From Contingency to Creative Attractor Transition: Perturbation Capture and Turbulence-Like Dynamics in Generative-Relational Systems

This paper develops a preliminary dynamical hypothesis of creativity centered on the conversion of contingent perturbations into persistent changes in a generative system. It distinguishes stochastic variation from dynamically consequential contingency: abundant random variation may remain local when perturbations are rapidly damped or absorbed by an established attractor. Creative reorganization is instead treated as regime-dependent. Systems operating in metastable or near-critical regions may exhibit greater susceptibility to small disturbances, although criticality is used here as an operational hypothesis rather than a claim of a unique physical critical point. The paper introduces perturbation capture for the retention and relational incorporation of a contingent event such that it can affect later generation. Under sufficient susceptibility, capture may combine with nonlinear amplification, cross-scale propagation, historical retention, and feedback on future sensitivity to destabilize an epistemic attractor and reorganize subsequent generative dynamics. The term turbulence-like is used cautiously for such sustained multiscale, history-dependent dynamics and is not intended to identify epistemic systems with fluid turbulence. A Generative Relational formulation allows states, relations, and the effective generator to co-evolve, so that a perturbation can alter both current output and future production. The framework yields testable predictions for human and artificial creativity and treats their differences as empirical questions of perturbation exposure, capture, amplification, retention, regime regulation, and generator reconfiguration rather than as essential differences between biological and artificial agents.