Since the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, the High Jump has never been the same. That’s when Dick Fosbury accomplished the fabulous feat of sailing over the crossbar headfirst and backward to earn his coveted Gold Medal! Today, we take it for granted that Fosbury’s Flop has always been the “gold standard” style in the sport. But, it wasn’t. The “scissors” and the “straddle” jumps had been the two dominant styles. How did Fosbury develop this ungainly technique? Was it a stroke of genius? Did he experience a flash of insight – a so-called eureka moment? Was this revolutionary style his and his alone? How did Fosbury’s technique acquire its catchy alliterative moniker? The answers to these questions are quite surprising and force us to consider behavioral innovations such as Fosbury’s from an altogether different perspective – one that applies a natural science approach to both innovative and everyday behavior.

At least 18 months before each presidential election, prospective candidates for the highest office in the United States have, since 1972, flocked to the otherwise unsung midwestern state of Iowa. All of these challengers hope to jumpstart their campaigns with a victory in the Iowa Caucus, held on a single frigid winter evening prior to the upcoming November election. It must have taken astonishing foresight and planning for a small state like Iowa to wangle the first-in-the-nation presidential contest, right? On the contrary! The origin of the Iowa Caucus turns out to be a case study in circumstance and happenstance rather than foresight and planning. Furthermore, the subsequent evolution and likely demise of the Iowa Caucus appear to be highly subject to the influence of accidental and unintended consequences.

The origins of even familiar objects are frequently mired in mystery. The violin is one such example. Nevertheless, we have recently learned much more about the evolution of the violin over time – specifically, its overall shape and the length of its twin sound-holes. The research yielding this increased understanding focused on the makers of the violin, its so-called luthiers, thus putting behavior prominently into the spotlight. Each of the two studies under consideration proposed provocative parallels between structural changes in the violin and the Law of Natural Selection. But, the more appropriate analysis rests on the Law of Effect shaping the behavior of the luthiers. What is revealed is, first, that increasing the length of the sound-holes amplified the acoustic power of the violin, thus leading luthiers to lengthen the sound-holes; and, second, that the aesthetic tastes of their customers led luthiers to modify the overall shapes of their violins.

Why do men go to such trouble to shave off their facial hair? A man’s beard represents an especially salient secondary sexual characteristic: a physical feature that develops at puberty and distinguishes men from women. In nature, such sexual dimorphism has been believed, since Charles Darwin, to participate in so-called sexual selection – females choosing the fittest males based on such characteristics. Thus, according to Darwin’s account, a lion cropping his mane would be tantamount to committing evolutionary suicide. But, that’s exactly what human males do. Why and when they do so raises interesting questions concerning the origins of shaving equipment and technique as well as the changing tastes of both women and men. Cultural change can be a matter of both function and fancy; such change can even trump the physical results of nature itself.

In 1969 Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. In 1983 Michael Jackson moonwalked on the earth. Each of these dramatic episodes was memorable for different reasons. Yet, each illustrated the malleability in movement of which we humans are capable. As well, each feat required many hours of trial-and-error practice before successful performance was achieved. Of course, almost all of us have learned to walk. Yet, we are still learning about that protracted learning process in toddlers and how fraught with hazard it can be. Further insights into learning to walk are being gleaned by studying the locomotor behavior of our evolutionary kin; gorillas have now been found to be capable of walking upright for extended distances. Understanding what contributes to this particular mode of moving could yield new clues into how humans became the most bipedal of all primates.

As do other states, Iowa offers motorists a broad range of optional license plates: some proclaim the driver’s support for a worthy cause; others allow drivers to express pride in their military service; and still others permit collegiate alumni to pledge public allegiance to their alma mater. Against this backdrop of extensive license plate diversity, simple black-and-white license plates suddenly and mysteriously began appearing on Iowa vehicles during the second half of 2019. Not only were other motorists puzzled, so too were law enforcement officers who suspected that these plates might be illegal. The origin and evolution of black-and-white license plates in Iowa will be seen to have put to the test the ingenuity of a small band of motorists as well as the adaptiveness of governmental agencies in pleasing the changing tastes of the motoring public.

“Art is in the eye of the beholder.” Yet, although still photographic images predated moving cinematic images, it took longer for photography to attain widespread artistic and creative appreciation. “Art for the sake of art” assumes that art has no practical purpose. Indeed, some have claimed that “everything useful is ugly.” Perhaps that’s why commercial photography initially overshadowed artistic or creative photography. Famed photographer Ansel Adams succeeded in both worlds: the commercial and artistic. What explains his success? How did he ever take up photography in the first place? How did Adams’ personal development coincide with the evolution of photography as an art form? How and why did Adams embrace environmentalism? And, how did his landscape photography advance the environmental movement in the United States? Answering these questions goes to the very essence of the creative arts and how art conveys meaning to those who behold it.

The present collection of vignettes contains a rich assortment of individual cases, each exemplifying important behavioral innovations. With so much variation, it would seem to be an impossible task to identify any underlying commonalities among them. Nevertheless, I believe that context, consequence, and coincidence can help us understand the origin and evolution of creative behavioral innovations. Along the way, we encountered the challenges posed by multiple individuals arriving at the same behavioral innovation. We considered the profound parallel between the Law of Natural Selection and the Law of Effect. We saw the theoretical emptiness of notions like genius, insight, and intelligent design. We recognized both the benefits and shortcomings of storytelling as a form of persuasive communication. And, we appreciated that a natural science of behavioral innovation is as applicable to nonhuman animals as it is to human beings – all are just making it up as they go along!

Florence Nightingale – widely known as the Lady with the Lamp – is internationally celebrated as the founder of modern nursing. Indeed, Nightingale instituted revolutionary hygienic reforms both during and after the calamitous Crimean War, in which more British troops died from infectious disease than from battle wounds. Far less appreciated is Nightingale’s pivotal role as an innovator in data visualization – a groundbreaking rhetorical system permitting data “to speak for themselves.” How Nightingale evolved from her privileged upbringing as the daughter of a wealthy landed family to a champion of progressive health care reform is an astonishing story – one involving a host of influential collaborators and acquaintances at the highest levels of mathematics and government. Nightingale’s passionate and persuasive powers proved highly successful in contrast to the clumsy efforts of another hygienic reformer, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis. Nightingale’s success confirms Louis Pasteur’s quotation: “chance favors only the prepared mind.”

Modern medicine is constantly making progress to prevent and cure a wealth of serious maladies. Drugs are a key weapon in medicine’s armament. Today, novel pharmaceuticals are marketed at an ever-increasing rate. As new drugs are approved for dispensing to the public, fresh brand names must be contrived for each. This task is both challenging and intricate, often leading to exotic and tongue-twisting monikers like Biktarvy (for HIV), Erleada (for prostate cancer), Ilumya (for plaque psoriasis), Lucemyra (for opioid withdrawal), Aimovig (for migraine), Olumiant (for rheumatoid arthritis), Seysara (for severe acne), and Aemcolo (for diarrhea). What accounts for such weird names? How are those names generated? How are they chosen? How are they approved? It turns out that a strikingly Darwinian process is at work in drug naming, one which is a lucrative business and adds considerable cost to the price of prescription medications.

Professional jockeys are always seeking ways to gain the advantage over their riding rivals. Precisely how the jockey is positioned on the horse turns out to be an extremely important factor – one that has aroused recent scientific interest. One innovation is the so-called monkey crouch. This crouched style over the base of the horse’s neck was actually a drastic departure from the upright riding style that was in vogue until the very end of the nineteenth century. Who began this practice? Was this innovation the result of intelligent design? The answers to these questions vary, with three likely originators coming to the fore: Tod Sloan, Willie Simms, and Harding Cox. Their fascinating stories intersect in England and reveal that the invention of the monkey crouch was not due to foresighted design. The evolutionary processes of variation, selection, and retention seem to have been hard at work in its development.

All history is retrospective. We’re always looking at the past through the lens of later developments. How else could we see it? We are ourselves, as subjects, among those later developments. It’s natural for us to take events that were to a significant extent the product of guesswork, accident, short-term opportunism, and good luck, and of demographic and technological changes whose consequences no one could have foreseen, and shape them into a heroic narrative about artistic breakthrough and social progress. But a legend is just one of the forms that history takes.

Language is an inherently creative process. New words are constantly being coined that add richness to our verbal communications with one another. The origin of words is the central concern of the branch of linguistic science called etymology. This field of study offers us rare glimpses into this creative process. I explore three words derived from dramatic works: malapropism, ignoramus, and robot. The histories of these words are unusually interesting and revealing as to the time and place of their origins. Wit, scorn, and foreboding, respectively, revolve around this trio of “playful” words.

A second horse racing innovation is riding “acey-deucy.” With this technique, the jockey’s left stirrup iron is commonly placed from 2 to 12 inches lower than the right by separately adjusting the attached leather straps. This acey-deucy style confers important advantages on oval tracks, where only left turns are encountered in counterclockwise American races; it permits the horse and jockey to better lean into the turns and to enjoy better strength and balance, thus harnessing the centripetal force of a tight bend. This sounds so scientific that it must have resulted from careful study and planning, right? But, no it didn’t! The origin of riding acey-deucy was actually accidental. Bad fortune became good fortune for riding sensation Jack Westrope, who is now credited with beginning and perfecting this racing innovation. Combined with the monkey crouch, acey-deucy allows the jockey to “fold into” the horse instead of squatting over him.