Creative People at Work
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Book Overview
To demystify creative work without reducing it to simplistic formulas, Doris Wallace and Howard Gruber, one of the world's foremost authorities on creativity, have produced a unique book exploring the creative process in the arts and sciences. The book's original "evolving systems approach" treats creativity as purposeful work and integrates cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and motivational aspects of the creative process. Twelve revealing case studies explore the work of such diverse people as William Wordsworth, Albert Einstein, Jean Piaget, Anais Nin, and Charles Darwin. The case study approach is discussed in relation to other methods such as biography, autobiography, and psychobiology. Emphasis is given to the uniqueness of each creative person; the social nature of creative work is also treated without losing the sense of the individual. A final chapter considers the relationship between creativity and morality in the nuclear age. In addition to developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists, this study offers fascinating insights for all readers interested in the history of ideas, scientific discovery, artistic innovation, and the interplay of intuition, inspiration, and purposeful work.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0195077180
ISBN13:9780195077186
Release Date:June 1992
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Length:320 Pages
Weight:1.05 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 6.1" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Excellent! Worth the Price, if you're serious
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
Interesting approach and worth the price, if you're serious. The editors have invited, or collected, analysis and/or interpretation from a variety of writers so that each of the individuals discussed in the book is seen from the perspective of a different "theory"--if you will--of creativity. As a reader, therefore, one has an overview of approaches to creativity. What sets this book apart is the opening text, written by the editors, about creativity and how the boundaries broken by creators differ according to the time in which the creator lived. They also maintain a respect for the mystery of creativity, and have interesting commentary on the successes and failures of different approaches that have been made in understanding it. I've read seriously about creativity and genius for the past 15 years; this is a book for the serious reader, which is a relief given the onslaught of books promising to make the reader "more creative" or books that fail to present creativity as a kind of dialogue among wild freedom, cool assessment, knowledge of and skill in one's field, and the metaphoric willingness to jump off a cliff and sometimes fail in spectacular ways and other times taking off.
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