The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes The World
Defining creativity can provide us with the necessary frame of reference to develop better understanding of what creativity is, and its impact on innovation and humanity. It is often assumed that a new product or a new idea reflects originality, but does it?
What is this befuddling human phenomenon we call creativity that has immensely contributed to the advancement of our species?
Is creativity a term often used to indicate the intrinsic fuel that ignites a new human idea or innovation?
Could new innovations be nothing more than a culmination of accumulated footnotes to antecedent thoughts and discoveries generated by our predecessors and ancient civilizations?
Is creativity exclusive to the ingenious minds?
Does the brain crave new information in order to make sense of a changing world, or does it simply meld existing elements to synthesize new designs?
Does the future compel us into a constant reconstruction of the world as an adaptation mechanism?
To answer many of these complicated questions, Anthony Brandt (a composer and professor at Rice University Shepherd school of Music) and David Eagleman (neuroscientist and a New York Times bestselling author) have successfully and brilliantly conveyed in their new book, titled The Runaway Species: How Creativity Remakes the World, their thesis on the blend that leads to creativity using a subtle dialectical argument to elucidate what creativity is about.
Their volume depicts creativity beyond its usual descriptions, and examines the scientific basis behind the bourgeoning of the creative mind. This informative yet jargon-free book consists of three parts and thirteen concise but meticulous chapters.
Part I introduces the human need for creativity and the process that fecundates new ideas through the core components like bending, breaking, and blending. In addition, Part I explores how new ideas spark and develop, and how human innovations are shaped by location, culture, and time. Part II explores key features of the creative mentality ranging from propagation of options to tolerance of risks, while Part III is more directed at companies and classrooms, highlighting strategies to foster creativity in our future leaders and progeny.
Applying a wide range of disciplines including neuroscience, art, history, and music, Brandt and Eagleman attempt to discern what creativity might be. Through the use of eloquent, precise, and intelligible writing style the authors effectively relay their insights. In addition, they adeptly take the reader on a scenic course into the creative mind as they offer research-based material, analogies, illustrations, and speculations entwined with scientific knowledge in a cohesive configuration.
Furthermore, this volume is about the venture that depicts creativity beyond its usual descriptions, and examines the scientific basis for sparking innovations. The authors also emphasize that creativity is all about the inner workings of the human circuitry, which is conducive to creativity and its function leading to a concerted view of inventiveness. Additionally, Brandt and Eagleman convincingly attempt to weld history with creativity and innovation into one entity. They go beyond rhetoric as they attempt to connect to a deeper certainty that binds people to a particular place and culture.
Finally, The Runaway Species: How Creativity Remakes the World is an intriguing and riveting mélange of perspectives that successfully delineates what creativity and innovation are about. It is an outstanding and inspirational volume that will have a broad and global appeal. It will categorically transport the reader into the past and the future fusing them together as one scientific structure, constituting an electrifying and enlightening scholarly reading.