PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

4. THE RISE AND FALL OF CREATIVITY
called a perceived target, since competition may prevent one from
reaching it. He then proceeded to study hundreds of well-documented
artists and scientists. In each case he took the total number of creations
known for each of these people, graphed them over time, and determined
the S-curve which would best connect these data points. He
found that most people died close to having realized their perceived potential.
In his words:
To illustrate further what I mean by the perceived potential, consider
the amount of beans a man has in his bag and the amount left when
he finally dies. Looking at the cases mentioned here ... I find that the
leftover beans are usually 5 to 10 percent of the total. Apparently
when Mozart died at thirty-five years of age, he had already said
what he had to say. 1
The idea is intriguing. Obviously people’s productivity increases and
decreases with time. Youngsters cannot produce much because they
have to learn first. Old people may become exhausted of ideas, energy
and motivation. It makes intuitive sense that one’s productivity goes
through a life cycle over one’s lifetime, slowing down as it approaches
the end. The cumulative productivity—the total number of one’s
works—could very well look like an S-curve over time. But the possibility
of mathematically formulating an individual’s peak level of
productivity and its inevitable decline before the person dies carries an
unprecedented fascination. Marchetti claims to have investigated close
to one hundred individuals and found their productivity to proceed
along S-curves. I felt compelled to conduct my own investigations. One
reason would be to check Marchetti’s claims; another was to exploit this
approach, if confirmed, for my own interests.
To start with, I had to find unambiguous cases of well-documented
productivity. It is difficult to quantify productivity. The bestdocumented
individuals are world-renowned artists and scientists. But
even then, what constitutes one unit of productivity? By some accounts I
found 758 compositions attributed to Mozart, some of them undated,
others unfinished or later incorporated into larger works. Granted,
composing a minuet at the age of six may not have been a lesser task
than a requiem at thirty-five, but should I count every one of the 758
works which have been unearthed and cataloged by zealous Mozart
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