Aha! Moment

A Scientist's Take on Creativity

AvDavid Jones

Häftad, Engelska, 2012

274 kr

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Beskrivning

This book is about having ideas and-a much longer haul-making them work. David Jones, best known for his Daedalus column, tells many stories about creators and their creations, including his own fantastical-seeming contributions to mainstream science-such as unrideable bicycles and chemical gardens in space. His theory of creativity endows each of us with a Random-Ideas Generator, a Censor, and an Observer-Reasoner. Jones applies the theory to a wide range of weird scientific experiments that he has conducted for serious scientific papers, for challenging printed expositions, and for presentations to a TV audience. He even suggests new ones, not yet tried! Creativity is as essential to science as curiosity, physical intuition, and shrewd deduction from well-planned experiments. But, says Jones, ingenuity is very uncertain-even for the greatest inventors, about 80 percent of ideas fail. Jokiness can help, and so can lots of random data. Jones has copious clever advice that will help you have that madly brilliant private thought in the first place-and will encourage you to take it further. Neither dense nor demanding, The Aha!Moment is engrossing, edifying, and scientifically serious; yet it is lightly written, has many jokes, and asks lots of silly questions. As Jones shows, it can often pay to take an absurd idea seriously.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2012-03-20
Mått:152 x 229 x 17 mm
Vikt:386 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:280
Förlag:Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:9781421403311

Utforska kategorier

Populärvetenskap inom Naturvetenskap och teknik
Fysik inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

Mer om författaren

Now retired, David Jones continues to publish challenging articles, mostly for Chemistry World. He has worked in academia, industry, and television. A constant stimulus for his creativity was his weekly Daedalus column, probably the longest-running joke in science. Daedalus was the court jester in the Palace of Science; he appeared in New Scientist, Nature, and the Guardian newspaper. Each week Daedalus took some well-known bit of science and pushed it to a clever and often preposterous extreme-which sometimes came true. Daedalus frequently leaks into The Aha! Moment.

Recensioner i media

The Aha! Moment is not bogged down with scientific detail and tech talk; in fact, it asks a multitude of absurd questions meant to promote innovative and logical brainstorming. Jones gives dozens of examples from his own body of work... While his examples dominate more than half of the book, they are intriguing and stimulating, acting as a means to promote creativity in fellow scientists and artists. -- Aimee Jodoin Foreword Reviews A top pick not to be limited to science holdings, this will reach many a general-interest reader with its fascinating, readable and lively insights. Midwest Book Review David Jones sees himself as the court jester of science and, as with jesters of old, he is allowed to say things that other mortals might think but dare not speak... Most of the book is an eclectic blend of Jones the chemist and Daedalus the mad scientist and together they make entertaining reading. You'd be mad not to buy it -- John Emsley Chemistry World A practical blueprint to bolster one's own creative process, a treasure map to innovative insights. -- Bob Grant The Scientist A fascinating insight into one man's never-ending search for ideas. -- Jessica Griggs New Scientist

Innehållsförteckning

Preface: Creativity in My Career1. A Theory of Creativity2. The Creative Environment3. Thoughts on the Random Ideas Generator4. Intuition and Odd Notions5. Creativity in Scientific Papers6. Heat and Gravity7. Astronomical Musings8. Rotating Things9. Explosions and Fuses10. Tricks with Optics11. Properties of Materials12. Physical Phenomena I Have Noticed13. Odd Notions I Have Played With14. Literary Information15. Inventions We Need but Don't Have16. A List of Silly Questions17. A Short Guide to Being CreativeNotesIndex