The Degeneracy of the Creative Process: the diverse musical structures and movement repertoires of West Sumatran and Afro-Bahian fight-dancing

Models of creativity in psychology are based on generative processes. However, the theoretical formulation of degeneracy proposed by George Gamow in the 1950s is more apt for describing creative processes. Gamow’s definition of degeneracy was introduced to biology from physics in 1954 and refers to the structural diversity underlying functional similarity. Due to negative associations the term ‘degeneracy’ attracted during the 19th and 20th century, Gamow’s concept fell outside the purview of the social sciences. Nonetheless, Gamow’s conceptual operationalization of degeneracy has proven insightful for genetics, immunology, neuroimaging, and evolutionary systems modeling. In biological systems, the loss of a genetic component can be compensated by redundant elements (the presence of other identical components), or by degenerate elements (structurally different components that perform the same function). In a biological system, degeneracy can be determined by deleting an element and observing if its deletion is accommodated by a net-flux of the system. At the cultural level, degeneracy can be ethically determined by comparing the different structures a single community manifests at different times or through a cross-cultural comparison of two different but contemporaneous societies that manifest structurally different but functionally similar activity with respect to context. In this study, performances of combat-dancing during annual ceremonies in Salvador da Bahia and West Sumatra are considered as evidence of degeneracy at the cultural level. Brazilian and Indonesian fight-dancing exhibit different musical and movement structures, but fulfill similar functional roles within specific cultural contexts. Degeneracy, once characterised at the cultural level, is a potent analytical tool that assists an understanding of creativity and human diversity.