Contextual biography and the evolving systems approach to creativity

This article describes why the author abandoned nomothetic methods in favor of the more idiographic focus of biography. The author outlines the advantages of contextual biography. In contextual biography, the psychological and existential dimension plays the role of an internal environment that interacts with the other contexts in which the subject evolves. The network of enterprises, a concept proposed by Howard Gruber, is a key aspect of that internal environment. Contextual biography conceptualizes the individual's life in terms of socialization and individuation, in terms of the subject's integration into particular contexts, and in terms of his or her construction of an original position within them. The study of socialization and individuation aims at a perception of the subject's uniqueness that takes into account the decisive role of context, the multiple relations among the intellectual projects that are the focus of scientific biography, the subject's other existential goals, and his or her own self-image and self-awareness. Jean Piaget is used as an example.