Crosby, Donald A.  "Causality, Time and Creativity: The Essential Role of Novelty" The Pluralist 4, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 46-59. 

Abstract

In this article I emphasize and discuss the critical importance of what William James terms "the notion of essential novelty," the intriguing topic to which I devoted a book called Novelty. As the present article's title indicates, I explore the relations of novelty to the concepts of causality and time and especially to the concept of creativity as I conceive it. In what follows, I devote a section to the relation of novelty to causality and a second one to the relation of novelty with creativity and explain how this connection bears on the concept of creativity. In the final section of the article, I respond to a provocative challenge raised by Peter Gunter in his review of Novelty in The Pluralist 3.1, namely, and of the character and role of novelty within nature, there should be the astounding amount of creativity we find exhibited in the history of our universe.