From Reductionism to Creativity

From Reductionism to Creativity
Author: Herbert V. Guenther
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1989
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Writing in the language of the new sciences, Herbert Guenther traces the evolution of Buddhist views on cognition and points to their relevance in the contemporary world. The history of Buddhist thought is a unique example of the interplay between reductionism and creativity, between conservatism and innovation, and it is the author's purpose to examine the interaction between these complementary movements. Of decisive importance in this context is the idea of " mind, " which Buddhism recognized early on as a process rather than a thing. This recognition marked the transition from structure-oriented thinking to a vigorous process-oriented thinking, which climaxed in the holistic movement known as rDzogs-chen. Based on original texts in the Pali, Tibetan, and Sanskrit languages, the book develops the Buddhist ideas out of the context in which they originated.

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science
Author: Eric R. Kandel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2016-08-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0231542089

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this new book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism—the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components—has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. He draws on his Nobel Prize-winning work revealing the neurobiological underpinnings of learning and memory in sea slugs to shed light on the complex workings of the mental processes of higher animals. In Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, Kandel shows how this radically reductionist approach, applied to the most complex puzzle of our time—the brain—has been employed by modern artists who distill their subjective world into color, form, and light. Kandel demonstrates through bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive functions how science can explore the complexities of human perception and help us to perceive, appreciate, and understand great works of art. At the heart of the book is an elegant elucidation of the contribution of reductionism to the evolution of modern art and its role in a monumental shift in artistic perspective. Reductionism steered the transition from figurative art to the first explorations of abstract art reflected in the works of Turner, Monet, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and Mondrian. Kandel explains how, in the postwar era, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Louis, Turrell, and Flavin used a reductionist approach to arrive at their abstract expressionism and how Katz, Warhol, Close, and Sandback built upon the advances of the New York School to reimagine figurative and minimal art. Featuring captivating drawings of the brain alongside full-color reproductions of modern art masterpieces, this book draws out the common concerns of science and art and how they illuminate each other.

Models of the Self

Models of the Self
Author: Shaun Gallagher
Publisher: Imprint Academic
Total Pages: 550
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780907845096

A comprehensive reader on the problem of the self as seen from the perspectives of philosophy, development psychology, robotics, cognitive neuroscience, psychopathology, semiotics, phenomenology and contemplative studies, all focused on a keynote paper.

Reinventing the Sacred

Reinventing the Sacred
Author: Stuart A Kauffman
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2008-01-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 046501240X

Consider the woven integrated complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awe-inspiring to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell, or to consider that the living organism was created by the evolving biosphere? As the eminent complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman explains in this ambitious and groundbreaking new book, people who do not believe in God have largely lost their sense of the sacred and the deep human legitimacy of our inherited spirituality. For those who believe in a Creator God, no science will ever disprove that belief. In Reinventing the Sacred, Kauffman argues that the science of complexity provides a way to move beyond reductionist science to something new: a unified culture where we see God in the creativity of the universe, biosphere, and humanity. Kauffman explains that the ceaseless natural creativity of the world can be a profound source of meaning, wonder, and further grounding of our place in the universe. His theory carries with it a new ethic for an emerging civilization and a reinterpretation of the divine. He asserts that we are impelled by the imperative of life itself to live with faith and courage-and the fact that we do so is indeed sublime. Reinventing the Sacred will change the way we all think about the evolution of humanity, the universe, faith, and reason.

Examining Creativity in the Workplace

Examining Creativity in the Workplace
Author: Nahanni Freeman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2024-08-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1040116426

This scholarly book explores the intersection of social cognition with a democratic philosophy of human resource management to advance a theory of workplace function that maximizes creativity. It examines how the work of Polanyi on tacit knowledge provides a useful theoretical structure for understanding person perception and self‐fulfilling prophecy effects in the workplace, with a focus on gender, culture, and race as diversity variables. Based on a broad range of interdisciplinary empirical evidence and theories, this book provides a foundational set of concepts to build new applied intervention strategies. The authors create new, testable theories based on a synthesis of several major areas of research in social psychology and human resource management, moving beyond the narrow confines of trends in a particular subdomain. Part 1 offers a literature review of the field, ranging from theoretical, historical, and philosophical psychology to social psychology and neurocognition. Each chapter in this section offers a novel theory that is pertinent to workplace innovation, synthesized from existing evidence. Part 2 reveals applications of tacit knowledge to the field of human resource management, with a focus on cross‐cultural applications for low‐ and high‐power distance settings. This insightful text presents the authors’ original, qualitative research around workplace creativity and tacit knowledge and is valuable reading for scholars and advanced students in industrial‐organizational psychology and human resource management.

Higher Creativity

Higher Creativity
Author: Willis Harman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 273
Release: 1984-12-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0874773350

Insight is the mind’s magic in action, solving problems, understanding relationships, creating new images—with a speed and certainty unavailable to ordinary consciousness. Breakthrough insights go even further. They take a quantum leap beyond ordinary creativity and our previous ways of looking at things—to a whole new method of resolving our difficulties. Almost all of us have experienced such moments in relation to work oriented or personal problems, and wish we could have them more often—in fact, we can. According to Willis Harman, Ph.D., president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and Howard Rheingold, human behavior columnist for Esquire, the main reasons we fail to have this kind of breakthrough experience more frequently are that we don’t believe we can, and we don’t apply the known techniques which can generate these insights. In Higher Creativity, the authors discuss this self-imposed limitation and argue persuasively for an enlarged image of everyone’s creative potential. They examine the secret history of inspiration through contemporary and historical accounts of profound creative breakthroughs, and finally they describe a surprisingly simple and reproducible sequence that has often triggered these insights for outstanding innovators in business, science, and the arts. These apparently special people became special by harnessing, sometimes quite accidentally, the awesome power of the unconscious in the service of higher creativity. Following their example and using historically validated procedures for reprogramming the unconscious, you can learn to capture the lightning for personal breakthrough in your own life.

Creative Ecologies

Creative Ecologies
Author: Bronislaw Malinowski
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351525182

The main question of our age is how we live our lives. As we struggle with this question, we face others. How do we handle ideas and knowledge, both our own and those of others? What relationship to ideas do we want? Whose ideas do we want to be surrounded by? Where do we want to think? Most choose, or have the choice made for them, according to what family, colleagues, and friends do and say and what we read about, and a more or less rational calculation of the odds. Modern ecology results from the shift in thinking generated by quantum physics and systems theory, from the old view based on reductionism, mechanics, and fixed quantities to a new view based on holistic systems where qualities are contingent on the observer and on each other. This perception changes how people treat ideas and facts, certainties and uncertainties, and affects both art and science. Worldwide it is part of the process of understanding the current crisis in the environment, and the balance of economy, creativity, and control required in our response. The book's starting point is the growing role that information has played in industrial economies since the 1800s and especially in the last thirty years. It is an attempt to identify ecology of thinking and learning. It is also based on the need to escape from old, industrial ways and become more attuned to how people actually borrow, develop, and share ideas. Throughout the book, Howkins asks questions and offers signposts. He gives no guarantee that creative ecologies will be sustainable, but shows what should be aimed for.

The Atlas of Social Complexity

The Atlas of Social Complexity
Author: Brian Castellani
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 509
Release: 2024-06-05
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 178990952X

Embark on a riveting journey through the study of social complexity with The Atlas of Social Complexity. Over three decades of scientific exploration unfold, unravelling the enigmatic threads that compose the fabric of society. From the dance of bacteria, to human-machine interactions, to the ever-shifting dynamics of power in social networks, this Atlas maps the evolution of our understanding of social complexity.

Unpacking Creativity for Language Teaching

Unpacking Creativity for Language Teaching
Author: Tan Bee Tin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2022-06-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000594955

Before unlocking creativity, we must first unpack what it means. In this book, creativity is unravelled from various perspectives and the relevance for language teaching and learning is explored. Tin offers a coherent discussion of creativity, adopting an inclusive and integrated but, at the same time, focused approach to creativity. Divided into 12 chapters, the book covers: A critical review of the way the term ‘creativity’ is used, defined and written about in various disciplines Various models and theories of creativity, the product- and process-oriented views of creativity and their relevance for language teaching Three pillars on which creative language pedagogy should be based Over 60 practical tasks, applying theoretical arguments and principles of creativity to language teaching and learning Based on the author’s own practice and research on creativity over the last two decades, the book provides exciting new ideas for scholars and practitioners interested in creativity and creative language pedagogy. The book serves as an important contribution for students, teachers and scholars in the field of applied linguistics, language teaching and education.

Humanity in a Creative Universe

Humanity in a Creative Universe
Author: Stuart A. Kauffman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199390452

Much of Stuart Kauffman's work in the philosophy of evolutionary biology has centered on the question of what he calls "prestatability" in evolution: that is, whether or not science can precisely predict the future development of biological features in organisms, using a singular "FinalTheory" of evolution. In this book, Kauffman argues that the development of life on earth is not prestatable, because no theory could ever fully account for the limitless variability of evolution. He believes that the biological universe's primary trait is that it is creative, and that acknowledgingthis creativity will lead to a radically different way in which humans view themselves and all other living beings. It is an argument against Reductive Materialism.Kauffman also asserts that man's Modern preoccupation to explain all things with scientific law has deadened our creative natures. In his words, he aims for the book to be "one that revises our scientific world view of the universe as entirely entailed by law." Instead, he advocates an approach toscience that accounts for "unprestatable" creativity, thus allowing humans to fully realize their creative selves. The book will build off the ideas developed in his last two works, Reinventing the Sacred and Investigations. Incorporating philosophers like Kant and Descartes, as well as the scienceof Newton and Darwin, Humanity in a Creative Universe is Stuart Kauffman's argument for a creative and unpredictable view of modern science.