic authors like Samuel Taylor
Coleridge devoted a great deal of thought. But also some
­people refer to “imaginative creation,” as if creativity can pos-
sibly occur with or without imagination. My own linguistic
intuition tells me that this interpretation is incorrect. Imagina-
tion is subsidiary to creativity and a necessary condition for it.
In Feeling and Imagination I approached imagination as the
entertaining of possibles, which place it in a domain that is
quite different from the past, present, and coming actualities
that constitute what we envisage as the real—which is to say,
the ordinary—world that we inhabit. Yet that world would
have no meaning to us apart from the possibilities that we
­always and relentlessly entertain. Extending what the charac-
ter in Shakespeare says: We are of imagination all compact.
In my attempt to explore our entertaining of possibilities, I dis-
tinguished among the logical, the empirical, the technological,
the moral, and the aesthetic or fictional variations predicated
upon impossibilities. That analysis was too skimpy, as I now
Preface xiii

realize, but of greater importance is the fact that I failed to


­examine adequately what the nature of possibility is in itself. I
surmised that it had a role in the creativity of animals like us,
but only more recently did I discern how greatly interwoven
are the imaginative and the creative.
Something similar applies to the relationship between
­creativity and inventiveness, novelty, and originality. By them-
selves none of these is necessarily creative. What is invented
may have little of the usefulness or permanent importance
that creativity involves. Nor do novelty or even originality
­entail any guarantee of this sort. On many occasions they may
each be lacking in the consecutive and highly valued ability to
make radical changes in oneself, in one’s culture or environ-
ment, and conceivably in the world at large. Nevertheless they
can all be necessary conditions for the existence of creativity.
Throughout my text I frequently refer to them in that capacity,
without seeking to invoke the rigor—which can often turn
into rigor mortis—that more formal definitions might yield.
By concentrating instead on modes of creativity, I wish
to articulate a Weltbild, a world-picture, that reaches beyond
the creative, the imaginative, the inventive, the novel, or the
original. All these belong to pervading patterns of existence
and concerted relations between the cognitive and the affec-
tive that require philosophical insight and explication. The
comprehensive portrait that I construct is designed to make
our ideas clear about the interactions of these phenomena. The
­optimal clarity, assuming it is attainable, can have very broad
ramifications for scientific and technological pursuits, as
well as those that are explicitly artistic. Ideally the desired
­harmonization between technical disciplines and the human-
istic focus upon moral and aesthetic bases of meaning and
xiv Preface

happiness may fortify eventual modes of creativity that are


themselves novel and inventively productive. That is the goal
toward which all my literary efforts are directed.
In working on these issues, I normally avoid jargon of any
sort and I introduce new terminology as little as possible. One
exception is my use of the word transformation. In chapters 1
and 10 I discuss its origin in other books of mine and seek to
strengthen my employment of it in this book. Readers will
­notice that it crops up at several points in the text. It is meant
to convey the manner in which creativity of every kind issues
from previous realities that are altered dynamically, and often
radically, while also being salvaged in some respect. Creativity
does not occur in copying or mechanically reproducing what-
ever prior being it engages with, or by eliminating it com-
pletely. I deploy the concept of transformation to indicate how
the raw materials of what will somehow become creative are
changed in the process of being used or reconstructed or
merely valued and enjoyed.
That is a recurrent theme throughout my discussions of
the different modes and vast disparity of creative occurrences
to be found in human life. The concept of transformation needs
more analysis, which the sequel might awaken in me, but my
lick and promise here may suffice for the parameters of this
endeavor. In its overall structure the book contains two funda-
mental parts. One of them begins with chapter 1, on the need
to reverse misconceptions about creativity, and ends with
chapter 5, on aesthetic creativity. While these chapters exam-
ine many different topics related to creativity as a whole, they
are also designed to anticipate the remaining discussions in
the book, which deal with specific modes of creativity that
overlap with the aesthetic in one way or another. Toward that
Preface xv

end, chapters 1–5 make preliminary statements about the


­major theses that are central to my pluralistic views about the
nature of creativity: my claim that the human preoccupation
with what is creative devolves from the biological, psycholog-
ical, and social bases of our material being; that creativity is
not limited to any single aspect or activity in human existence;
that it inheres not only in the mainly aesthetic goals to which
fine and useful arts are dedicated, but also in components
of science, technology, mathematics, moral practice, and
­ordinary, daily, experience that embody notable elements of
the aesthetic.
Chapters 6–9 address particular problems within these
general categories. They lead to chapter 10 on creativity as it is
related to our species’ feelings and conceptions about “real-
ity.” In lieu of any definitive finale, the reader will then find
concluding remarks in which I discuss further research that
others, as well as myself, may deem worthy of consideration.
Though scientists are much concerned with creativity in
their chosen pursuits, their actual theories about it have been
fairly scarce and rarely systematic. For humanists the creative
is widely recognized as the golden thread that binds their
­disparate studies of values and life-enhancing qualities in all
artworks generically, together with the impact of art upon
­society as a whole. Nevertheless, aesthetic practitioners today
sorely need the unique perspective that philosophical works
have traditionally provided in former centuries, but much less
often in our period. As an example of what analytic philoso-
phers can do, the appendix to this volume consists of a talk by
Moreland Perkins, professor emeritus of philosophy, Univer-
sity of Maryland, who delivered it to a gathering of lower-
school teachers. In form as well as content, its method is quite
xvi Preface

unlike my own. I welcome it as a supplement and separate


resource that complements the peripatetic philosophizing that
is predominant in the chapters that I have written.

During the years I was struggling with the many drafts that
eventuated as this book, I taught a seminar at MIT on the
­nature of creativity. As in all my teaching there, the enlarged
self-education that went into the subsequent manuscript
­issued from the teaching activity itself. Having such excellent
students enabled me to formulate ideas I had never consid-
ered before. Week after week, I learned from the process of
teaching the course what I could and should believe in this
area of philosophy. I am grateful to those who participated
with me in this rewarding experience and thereby served as
co-producers of my work. Others whose encouragement,
­advice, and criticism were extremely valuable to me were Jose-
phine F. Singer, Moreland Perkins, Thomas E. Stone, Jane L.
Philbrick, Kathleen A. Caruso, and the anonymous outside
readers to whom the press sent for their approval one of the
later drafts.

I. S.
May 2010
1
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity

Traditional and Modern Misconceptions

This preliminary chapter will seek to present a framework and


a foundation for the progressively more constructive thoughts
in the remaining chapters. Trying to sweep away the detritus
of several past and recent perspectives in philosophical theo-
ries of creativity, I limit my polemical attack to the minimum
that most readers require to see where I am coming from and
will proceed hereafter. In the development of this chapter, I
also sketch some ideas about the quest for creativity as a means
of coping with the sense of dread and often desperation that
resides generically in the human condition, and that the joyful
access to creativity is capable of overcoming.
To begin with, I suggest that we who were born into the
orthodox ideologies of our culture have inherited deeply en-
grained, but retrograde, assumptions about creativity. We
have been taught that it reflects a spiritual domain that exists
apart from our natural condition, that in human beings cre-
ative ability is an approximation of the infinite and eternal
power of a deity that created nature as a manifestation of its
own pure spirit. This Supreme Creator is thought to be the
2 Modes of Creativity

defining model for any creativity that may be available to


lesser beings like ourselves. In the last two hundred years the
Romantic views that permeated the Western world, and more
recently much of the entire world, have modified the religious
dogmas by identifying creativity with the having of extraordi-
nary experiences without which this highly desired value
would not exist. And finally, as a derivative from these two
perspectives, creativity is often believed to be inherently good,
albeit always liable to notorious misuse by weak or evil ­people.
I will be contesting these and related ideas of creativity at
various points, but in a fashion that differs from some other
thinkers who have also found them unacceptable. Within
­traditional Christianity of the Middle Ages there occurred a
constant and never fully resolved debate about the relation of
God the Creator to the world he brought into being. Though
church doctrine ordained that the deity is outside of time and
space, and therefore beyond the realm of matter, various think-
ers who considered themselves devout Christians affirmed the
unending presence of God in everything he had created with
endless love and wisdom. Reformists like Luther or Calvin,
just to mention two of them, believed that human beings are
by nature thoroughly depraved, but both of these theorists
­retained the conviction that God’s love infuses all existence,
descending into the world for various purposes and then re-
turning to its sacred origin.
Medieval pantheists who interpreted this notion as indi-
cating that God and nature are really one and the same were
considered heretics, and even executed in some cases. By the
nineteenth century, however, their outlook was often quite
­acceptable. It arose triumphant in the romanticism that served
as the dominant attitude within much of the religious and
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 3

s­ ecular philosophy of that period. In Hegelian metaphysics,


which reigned in academic circles for a hundred years, God
(or “the Absolute,” a more technical term sometimes used)
was thought to re-create the world continually in a pervasive
search for the complete and ultimate form of spirituality.
Through ideals that remaster and overcome the moral limi­
tations of materiality, the divine spirit was taken to imbue
­nature with ever greater achievements that are truly valuable
and give more and more meaning to life. God was by defini-
tion the Absolute inasmuch as his sheer essence totally ­explains
each aspect of the natural order while also signifying the final
destination for which everyone, and everything, yearns with-
out always realizing how much such striving seeks to reach
this metaphysical terminus.
Much of twentieth-century philosophy was a reaction
against Romantic and Hegelian “objective idealism.” Never-
theless there arose a school of thought, loosely referred to as
“process philosophy,” that sought to reject the extensive
­dichotomy between nature and the divine while retaining
at the same time some of the Hegelian inspiration. In general,
the new mindset remotely resembled Friedrich Nietzsche’s
teachings but also differed from them. Its basic thrust focused
on the concept of creativity as related to ideas about universal
freedom, in contrast to any externally imposed determinism
that might cause events and experiences to be what they are.
All entities or moments of consciousness, it held, come into
being as instances of self-creation and thus self-determination.
Thinkers who contributed most to this type of philosophizing
were Charles Sanders Peirce, Henri Bergson, Alfred North
Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne. In defiance of the logical
empiricism that has been dominant in English-language
4 Modes of Creativity

­ hilosophy, they all formulated theories that are metaphysical


p
and even theistic speculations about the role of what they
­considered to be cosmic creativity. Since in this book I will be
trying to reverse the influence of that kind of thinking, I will
summarize only briefly some of its major theses.
As usually interpreted, Whitehead’s philosophy is espe-
cially pertinent because of its effort to unify scientific studies
of nature with metaphysical views about creativity as a way of
explaining reality in general. Having affirmed a distinction be-
tween Being and Becoming, Hegel had argued that the em-
pirical world is an all-pervasive struggle to transcend creatively
its temporal and imperfect “Becoming” by progressively
­approximating the oneness that constitutes the underlying
“Being” of reality. In repudiating this approach, Nietzsche
­argued that Becoming is the only Being we can imagine. White-
head’s tactic is significantly different from that of either Hegel
or Nietzsche. He claims the creativity that characterizes, and
even unites, all reality underlies not only the Becoming of
what exists but also its transcendent Being.
As Hegel conceived of it, the Absolute embodies the
­highest ideals and their perfect fulfillment incorporated in the
Being of what is real. Whitehead repudiates this notion. In
his alternate approach, he amplifies Bergson’s conception of
“creative evolution,” which is to say, nature as it unfolds
through the evolutionary processes explored by various
branches of science. Suggesting that creativity is a constant
within Becoming that also makes sense of what is meant
by Being, Bergson sought to alter the common dogmas of
­Judeo-Christianity.
Instead of envisaging God as an infinitely perfect deity
who then creates the world in an act of love that creatures can
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 5

possibly emulate in their desire to reciprocate his bestowal of


goodness, Bergson depicted the love that motivates the suc-
cessive developments in nature, and that evolves creatively, as
itself being God. The pantheistic love that Bergson portrays is
not an emanation from a previously existent deity, but rather
divinity itself coming into being through its temporal and
nondeterministic immersion in nature. The very spirituality of
God would then consist in his supreme creativity within the
world as it develops by means of natural phenomena. In The
Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Bergson portrays saints
and ethical heroes as contributors to that progression, their
own evolving creativity of mind and action thereby revealing
the spirituality embedded in reality as a whole.
Bergson, whose renown peaked shortly before the outset
of World War II, espoused naturalistic theories of evolution as
scientific truth about the structure of the empirical world,
while also insisting that nothing is totally mechanistic. Every-
thing is motivated by the operation of inner and freely given
creativity, he asserted. The title of Creative Evolution, Bergson’s
most famous book, manifests the synthesizing character of his
philosophy.
Much of this approach was already present in Peirce’s
­concept of what he called “agapastic love,” which is likewise
predicated upon the ideas of freedom and operative creativity.
Since events in nature cannot be foreseen with certainty, Peirce
concludes that an element of random chance must always be
assumed. Universal creativity, as he views it, exists as the way
in which an agent can unforeseeably effect some possible
­outcome. This kind of thought also reappears in Whitehead’s
philosophy, particularly as it was adapted by Charles Harts-
horne. Writing about “Creative Synthesis,” Hartshorne states:
6 Modes of Creativity

“Here is the ultimate meaning of creation—in the freedom or


self-determination of any experience as a ‘new’ one, arising
out of a previous many, in terms of which it cannot, by any
causal relationship, be fully described. . . . [Since] the motive or
character [of a new experience] is not received from the past, it
must be a creation of the present.”1
Neither Hartshorne nor Whitehead—nor any of the other
thinkers in this movement—denies that a great deal of the
­reality we are each familiar with is certainly not creative. They
are instead referring to what they call the all-pervading “flow
of existence” that supersedes the special individuality of any
physical or mental manifestations of being. As Hartshorne
says, a stone is not creative or self-determined, but its sub-
atomic elements are. Their random and mainly unpredictable
movements can only be charted in the probabilistic manner of
quantum physics.

Pros and Cons of Metaphysics

All the same, we cannot surmise that process philosophy ­relies


entirely on scientific theory and observation. It is explicitly a
metaphysics, a seeing of the world that cannot be verified
or falsified yet may possibly enable a sympathetic reader to
perceive his life anew, and also the universe in which it exists.
The philosophy seeks to provide aesthetic and valuational
spectacles that can disclose qualitative aspects of reality that
operate throughout nature as well as in our own experience.
Since I am not writing a thorough analysis of process phi-
losophy, what interests me primarily is the fact that any meta-
physics of this sort must be recognized as itself constituting a
mode of creativity. In making its type of assertions about the
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 7

basic creativity in everything, including whatever is clearly


uncreative, it exemplifies the human inclination to imagine
­interpretations of the cosmos that are justifiable, if at all, only
as conceptual works of art, or possibly art itself when it is
­sufficiently imaginative and capable of enriching what might
otherwise be a barren, mechanistic attitude toward the world.
All these writers that I have just mentioned are at their best
when they confront questions about how creativity occurs. In
trying to answer those queries, Whitehead remarks: “Philoso-
phy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic
thought has done its best, the wonder remains. There have
been added, however, some grasp of the immensity of things,
some purification of emotion by understanding.”2 Whitehead’s
allusion to wonder is reminiscent of statements by Einstein
that I will be quoting in this chapter and subsequently. White-
head takes us a little further by attaching his speculation about
the feeling of wonder to the ideas about creativity that he has
been promoting as a metaphysician. In doing so, however, he
confuses matters by suggesting that his work reveals “the
­immensity of things.” That phrase does no work at all.
One might nevertheless argue that the latest findings in
astronomy or subatomic physics support what Whitehead
says. Thanks to these and kindred scientific developments, the
world that our ancestors experienced as cozy and limited
­extensions of themselves in their physical surroundings could
now appear to have an enormity that nobody would have
imagined earlier. That may well awaken wonder that would
not have existed before. But the metaphysical concept of what
is considered cosmic creativity has no such grounding. It
goes beyond any verifiable scientific observations. Being an
aesthetic and creative artifact by virtue of its indigenous
8 Modes of Creativity

­ eaning, it may possibly inspire a sense of grandeur or even


m
a kind of religious uplift—as the “Ode to Joy” in the last move-
ment of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony does, to take only one
example of what great art can evoke. Yet the notion of cosmic
creativity alone fails to give us an accurate and authentic grasp
upon either the nature or the being of the world’s immensity.
And neither can Whitehead’s theory be thought to pro-
vide any “purification of emotion by understanding.” In
­painting its nonverifiable picture, process philosophy adds
nothing to whatever we already know about reality. Instead it
supplements the data in a metaphoric and unfactual manner,
as artistic work often does. “Understanding” of the type that
Whitehead seems to have in mind belongs to a special cate-
gory, if only because it is metaphysical. Speculation about an
ultimate creativity, seductive as such language may be, cannot
yield knowledge that may or may not purify our emotions.
In various places Whitehead states that creativity as he
thinks of it “explains” why things are as they are. Without
­invoking causal reasons, he defends his doctrine by calling it
an ­“introduction of novel verbal characterizations, rationally
­coordinated.”3 But these so-called characterizations are not
­capable of serving as explanations, any more than paintings by
Monet or Picasso are.

Bergson as a Possible Exception

In some respects, and above all in the clarity of his writing,


Bergson’s statements about creativity are more convincing
than Whitehead’s. Having begun with the quasi-biological
­investigation that permeates Creative Evolution, Bergson’s
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 9

c­ umulative explication ends, in The Two Sources of Morality and


Religion, with his discussion of creativity as the core of what he
calls “dynamic religion.” In the experience and behavior of
mystics, mainly those that are Christian and Catholic, he finds
creativity continually at work as the vital impetus (élan vital)
that shows itself in love. In words that seek to unite scientific
truth and religious faith, Bergson states his belief in mystical
intuition: “Beings have been called into existence who were
destined to love and be loved, since creative energy is to be
defined as love. Distinct from God, Who is this energy itself,
they could spring into being only in a universe, and therefore
the universe sprang into being.”4
In this bold conception, the physical, material and even
mechanistic, components of ordinary life interact with its
­spiritual potentialities as the conditions needed for creative
energy to exist in a world such as ours. Bergson’s idea of God
as belonging within empirical nature is immanentistic, much
as Hegel’s ideas about the Absolute were, and therefore nei-
ther otherworldy nor dogmatic in the manner that Western
religion has normally envisaged. It is said that toward the end
of his life, Bergson contemplated conversion to Catholicism
but finally decided, as an act of solidarity, to remain a Jew in
view of the Nazi occupation of Paris. His piety in making that
decision can be applauded by Catholics as well as Jews. At
the same time, Catholic theorists who were not themselves
Bergsonian in their philosophy might well have felt that the
pantheistic import of his metaphysics was alien to the teach-
ings of the church.
As we will see later, Bergson denies that the ultimate
­problem of philosophy is why something exists rather than
10 Modes of Creativity

nothing. He argues that the very notion of absolute nothing-


ness is meaningless, since the absence of something implies
the substitution of something else. Mystical intuition resolves
the issue, Bergson says, by displaying reality as filled with a
sense of the creative and loving presence of God in the world:
“God is love, and the object of love: herein lies the whole con-
tribution of mysticism.”5

The Seductiveness of Process Philosophy

What I find most intriguing about the outlook of the process


philosophers is its persistent belief that all reality is creative in
some way or other. This is a buoyant and affirmative view,
though not one that coheres with my own experience of the
world. I feel at times, as they do too, that the obviously chaotic
occurrences in the universe—the tremendous explosions in
every galaxy, the movements of matter over great distances of
presumably empty space, the awesome number of light years
traversed in such cosmological performances—that all this
may be explicable in terms of completely mechanical and
­deterministic causation. Nonetheless, as process philosophers
claim, there might be some inner freedom that matter mani-
fests under these astounding circumstances.
That consideration may make us feel more at home in the
universe: it tends to sustain what we experience as our own
existence. But, then, we must also remember that we have no
way of knowing about any such metaphysical possibilities,
­either pro or con. Science itself cannot pretend to answer ques-
tions of this kind, and theorists who do are often presenting
a prelude to the even more dubious imaginings of one or
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 11

a­ nother theology. That is especially evident in the work of


Hartshorne and, to a lesser degree, Peirce.

A Contrary Approach

My empiricist and pluralist perspective is designed as a


­buttress against the fanciful character of the lingering tran-
scendentalism in process philosophies. The creativity that I
investigate exists as an inborn capacity of the mind and brain
that are prevalent in our species. There is no presumption
that this dance of life, like the aesthetic as a whole, has any
grounding in an objective and universal order beyond its own
mundane occurrence. What I do feel confident about is the
way in which animate creatures on this planet, above all
­ourselves, systematically adhere to the diverse forms of trans-
formation that I will be discussing as modes of creativity.
These are empirical phenomena that belong to the everyday
structure of nature.
Speculations of mine along these lines began with a book
entitled Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique
(1998). In that work on applied aesthetics, I argued that cin-
ema should be approached as neither a recorded reproduction
of reality, which the school of realism maintains, nor as
­primarily an artful deployment of techniques, which the
school of formalism believes. To show how films are both
­conveyors of meaning and vehicles of technical inventiveness,
I tried to demonstrate that the two approaches ineluctibly
­coalesce. Cinema transforms reality through the formal de-
vices that an accomplished filmmaker uses to express some
vision of reality that he or she introduces as a creative artist.
12 Modes of Creativity

In making these suggestions, I readily affirmed that all


other arts rely on similar—though sometimes very different—
types of transformational production. What I am now willing
to entertain is the possibility that much, or even all, of life can
be treated as one or another example of transformation. In that
respect, we might extrapolate to the possibility that creativity
of some sort resides in virtually everything that lives, and re-
gardless of the ambiguities about reality that I address in
chapter 10.
Though I present these ideas about transformation in as
tentative a manner as I can, one may wonder nevertheless
whether I am not myself open to the kind of criticism I have
been leveling against the process philosophers. Can I truly
deny that my asseverations are as unverifiable as theirs? Don’t
my reflections merely represent feelings of my own that I may
possibly express creatively in this context? Shouldn’t I admit
that my personal outlook belongs to a philosophical genre that
is comparable to those of these metaphysicians?
In the course of his work, George Santayana repudiated
the idea that his writings should be categorized as “meta­
physics.” His culminating work was a speculative study in
­ontology, properly entitled Realms of Being, that is not truly
empirical or scientific, and yet neither does it proffer dogmatic
assertions about some ultimate and irreducible reality. At its
level of abstraction, however, and in the a prioristic stance of
its reasoning, I think that Santayana’s ontology can be viewed
as a variant of metaphysics. The same may be said about much
of the conceptualization in the statements that I make about the
nature of creativity. In pondering their merits and their short-
comings, the reader should always keep that in mind.
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 13

The Quest for Creativity

As a critic of the process philosophers and, in part, Santayana


as well, I offer reflections—about creativity in art, science, and
the rest of our existence—that may be formally similar but are
significantly opposed to theirs. I suggest that whatever is ten-
able in this field must be located within a perception of human
nature as pluralistically seeking creativity in the alternate
ways that issue from our temporal condition. The spirituality
for which people have hungered throughout the ages can only
be appreciated as a reification of creative modalities that occur
within our particular species. In itself, human creativity does
not originate either outside of nature or as a transcendent
power within it, but instead as a recognizable achievement
in our biological condition that beings like us cultivate and
improve if we can. Reversing in this fashion the more prevalent
perspectives about the creative and the spiritual will have exten-
sive ramifications.
My previous writings on the nature of love and sexuality,
and on the philosophy of film, have led directly to my current
thoughts about the nature of creativity. Several of my books,
especially the Nature of Love trilogy and The Pursuit of Love,
sought to develop my ideas about bestowal and appraisal as
two types of valuation that constitute the creativity of affective
choice and personal attachment. I characterized both as prod-
ucts of imagination and idealization that evince a particular
kind of creativity. This book seeks to unfold and extend what
is implied in these notions. I consider the transformational ca-
pacity of art to be paradigmatic of human creativity wherever
it occurs. From this it follows that not only love in its different
14 Modes of Creativity

modalities and the passionate pursuit of knowledge, but also


all other meaningful interests, have an aesthetic component
within them that manifests their creative potentiality. I make
my case in a cumulative manner, and without prior as­
sumptions that might constrain the ongoing inquiry. If we can
illuminate the diversified forms of creativity that are evi-
dent and accessible to us, we may find that the all-embracing
definitions that many philosophers crave professionally are,
in principle, hardly worth our consideration.
Before trying to clarify these broad intentions, however, I
return to the misconceptions in the history of ideas with which
I began this chapter. In attempting to get beyond them, I will
first study their origination out of layers of our human
­consciousness about which we are often unaware, even though
they permeate our daily thought and behavior.

Relevance to Creation Myths

In virtually all religions, and in many philosophical theories


thus far, there resides a description of the beginning of things.
Many people affirm that their version of this account is liter-
ally true; others accept even the cosmic story they believe in as
merely a form of mythmaking, however compelling the myth
may be for themselves. At present, I wish to put aside the
question of truthfulness in order to give prominence to some
other aspects of this phenomenon. First, the myths of creation,
like all other myths, are tales that people tell and retell as
­expressions of their own experience or desires. They are not
only imaginative transformations of what outstanding indi-
viduals have encountered in their lives but also demonstra-
tions of personal aspirations. The prevalence of these myths
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 15

about the origin of everything reveals the enormous curiosity


that human beings have always had about their existence as
inhabitants of a world order that constitutes whatever appears
to be reality and whatever may transcend it.
Why should this mean so much in every culture that we
know? Indeed the very concept of culture partly depends
upon the prevalence of such mythmaking. If we came upon a
group of homo sapiens who lacked this aptitude, would we
not infer that they are creatures without any culture? Those
who possess the appropriate form of imagination are assumed
to have developed consequent arts and skills that are more
or less similar in all societies and the product of some com-
mon attempt to imagine how the world about us could have
originated.
According to the frequent, though not invariable, belief,
the current state of things arose as the result of a single
event, a primal act of creativity that started the clock of time-
determined and observable existence. That primordial event is
often thought to presuppose the progenitor whom I have men-
tioned and whose enactment of this awesome feat serves as
explanation of all creation. The very idea of a causal being that
is “supreme” in the cosmos, though possibly preceding it as
well, is itself a part of the creative imagination of humanoids
like us.
In many of the mythic presentations, the primal and
­definitive moment of creativity served as the making of
­something out of nothing. The creator who is the single source
of everything is then depicted as a magnificent artist or ­wonder
worker capable of accomplishments that exceed whatever
mortals like ourselves can effect or even comprehend. Though
our creativity might be only a refashioning or reconstructing
16 Modes of Creativity

of what has already occurred, the initial and infinitely greater


example of creation may be seen as the filling of an absolute
void, the changing of mere nothingness into concrete actuality.
To those who are not sympathetic with this type of lan-
guage, its very formulation can seem ridiculous. Shakespeare
capitalizes on this in Twelfth Night by having Feste (the Fool)
masquerade as Sir Topaz the Vicar and pompously proclaim:
“That that is is.”6 We laugh because we feel that anything else
must be a logical impossibility. But also we believe, or suspect,
that it makes no sense to think that what now exists could
have come out of some previous nonexistence. We can know
only something that is at present, or has been, or may be in the
future. Even unformed matter would have to have had an ex-
plicit composition of its own peculiar kind. To that extent,
Shakespeare’s ridicule of metaphysical speculation would
seem to be justified. The abstruse assertion is only a trick of
language. However creation of the world may have happened,
it must therefore have been enacted as a remolding or trans-
formation of ingredients, chaotic in themselves perhaps, that
somehow eventuated as the structured cosmos we see about
us. What still remains, nevertheless, is the query that G. W.
Leibniz posed: Why is there anything in the universe rather
than nothing? He might well have repeated what King Lear
says to Cordelia in his presumed resemblance to God at the
beginning of the play and before he goes mad: “Nothing will
come of nothing.”7

The Sense of Dread and Its Resolution through Creativity

In relation to the explicit nature of creativity, we need to


­analyze the opposition between the two forms of thought:
Prologue: Reversing Mistakes about Creativity 17

c­ reation arising out of nothing or else out of an earlier some-


thing. These alternatives embody different ideas about cre-
ativity. What underlies them both, however, is the fact that we
human beings use the terms nothing and nothingness in ways
that ­baffle our intellect. That alone can jeopardize our ability
to feel or act coherently in coping with our predicament as
­finite and mortal creatures. In his soliloquy on suicide, Hamlet
says that “the dread of something after death / The undiscov-
ered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns, puzzles
the will.”8 But all such references to death, and any conception
of its meaning that we may have, would seem to compound
our puzzlement about life itself. Is death an absolute negation
of everything we have personally experienced in having lived?
How are we to make sense of this possibility? What exactly
can it signify?
For most of us, the dread and puzzlement of our will to
which Hamlet alludes result less from concern about what
will happen to us after death than from the repugnance and
the horror that we feel in the prospect of being totally annihi-
lated. The undiscovered country from which no traveler
­returns may therefore be interpreted as the uncharted and
solitary condition in which each man or woman exists just in
living under the circumstances that define our state of being.
We are born into permanent ignorance, sometimes painful
­ignorance, about our personal reality as well as the reality of
everything else. The neonate screaming frantically when it
surges into the world cannot understand what is perturbing it,
and most people take little note of the incomprehension about
life and death that gradually becomes habitual to them. Yet it
continues until they die, despite whatever beliefs they may
have accrued about our existence.
18 Modes of Creativity

In commenting on Hamlet’s speech as I have, I may be


stretching, even distorting, Shakespeare’s use of the word
dread. He might well have intended nothing but a high level of
fear. If we greatly fear something that might occur after death,
we may be said to have a dread of it. What I am talking about
is not the same. I have in mind the vexatious questioning itself,
the nagging and frequently terrifying sense of our inadequacy
as self-conscious individuals who intuit that the nature of life
and death can never be understood by us, and possibly not by
anyone else whom we can imagine. Many of the problems we
encounter in everyday experience can be solved, but we do
not know, we cannot conceive of, what would yield a solution
to this one. Our troubled response is more than just trepida-
tion about death as either sheer destruction or else a transition
to some terrifying afterlife.
I will be arguing for the possibility that our concept of cre-
ativity may help us deal with this situation. But first I need to
clarify further the nature of our consternation. Our dread of
death, and also our dread of failure or only relative success in
life, bespeaks an underlying desire to possess and retain what-
ever goodness we may have achieved by having lived. Such
dread reflects a residual feeling of hopelessness, a vague yet
all-embracing kind of discomfort about reality. As we can say
that anxiety is normally fear without an object, so too can we
characterize this sentiment as anxiety that precludes any
awareness of there ever being, or having been, a primal and
all-explaining act of creation, whether glorious or not. In itself
this can destabilize constructive involvement in life. It stuns us
with an intimation that what we value and care about might
have no true import at all.
Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
Thrips on corn that he investigated in Russia. Uzel suggests that
injuries due to other causes are sometimes ascribed to Thrips.[460] In
hot-houses these Insects are well known, and sometimes occasion
considerable damage to foliage. The German horticulturalists call
them black-fly, in distinction from Aphidae or green-fly. Some
Thysanoptera live under bark, and even in fungi, and in Australia
they form galls on the leaves of trees. This observation is due to Mr
Froggatt, and is confirmed by specimens he sent to the writer.
Vesicular bodies in the leaves of Acacia saligna were traversed on
one side by a longitudinal slit, and on a section being made, nothing
but Thrips, in various stages of growth, was found inside them. A
second kind of gall, forming masses of considerable size on the
twigs of Callistemon, is said by Mr Froggatt to be also due to Thrips,
as is a third kind on Bursaria spinosa. It is curious that Thrips' galls
have not been observed in other parts of the world.

Thysanoptera are devoured by small bugs of the genus Triphleps, as


well as by beetles; a small Acarid attacks them by fixing itself to the
body of the Thrips. Nematode worms and their eggs were found by
Uzel in the body-cavity. He found no less than 200 Nematodes in
one Thrips, and noticed that they had entirely destroyed the ovaries.
Woodpeckers, according to him, tear off the bark of trees and eat the
Thysanoptera that are concealed thereunder, though one would
have surmised that these minute Insects are too small to be game
for such birds. They have, it appears, no special protection, except
that one species (a larva of Phloeothrips sp.) is said to emit a
protective fluid.

Parthenogenesis seems to be frequent amongst Thysanoptera, and


is found in concurrence with diversity as to winged and wingless
females of the same species, so as to have given rise to the idea
that the phenomena in this respect are parallel with those that are
more widely known as occurring in Aphidae. Under certain
circumstances few or no males are produced (one of the
circumstances, according to Jordan, being season of the year), and
the females continue the species parthenogenetically. In other
cases, though males are produced they are in very small numbers.
Some species of Thysanoptera are never winged; in others the
individuals are winged or wingless according to sex. But there are
other cases in which the female is usually wingless, and is
exceptionally winged. The winged specimens in this case are, it is
thought, of special use in disseminating the species. Jordan has
suggested that these phenomena may be of a regular nature, but
Uzel does not take this view. Another condition may be mentioned, in
which the species is usually wingless, but winged individuals of the
male as well as of the female sex occasionally appear. Thrips lini
apparently makes regular migrations, feeding at one time
underground on the roots of flax, and then changing to a life in the
open air on other plants.

Numerous forms of Thysanoptera, belonging to both of the great


divisions of the Order, have been found fossil in Europe and North
America, but all are confined to deposits of the Tertiary epoch.

Of the 135 species known to Uzel, 117 are European; they are
divided into two Sub-Orders. 1, Terebrantia, in which the females are
provided with an external toothed ovipositor, of two valves; 2,
Tubulifera, in which there is no ovipositor, and the extremity of the
body is tubular in both sexes. The British species are about 50 in
number, and were described by Haliday about 60 years ago;[461] of
late they have been very little studied.

The name Physopoda or Physapoda is used for this Order, instead


of Thysanoptera, by several naturalists.
CHAPTER VIII

HEMIPTERA—OR BUGS

Order IX. Hemiptera.

Mouth consisting of a proboscis or mobile beak (usually


concealed by being bent under the body), appearing as a
transversly-jointed rod or grooved sheath, in which are enclosed
long slender setae (like horse-hairs). Wings (nearly always) four;
the anterior frequently more horny than the posterior pair, and
folding flat on the back, their apical portions usually more
membranous than the base (Heteroptera); or the four wings may
cover the abdomen in a roof-like manner, and those of the
anterior pair may not have the basal and apical parts of different
consistences (Homoptera); sometimes all four of the wings are
transparent. The young resembles the adult in general form; the
wings are developed outside the body, by growth, at the moults,
of the sides of the hinder portions of the meso- and meta-notum;
the metanotal prolongations being more or less concealed by the
mesonotal.

The Hemiptera or Bugs are perhaps more widely known as


Rhynchota. In deciding whether an Insect belongs to this Order the
student will do well to examine in the first place the beak, treating the
wings as subordinate in importance, their condition being much more
variable than that of the beak. The above definition includes no
reference to the degraded Anoplura or Lice. These are separately
dealt with on p. 599; they are absolutely wingless, and have an
unjointed proboscis not placed beneath the body, the greater part of
it being usually withdrawn inside the body of the Insect.

The Hemiptera are without exception sucking Insects, and the


mouth-organs of the individual are of one form throughout its life. In
this latter fact, coupled with another, that the young are not definitely
different in form from the adult, Bugs differ widely from all other
Insects with sucking-mouth. They agree with the Orthoptera in the
facts that the mouth does not change its structure during the
individual life, and that the development of the individual is gradual,
its form, as a rule, changing but little. In respect of the structure of
the mouth, Orthoptera and Hemiptera are the most different of all the
Orders. Hence, Hemiptera is really the most isolated of all the
Orders of Insects. We shall subsequently see that, like Orthoptera,
the Order appeared in the Palaeozoic epoch. Although a very
extensive Order, Hemiptera have for some incomprehensible reason
never been favourite objects of study. Sixty years ago Dufour pointed
out that they were the most neglected of all the great Orders of
Insects, and this is still true; our acquaintance with their life-histories
and morphology especially being very limited.

Fig. 255—Eusthenes pratti (Pentatomidae). China. A, Nymph: a, case


of anterior, b, of posterior wing; c, orifices of stink-glands; B, the
adult Insect.

There is probably no Order of Insects that is so directly connected


with the welfare of the human race as the Hemiptera; indeed, if
anything were to exterminate the enemies of Hemiptera, we
ourselves should probably be starved in the course of a few months.
The operations of Hemiptera, however, to a large extent escape
observation, as their mouth-setae make merely pricks that do not
attract notice in plants; hence, it is probable that injuries really due to
Hemiptera are frequently attributed to other causes.
In the course of the following brief sketch of the anatomy and
development of Hemiptera, we shall frequently have to use the terms
Heteroptera and Homoptera; we may therefore here mention that
there are two great divisions of Hemiptera having but little
connection, and known by the above names: the members of these
two Sub-Orders may in most cases be distinguished by the condition
of the wings, as mentioned in the definition at the commencement of
this chapter.

External structure.—The mouth-parts consist of an anterior or


upper and a posterior or lower enwrapping part, and of the organs
proper, which are four hair-like bodies, dilated at their bases and
resting on a complex chitinous framework. The lower part forms by
far the larger portion of the sheath and is of very diverse lengths, and
from one to four-jointed: it is as it were an enwrapping organ, and a
groove may be seen running along it, in addition to the evident
cross-segmentation. The upper covering part is much smaller, and
only fills a gap at the base of the sheath; it can readily be lifted so as
to disclose the setae; these latter organs are fine, flexible, closely
connected, rods, four in number, though often seeming to be only
three, owing to the intimate union of the components of one of the
two pairs; at their base the setae become broader, and are closely
connected with some of the loops of the chitinous framework that is
contained within the head. Sometimes the setae are much longer
than the sheath; they are capable of protrusion. Although varying
considerably in minor points, such as the lengths of the sheath and
setae, and the number of cross-joints of the sheath, these structures
are so far as is known constant throughout the Order. There are no
palpi, and the only additions exceptionally present are a pair of small
plates that in certain forms (aquatic family Belostomidae) lie on the
front of the proboscis near the tip, overlapping, in fact, the last of the
cross-articulations.

Simple as is this system of trophi its morphology is uncertain, and


has given rise to much difference of interpretation. It may be granted
that the two portions of the sheath are respectively upper lip, and
labium; but as to the other parts wide difference of opinion still
prevails. On the whole the view most generally accepted, to the
effect that the inner pair of the setae correspond in a broad sense
with maxillae of mandibulate Insects, and the outer pair with
mandibles, is probably correct. Mecznikow, who studied the
embryology,[462] supports this view for Heteroptera, but he says (t.c.
p. 462), that in Homoptera the parts of the embryo corresponding
with rudimentary maxillae and mandibles disappear, and that the
setae are subsequently produced from peculiar special bodies that
are at first of a retort-shaped form; the neck of the retort becoming
afterwards more elongate to form the seta; also that in the
Heteropterous genus Gerris the embryology in general resembles
that of Homoptera, but the development of the setae is like that of
other Heteroptera (t.c. p. 478). This discontinuity in the development
of the Homopterous mouth has since been refuted by Witlaczil,[463]
who found that the retort-shaped bodies really arise from the primary
segmental appendages after they have sunk into the head. We are
therefore justified in concluding that the mouth-parts are at first
similarly developed in all Hemiptera, and that this development is of
a very peculiar nature.

Fig. 256—Mouth-parts of Hemiptera. (After Wedde.) A, Section of the


head and proboscis of Pyrrhocoris apterus: dr, gland; i.g, infra-
oesophageal ganglion; lb, labium; lr, labrum; m, muscles; m1
muscle (depressor of labium); m2, muscle of syringe; ph, pharynx;
s, setae; s.g, supra-oesophageal ganglion; sp. dr, salivary gland;
spr, syringe: B, transverse section of proboscis of Pentatoma
rufipes, at third joint of sheath: m, m, muscles; md, mandibular
seta; mx, maxillary setae; n, nerve; p, the sheath or labium; tr,
trachea.
Smith is convinced that there are no traces of mandibular structure in
any Hemiptera.[464] On the other hand, numerous entomologists
have supposed they could homologise satisfactorily various parts of
the Hemipterous trophi with special parts of the maxillae and labium
of mandibulate Insects. This point has recently been discussed by
Marlatt[465] and by Heymons.[466] From the latter we gather that the
mode of growth is peculiar by the extension backwards of some of
the sclerites, and their becoming confounded with parts of the wall of
the head. From all this it appears that at present we cannot correctly
go farther than saying that the trophi of Hemiptera are the
appendages of three head-segments, like those of other Insects. The
views of Savigny, Léon,[467] and others to the effect that labial palpi,
and even other parts of the labium of Mandibulata can be
satisfactorily identified are not confirmed by Heymons.

Underneath the pharynx, in the head, there is a peculiar structure for


which we have as yet no English term. It was apparently discovered
by Landois and Paul Mayer,[468] and has been called
"Wanzenspritze," which we translate as syringe. It may be briefly
described as a chamber, into which the salivary ducts open,
prolonged in front to the neighbourhood of the grooves of the setae
in the rostrum; behind, it is connected with muscles; it has no direct
connection with the pharynx, and though it was formerly supposed to
be an organ of suction, it seems more probable that it is of the nature
of a force-pump, to propel the products of some of the bug's glands
towards the tips of the setae.

The rostrum being extended from its position of repose, the tip of the
sheath is brought into contact with the object to be pierced, the
surface of which is probably examined by means of sensitive hairs at
the extremity of the sheath; these therefore functionally replace to
some extent the palpi of other Insects. As a rule the sheath does not
penetrate (though there is reason for believing that in various of the
animal-feeding bugs it does so), but the setae are brought into action
for piercing the skin of the plant; they are extremely sharp, and the
outer pair are usually barbed, so that when once introduced a hold is
easily maintained. This being established it is thought that the
salivary pump comes into play, and that a fluid is injected into the
object pierced so as to give rise to irritation or congestion, and thus
keep up a supply of fluid at the point operated on: this fluid extends
along the grooved setae by capillary attraction, and the rapidity of
the current is increased by a pumping action of the pharynx, and
possibly by movements of the setae themselves. Though the setae
are often extremely elongate—sometimes several times the length of
the body—they are nearly always slender, and there is no reason to
suppose that a perfect, or air-tight, tube is formed; hence it is
probable that capillary attraction is really the chief agent in the
ingestion of the fluid. The slight diversity of structure of the
Hemipterous trophi is in very striking contrast with what we find in
mandibulate Insects, and in the less purely suctorial Insects, such as
Diptera and some divisions of Hymenoptera. Schiödte in
commenting on this has suggested that it is probably due to the
small variety of actions the rostrum is put to.[469]

Fig. 257—Saccoderes tuberculatus Gray. Brazil. (Fam. Reduviidae.)


(Antennae absent in the specimen represented.)

The head exhibits great variety of form; in the Homoptera the front
part is deflexed and inflexed, so that it is placed on the under
surface, and its anterior margin is directed backwards; it is often
peculiarly inflated; in the Lantern-flies or Fulgoridae (Fig. 282) to an
incomprehensible extent. In the great Water-bugs, Belostomidae,
there is on the under surface a deep pocket for each antenna,
beautifully adapted to the shape of the curiously-formed appendage
(Fig. 279). The prothorax is always very distinct, frequently large,
and in many of the Heteroptera (Fig. 257), as well as in the
Homopterous family, Membracidae (Fig. 283), assumes the most
extraordinary shapes. Both meso- and meta-thorax are well
developed. The former is remarkable for the great size of the
scutellum; in some cases (Plataspides, Scutellerides) this forms a
large process, that entirely covers and conceals the alar organs, so
that the Insect has all the appearance of being apterous. The exact
composition of the abdomen has not been satisfactorily determined,
opinions varying as to whether the segments are nine, ten, or eleven
in number. The difficulty of determining the point is due to two facts:
viz. the extreme modification of the terminal segments in connection
with the genital appendages, and the prominence of the extremity of
the alimentary canal. If this terminal projection is to be treated as a
segment, it would appear that eleven segments exist, at any rate in
some cases; as the writer has counted ten distinct segments in a
young Coreid bug, in addition to the terminal tube. This tube in some
of the male Heteroptera is very subject to curious modifications, and
has been called the rectal cauda. Verhoeff considers that ten
segments were invariably present in the females examined by him in
various families of Heteroptera and Homoptera.[470] In Aphidae (a
division of Homoptera), Balbiani considers there are eleven
abdominal segments present; but he treats as a segment a
projection, called the cauda, situate over the anus; this structure
does not appear to be homologous with the rectal cauda we have
just mentioned. In Coccidae the number of abdominal segments is
apparently reduced. Schiödte states[471] that the older authorities
are correct in respect of the stigmata; there are, he says, in
Heteroptera invariably ten pairs; one for each thoracic segment; and
seven abdominal, placed on the ventral face of the pleural fold of the
abdomen. In some cases there are additional orifices on the external
surface that have been taken for stigmata, though they are really
orifices of odoriferous glands; these openings may exist on the
metasterna or on the dorsal surface of the abdomen. The lateral
margins of the abdomen are frequently greatly developed in
Heteroptera, and are called "connexivum;" the upper and lower
surfaces of the body meeting together far within the marginal outline.
Dr Anton Dohrn many years ago[472] called attention to the
extremely remarkable structure of the terminal segments in many
male Hemiptera; and the subject has been subsequently very
imperfectly treated by the present writer and other entomologists, but
it has never received the attention it deserves.

In the females of numerous Heteroptera and Homoptera (Capsidae,


Cicadidae, etc.) there is a well-developed ovipositor, that serves both
as a cutting instrument to make slits in the stems of plants, and as a
director to introduce the eggs therein. Verhoeff considers that it
always consists of two pairs of processes (though one pair may be
very small), one from the eighth abdominal segment, the other from
the ninth.[473]

The antennae usually have very few joints, often as few as four or
five, their maximum number of about twenty-five being attained in
the males of some Coccidae, this condition being, however, present
in but few of even this family. In Belostoma (Fig. 279) they assume
extremely curious forms, analogous to what we find in the
Coleopterous genus Hydrophilus. In addition to the compound eyes,
there are usually ocelli, either two or three in number, but wanting in
many cases. The usual number of joints of the tarsi is three, but in
Coccidae there is only one joint.

Fig. 258.—Alar organs of a Capsid bug (Capsus laniarius). A, Elytron:


A, clavus; B, corium; C, cuneus; D, membrane; E, E, cell of the
membrane; B, hind-wing.

The wings (Fig. 258) exhibit much diversity. The anterior pair usually
differ greatly from the posterior; they are called elytra, hemi-elytra or
tegmina. This difference in the two pairs is the rule in the first of the
great divisions of the Order, and the name Heteroptera is derived
from the fact. In this Sub-Order the front wings close over the back,
and are more or less horny, the apical part being, however,
membranous. Systematists make use of the wings for the purpose of
classification in Heteroptera, and distinguish the following parts,
"clavus," "corium," "membrane," the corium being the larger horny
division, the clavus the part lying next the scutellum and frequently
very sharply distinguished from the corium; the membrane is the
apical part. The outer or costal part of the wing is also often sharply
delimited, and is called the "embolium;" in the great family Capsidae
and a few others, the outer apical part of the corium is differentiated
from the rest of the surface, and is termed the "cuneus." In
Plataspides, one of the divisions in which the alar organs are entirely
covered by the scutellum, they are modified in a very remarkable
manner. In the Homoptera the divisions named above do not exist,
and the wings in repose are placed in a different position, as stated
in our definition of the Order. It is said to be very difficult to
homologise the wing-nervures of Hemiptera, and nothing appears to
be known as to the mode of their development.

The alar organs in Hemiptera exhibit a very frequent form of variation


within the limits of the same species; this has not yet been
elucidated.[474] In some cases in the Heteroptera nearly all the
individuals of a generation may have the wings aborted; sometimes
this occurs as a local variation. In Aphidae the occurrence of winged
and wingless individuals is very common, and has even become an
important factor in their extraordinary life cycles. (See Chermes, etc.,
subsequently.)

Internal anatomy.—The alimentary canal presents considerable


diversity and some remarkable features. There is a slender tube-like
oesophagus and a large crop. It is difficult to assign any of the parts
posterior to this to the divisions usual in other Insects, and it is said
that the distinction of parts histologically is as vague as it is
anatomically. In the Heteroptera the Malpighian tubes open into two
(or one) vesicular dilatations seated immediately in front of the short
rectum: between this point and the crop there may be a very
elongate, slender portion with one or more dilatations, these parts
apparently replacing the true or chylific stomach. There is no gizzard.
In the Homoptera the relations of the divisions of the alimentary
canal are even more puzzling; the canal is elongated and forms
coils, and these are connected with tissues and tunics so as to make
their dissection extremely difficult. List says that there are great
differences in the alimentary canal among the members of the one
family Coccidae. There are usually four Malpighian tubes, but in
Coccidae there is only one pair, and in Aphidae none. The excretory
cells of these tubes are in Hemiptera of remarkably large size. There
is a large development of salivary glands, at least two pairs existing.
There can be little doubt that some of their products are used for
purposes of injection, as already described, though Künckel came to
the conclusion that the saliva when placed in living plants is totally
innocuous.[475]

The ganglia of the nervous system are all concentrated in the thorax
and head. In some cases (in various Homoptera) the infra-
oesophageal ganglion is placed at a distance from the supra-
oesophageal ganglion, and may even be united with the thoracic
mass of ganglia (Orthezia, etc.); in this case the chitinous framework
of the mouth-parts is interposed between the supra- and the infra-
oesophageal ganglia. In Pentatoma all the three ganglionic masses
are brought into close proximity, but in Nepa the thoracic mass of
ganglia and the infra-oesophageal ganglion are widely separated.

The ovarian tubes vary greatly in number: according to List in


Orthezia cataphracta the number differs considerably in different
individuals, and even in the two ovaries of the same individual, the
number being usually two. The testes are not placed in a common
tunic, though they are frequently approximated or even contiguous.
[476]
The smell of bugs is notorious. In many species it is not unpleasant,
though as a rule it is decidedly offensive. It is a remarkable fact that
the structures connected with the production of this odour are
different in many cases in the young and in the adult. The odour
emitted by the latter proceeds from a sac seated at the base of the
abdomen, and opening exteriorly by means of an orifice on each
side of the metasternum; while in the young there are two glands
situated more dorsally and a little more backwards, and opening on
two of the dorsal plates of the abdomen (Fig. 255, A).[477] In the
young the dorsum of the abdomen, where the stink-glands open, is
exposed, but this part in the adult is covered by the wings. The
odorific apparatus is specially characteristic of Heteroptera, and
Künckel states that there is so much variety that generic and even
specific characters might be drawn from conditions of the stink-
glands. As a rule they are most constantly present in the plant-
feeding forms; in some essentially carnivorous forms (Reduviidae,
Nepidae, Notonectidae) they are entirely absent. The offensive
matter emitted by Notonecta is of a different nature, and is probably
anal in origin.

Metamorphosis or postembryonic development.—In the


language of the systematists of metamorphosis, Hemiptera are said
to be Homomorpha Paurometabola—that is, the young differ but little
from the adult. According to Brauer's generalisations they are
Menorhynchous, Oligonephrous, Pterygogenea, i.e. they have a
sucking mouth that does not change during life, few Malpighian
tubes, and are winged in the adult state. It is generally admitted that
the Homoptera do not completely agree with Heteroptera in respect
of the metamorphosis, it being more marked in the former, and in
Coccidae attaining (as we shall mention when discussing that family)
nearly if not quite the condition of complete metamorphosis of a
peculiar kind. Unfortunately we are in almost complete ignorance as
to the details of the life-histories and development of Heteroptera, so
that we can form no generalised opinion as to what the post-
embryonic development really is in them, but there are grounds for
supposing that considerable changes take place, and that these are
chiefly concentrated on the last ecdysis. The young of some bugs
bear but little resemblance to the adult; the magnificently-coloured
species of Eusthenes (Fig. 255), before they attain the adult
condition are flat, colourless objects, almost as thin as a playing-
card; it is well known that the extraordinary structures that cover and
conceal the body in Plataspides, Scutellerides, Membracides, etc.,
are developed almost entirely at the last moult: it is not so well
known that some of these changes occur with much rapidity. A very
interesting account of the processes of colour-change, as occurring
in Poecilocapsus lineatus at the last ecdysis, has been given by
Lintner,[478] and from this it appears that the characteristic coloration
of the imago is entirely developed in the course of about two hours,
forming a parallel in this respect with Odonata. When we come to
deal with Aphidae we shall describe the most complex examples of
cycles of generations that exist in the whole of the animal kingdom.

Fossil Hemiptera.—Hemiptera are believed to have existed in the


Palaeozoic epoch, but the fossils are not numerous, and opinions
differ concerning them. Eugereon hockingi, a Permian fossil, was
formerly supposed to be a Homopterous Insect, but it is very
anomalous, and its claim to a position in Hemiptera is denied by
Brauer,[479] who considers it to be Orthopterous. It is now generally
recognised that this fossil requires complete reconsideration.
Another Permian fossil, Fulgorina, is admitted to be Homopterous by
Scudder, Brauer and Brongniart. Scudder thinks the Carboniferous
Phthanocoris was an Archaic Heteropterous Insect, and if correct
this would demonstrate that both of the two great Sub-Orders of
Hemiptera existed in Palaeozoic times. Brauer, however, is inclined
to refer this fossil to Homoptera, and Brongniart[480] speaks of it as
being without doubt a Fulgorid. Dictyocicada, Rhipidioptera and
Meganostoma, from the Carboniferous shales of Commentry, have
also been referred to Fulgoridae by Brongniart, but the evidence of
their alliance with this group is far from satisfactory. In the Secondary
epoch numerous Hemiptera existed, and are referred to several of
the existing families. They come chiefly from the Oolite. In the
Eocene of the Isle of Wight a fossil has been discovered that is
referred to the existing Homopterous genus Triecphora.
We are not entitled to conclude more from these facts than that
Homoptera probably appeared before Heteroptera, and date back as
far as the Carboniferous epoch.

Classification and families.—No complete catalogue of Hemiptera


exists, but one by M. Severin is in course of publication. It is
probable that there are about 18,000 species at present described,
two-thirds of this number being Heteroptera. In Britain we have about
430 species of Heteroptera and 600 of Homoptera. The classification
of the Order is not in a very advanced condition. The following table
exhibits the views of Schiödte[481] in a modified form:—

Front of head not touching the coxae. .......... I. Heteroptera.


Front of head much inflexed so as to be in contact with the coxae. .......... II.
Homoptera.

Sub-Order I. Heteroptera.

Posterior coxae nearly globose, partly embedded in cavities, and having a


rotatory movement. Mostly terrestrial forms. .......... 1. Trochalopoda.
Posterior coxae not globose, larger, and not embedded; their articulation
with sternum almost hinge-like. Posterior aspect of hind femur usually
more or less modified for the reception of the tibia when closed on it:
mostly aquatic forms. .......... 2. Pagiopoda.

Division 1. Trochalopoda.

This division includes the majority of the families of Heteroptera—viz. the


whole of the terrestrial families except Saldidae, and it also includes
Nepidae, a family of water-bugs.

Division 2. Pagiopoda.
This includes the six purely aquatic families of Heteroptera, except Nepidae,
which appear to have very little connection with the other aquatic bugs.
The only terrestrial Insects included in the family are the Saldidae; in
these the femora are not modified as they are in the aquatic forms.
Hemiptera that live on the surface of water, not in the water, are classed
with the terrestrial species. With these exceptions this arrangement
agrees with that of Gymnocerata and Cryptocerata as usually
adopted,[482] and therefore followed in the following pages. Schiödte's
characters, moreover, do not divide his two divisions at all sharply.

Sub-Order II. Homoptera.

Tarsi usually three-jointed Series Trimera.


" " two-jointed " Dimera.
" " of one joint " Monomera.

The classification of Homoptera is in a most unsatisfactory state;[483] no two


authors are agreed as to the families to be adopted in the series
Trimera. We have recognised only five—viz. Cicadidae, Fulgoridae,
Membracidae, Cercopidae, and Jassidae. The Dimera consists of
Psyllidae, Aphidae, Aleurodidae; and the Monomera of Coccidae only. It
is usual to associate the Dimera and Monomera together under the
name of either Phytophthires or Sternorhyncha, but no satisfactory
definition can be given of these larger groups, though it seems probable
that the families of which they are composed are natural and distinct.

Sub-Order I. Heteroptera.

Series 1. Gymnocerata.

The majority of the terrestrial families of Heteroptera form the series


Gymnocerata, in which the antennae are conspicuous, and can be
moved about freely in front of the head, while in Cryptocerata they
are hidden. The series Gymnocerata includes all the terrestrial
Heteroptera, and the two families, Hebridae and Hydrometridae,
which live on the surface of the water or in very damp places; while
Cryptocerata includes all the forms that live under water.

Fig. 259—Phloea corticata. South America.

Fam. 1. Pentatomidae.—Scutellum very large, at least half as long


as the abdomen, often covering the whole of the after-body and alar
appendages. Antennae often five-jointed. Proboscis-sheath four-
jointed. Ocelli two. Each tarsal claw with an appendage.—This, the
largest and most important family of the Heteroptera, includes
upwards of 4000 species, and an immense variety of forms. It is
divided into no less than fourteen sub-families. The species of one of
these, Plataspides, are remarkable for their short, broad forms, and
the peculiar condition of the alar organs, which are so completely
concealed by the great scutellum that it is difficult to believe the
Insects are not entirely apterous. The head is usually inconspicuous
though broad, but in a few forms it is armed with horns. Though this
sub-family includes upwards of 200 species, and is very widely
distributed in the Old World, it has no representatives in America.
The Scutellerides also have the body covered by the scutellum, but
their organs of flight are less peculiar than they are in the
Plataspides; the Insects of this sub-family are highly remarkable on
account of their varied and frequently vivid coloration; some of them
are metallic, and the colour of their integuments differs greatly in
some cases, according to whether the specimen is wet or dry; hence
the appearance after death is often very different from that of the
living specimen. These Insects are extremely numerous in species.
The sub-family Phloeides (Fig. 259), on the contrary, includes only
three or four South American species: they have no resemblance at
all to other Pentatomidae; they are flat, about an inch long, and look
like scales of bark, in this respect agreeing with Ledra and some
other Homoptera. The South American sub-family Cyrtocorides (Fig.
260) is of equally small extent; the species are of strange irregular
shapes, for which we can find no reason. The Tessaratomides
includes many of the largest Hemiptera-Heteroptera, some of its
members attaining two inches in length.

The great family Pentatomidae, containing about 400 species, is


represented in Britain by about 36 native species, the most
interesting of which are perhaps those of the genus Acanthosoma.
De Geer noticed long ago that the female of A. griseum exhibits
great solicitude for its young, and his statement has since been
confirmed by Mr. Parfitt and the Rev. J. Hellins, who found that the
mother not only protects the eggs but also the young, and that for a
considerable time after hatching.[484]

Fig. 260—Cyrtocoris monstrosus. South America, × 3.

Very little is known as to the life-histories of Pentatomidae. In some


cases the young are very different in appearance from the adults.
The peculiar great scutellum is not developed till the mature
condition is reached. But little attention has been given to the habits
of Pentatomidae; it is generally considered that they draw their
nutriment from plants; the American Euthyrhynchus floridanus has,
however, been noticed to suck the honey-bee, and we think it
probable that a good many Pentatomids will be found to attack
Insects.

The term Pentatomidae as applied to this family is of modern origin:


in most books the equivalent group is called Scutata, or Scutati, and
the term Pentatomidae is restricted in these works to the sub-family
called Pentatomides in the system we adopt.
Fam. 2. Coreidae.—Scutellum not reaching to the middle of the
body; proboscis-sheath four-jointed; ocelli present; antennae
generally elongate and four-jointed, inserted on the upper parts of
the sides of the head; femora not knobbed at the tip.—The members
of this great family are easily recognised by the above characters;
formerly it was called Supericornia in connection with the
characteristic position of the antennae. About 1500 species are
known, and they are arranged in no less than twenty-nine sub-
families. Many of them are Insects of large size, and they frequently
have a conspicuous disc, or dilatation, on one of the joints of the
antennae.
Fig. 261.—Diactor bilineatus. South America. × 3⁄2.
Fig. 262—Phyllomorpha laciniata, carrying some of its eggs. Spain.

Another very curious and, as yet, inexplicable peculiarity very


commonly met with among them, is that the hind legs may be of
great size and deformed; either the femora or the tibiae, or both,
being very much distorted or armed with projections. Brilliant colour
is here comparatively rare, the general tone being indefinite tints of
browns, greys, or smoky colours. The South American genus
Holymenia (Copius of older authors) consists of slender forms,
having the elytra transparent even on the basal part like Homoptera;
this and some other peculiarities give the species of this genus a
certain resemblance to Insects of other Orders; Westwood says that
Diateina holymenoides (Diptera) greatly resembles a bug of the
genus Holymenia. The tropical American genus Diactor consists of a
few species of elegant colour having the hind legs very peculiarly
shaped, the tibiae being flattened and expanded in a sail-like
manner, and ornamented with agreeable colours different from those
on the rest of the body; they are made more conspicuous by the
femora being remarkably long and thin; it is probable that they are
used as ornaments. The subfamily Phyllomorphides consists of
about a dozen species, and is found in several of the western parts
of the Eastern hemisphere, one species, P. laciniata, occurring in
Southern Europe. This Insect is of very delicate texture, and the
sides of the body are directed upwards and deeply divided so that a
sort of basin is formed, of which the dorsum of the body is the floor;
the Insect is very spinose, and is thus enabled to carry its eggs, the

You might also like