Doris B. Wallace - Böcker

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 discovery, artistic innovation, and the interplay of intuition, inspiration, and purposeful work.

Inspired by Howard Gruber's Evolving Systems Approach, these studies explore creativity in several domains. The idea that the creative person embodies a system of loosely coupled sub-systems - knowledge, purpose, and affect that work together, is viewed here in different chapters that explore this concept. These include autobiographies of incarcerated youth, curricula for moral and civic responsibility, changing attitudes of readers to text (romance novels), as well as case studies of highly creative individuals, such as George Bernard Shaw. Gruber's approach provides concepts as well as methodological tools which the authors apply to diverse creative processes. This book is a valuable resource for undergraduate as well as graduate level students interested in creativity, development and education. In addition to the intrinsic interest of each chapter, the guiding theme of the book is the underlying theory of creativity, Gruber's Evolving Systems Approach, and illustrates the unusual breadth and flexibility of that theory.