“What Occurs in Egoless Creation with Pattern Languages” (PURPLSOC2017)

Associate Professor
Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University
Ph.D in Media and Governance
What Occurs in Egoless Creation
with Pattern Languages
Takashi Iba
Ayaka Yoshikawa
Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Christopher Alexander on
Egoless Creation with a Pattern Language
What Occurs in Egoless Creation
with Pattern Languages
Writers & Zen Master on
Egoless Creation
Creative Systems Theory

“When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always
a mastermind behind it. It is so ﬁlled with the will of its
maker that there is no room for its own nature.”
/
(p.36)
Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building,
Oxford University Press, 1979
Christopher Alexander said

“the quality without a name cannot be made, but only
generated by a process. It can flow from your actions; it
can flow with the greatest ease; but it cannot be made. It
cannot be contrived, thought out, designed. It happens
when it flows out from the process of creation of its own
accord.”
/
(p.156)

“When a thing is made, it has the will of the marker in it.
But when it is generated, it is generated, freely, by the
operation of egoless rules, acting on the reality of the
situation, and giving birth, of their own accord. …”
/
(p.160)

“Get rid of the ideas which come into your mind. Get rid of
pictures you have seen in magazines, friends’ houses …
Insist on the pattern, and nothing else. The pattern, and
the real situation, together, will create the proper form,
within your mind, without your trying to do it, if you will
allow it to happen. This is the power of the language, and
the reason why the language is creative.”
/
(p.397)

“To do it, you must let go of your control and let the pattern
do the work. You cannot do this, normally, because you are
trying to make decisions without having conﬁdence in the
basis for them. But if the patterns you are using are familiar
to you, if they make sense to you, if you are conﬁdent that
they make sense, and that they are profound, then there is
no reason to be afraid of giving up your control over the
design. If the pattern makes sense, you do not need to
control the design.”
/
(p.399)

“the order of the language is the order which the patterns
need to operate on one another to create a whole. It is a
morphological order, similar to the order which must be
present in an evolving embryo.
And it is this very same order which also allows each pattern
to develop its full intensity. When we have the order of the
language right, we can pay attention to one pattern at a
time, with full intensity, because the interference between
patterns, and the conﬂicts between patterns, are reduced to
almost nothing by the order of the language.”
/
(p.401)

“We are ready, now, to see just how a sequence of
patterns can create a building in our minds. It happens
with surprising ease. The building almost “makes itself,”
just as a sequence seems to when we speak.”
/
(p.407)

“Your mind is a medium within which the creative spark
that jumps between the pattern and the world can happen.
You yourself are only the medium for this creative spark,
not its originator.”
/
(p.397)

“It is a fearsome thing, like diving into water. And yet it is
exhilarating — because you aren’t controlling it. You are
only the medium in which the patterns come to life, and of
their own accord give birth to something new.”
/
(p.426)

“There is a kernel at the center of the timeless way, a
central teaching, which I have not described till now.”
“The essence of this kernel is the fact that we can only
make a building live when we are egoless.”
/
(p.535)

“To make a building egoless, like this, the builder must let
go of all his willful images, and start with a void.”
“you must start with nothing in your mind”
“You are able to do this only when you no longer fear that
nothing will happen, and you can therefore afford to let go
of your images.”
/
(p.538)

“For a person who is unfree, the language seems like
mere information, because he feels that he must be in
control, that he must inject the creative impulse, that
he must supply the image which controls the design.”
/
(p.539)

“Once you learn that the pattern language and the site
together, will genuinely generate from inside your mind,
from nothing, you can trust yourself to go of your images
entirely.”
/
(p.538)

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Scribner, 2000 / 2010

“I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but
I have never demanded of a set of characters that
they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to
do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is
what I visualized. In most, however, it’s something I
never expected.”
Stephen King said

“For me, what happens to characters as a story
progresses depends solely on what I discover about
them as I go along — how they grow, in other words.
Sometimes they grow a little. If they grow a lot, they
begin to inﬂuence the course of the story instead of the
other way around.”
Stephen King said

“The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow
(and transcribe them, of course).”
Stephen King said

Haruki Murakami, Hayao Kawai, Haruki Murakami Goes to
Meet Hayao Kawai, Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln, 2016

“When I start writing, I don’t have a rough sketch of the
story or anything like that. I just immerse myself in the act
of writing and then, as they say, the ending kind of comes
naturally. And since I’m supposed to be a professional
write, there’s always an ending.”
Haruki Murakami, Hayao Kawai, Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet
Hayao Kawai, Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln, 2016
(p.63)
Haruki Murakami said

“I feel like that novel has already moved on ahead and
now I’m chasing after the images in it.”
(p.68)

“I think writing novels is similar to playing a role-playing
video game. … But what’s decisively different from role-
playing games at the game center is that in writing, the
program that you are using is one that you yourself made.
As you create the program, you are simultaneously acting
as a player. And as you the game, your memory of
programming is completely erased. Your left hand doesn’t
know what the right hand’s doing, and vice versa. For me,
this is the ultimate game and also a form of self-healing.
Actually doing it, though, is very difﬁcult.”
(p.62)

“While we are fully aware of and observing deeply an
object, the boundary between the subject who observes
and the object being observed gradually dissolves, and
the subject and object become one. This is the essence of
meditation.”
“Only when we penetrate an object and become one with
it can we understand. It is not enough to stand outside
and observe an object.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Transformation and Healing: Sutra on the
Four Establishments of Mindfulness, Parallax Press, 2006
(p.10)
Thich Nhat Hanh said

“If you want to see and understand, we have to penetrate
and become one with the object. If we stand outside of it
in order to observe it, we cannot really see and
understand it. The work of observation is the work of
penetrating and transforming.”
“If we continue in our mindful observation, there will no
longer be a duality between observer and observed.”
(p.121)

Ryodo Yamashita and Issho Fujita, Updating
Buddism, in Japanese, Gentosha, 2013
Ryodo Yamashita said
After removing all “cloud” of thinking mind, there remains
the “sky” that can observe the world.

Takashi Iba, "An Autopoietic Systems
Theory for Creativity”, Procedia -
Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol.2,
Issue 4, 2010, pp.6610-6625
Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference 2009
Procedia
Social and
Behavioral
Sciences
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
COINs2009: Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference
An Autopoietic Systems Theory for Creativity
Takashi Ibaab
aMIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Cambridge MA, USA
bFaculty of Policy Management, Keio University, Japan
Abstract
In this paper, a new, non-psychological and non-sociological approach to understanding creativity is proposed.
The approach is based on autopoietic system theory, where an autopoietic system is defined as a unity whose
organization is defined by a particular network of production processes of elements. While the theory was
originally proposed in biology and then applied to sociology, I have applied it to understand the nature of
creation, and called it "Creative Systems Theory". A creative system is an autopoietic system whose element
is "discovery", which emerges only when a synthesis of three selections has occurred: "idea", "association",
and "consequence". With using these concepts, we open the way to understand creation itself separated from
psychic and social aspects of creativity. On this basis, the coupling between creative, psychic, and social
systems is discussed. I suggest, in this paper, the future of creativity studies, re-defining a discipline
"Creatology" for inquiring creative systems and propose an interdisciplinary field as "Creative Sciences" for
interdisciplinary connections among creatology, psychology, and so on.
Keywords; creativity; systems theory; autopoiesis; pattern language
1. Introduction
In this paper, a new, non-psychological and non-sociological approach to understanding creativity
is proposed. The approach is based on autopoietic system theory, where an autopoietic system is
defined as a unity whose organization is defined by a particular network of production processes
of elements. While the theory was originally proposed in biology and then applied to sociology, I
have applied it to understand the nature of creation, and called it "Creative Systems Theory". A
creative system is an autopoietic system whose element is "discovery", which emerges only when a

Takashi Iba, "An Autopoietic Systems Theory for Creativity”,
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol.2, Issue 4, 2010, pp.6610-6625

Creative Systems Theory 
based on the autopoietic systems theory
A creative process is defined as an autopoietic system whose
elements are discoveries.
Creative process is a (re-) production network of discoveries.
Each discovery is emerged only when a synthesis of the following
three selection occurs: idea, association, and finding.
Creative Systems Theory 

Creative Process as Chain of Discoveries

Creative Process - Autopoietic System

“the distinction between action and experience resides in
the application of the distinction between self-reference and
hetero-reference”
“Experience appears to be determined by the environment”
“If, on the other hand, we are dealing with participation
through action, then the system determines the
environment.”
Action and Experience in Systems Theory
Niklas Lehmann Art as a Social System, Stanford University Press, 2000
(p.78)
Action
Experience
Autopoietic
System
Autopoietic
System

Chain of discoveries
following the result
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

Action
Experience
Action
writing
making
“the quality without a name cannot be made, but only generated
by a process. It can flow from your actions; it can flow with the
greatest ease; but it cannot be made. It cannot be contrived,
thought out, designed. It happens when it flows out from the
process of creation of its own accord.”
/
(p.156)

“Your mind is a medium within which the creative spark
that jumps between the pattern and the world can happen.
You yourself are only the medium for this creative spark,
not its originator.”
/
(p.397)
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

“We are ready, now, to see just how a sequence of
patterns can create a building in our minds. It happens
with surprising ease. The building almost “makes itself,”
just as a sequence seems to when we speak.”
/
(p.407)
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

“The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow
(and transcribe them, of course).”
Stephen King said
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

“I feel like that novel has already moved on ahead and
now I’m chasing after the images in it.”
(p.68)
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

“Within the sequence which the language deﬁnes, you can
focus on each pattern by itself, one at a time, certain that those
patterns which come later in the sequence will ﬁt into the design
which has evolved so far. You can pay full attention to each
pattern; you can let it have its full intensity. Then you can give
each pattern just that strange intensity which makes the pattern
live.”
/
(p.402)

Creative Process - Autopoietic System
“should be”

“In the same way, groups of people can conceive their
larger public buildings, on the ground, by following a
common pattern language, almost as if they had a
single mind.”
/
(p.427)

“And in this sense, the language is the instrument which
brings about the state of mind, which I call egoless.”
/
(Alexander, 1979, p.546)

“it is just your pattern language which helps you become
egoless.”
/
(Alexander, 1979, p.543)

“We have seen earlier that when an activity is thoroughly engrossing,
there is not enough attention left over to allow a person to consider
either the past or the future, or any other temporarily irrelevant stimuli.
One item that disappears from awareness deserves special
mention, because in normal life we spend so much time thinking
about it: our own self.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper Perennial, 1990 / 2008 p.62
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

“A third characteristic of ﬂow experiences has been variously
described as “loss of ego,” “self-forgetfulness,” “loss of self-
consciousness,” and even “transcendence of individuality” and
“fusion with the world” (Maslow, 1971, pp.65,70).”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play, Jossey-Bass, 1975 / 2000 p.42
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Action
Experience
Action
writing
making

“While we are fully aware of and observing deeply an
object, the boundary between the subject who observes
and the object being observed gradually dissolves, and
the subject and object become one. This is the essence of
meditation.”
(p.10)

“Writing novels is in large part an act of self-healing.”
(p.62)

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