The Idea of Creativity

In this still-relevant collection of 17 reprinted essays (eight of which are from The Idea of Creativity in Science and Art, Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), Krausz (philosophy, Bryn Mawr College) and other multidisciplinary scholars address the conundrums of and approaches to creativity in the sciences, arts, and philosophy--an area not always associated with creativity: its criteria; phenomenology; and the relationships between self, self- transcendence, imagination, skill, medium, process, rationality, goals, novelty vs. intelligibility, products, domains, and aesthetic sensibility. Creativity is also addressed as an interest of contemporary philosophers, e.g., Popper, in the question of human freedom, and as an aspect of literary interpretation. In addition to general philosophers and philosophers of science, contributors hail from the fields of cognitive science and psychology. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael Krausz (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1969) is the Milton C. Nahm Professor of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College. He is author of Rightness and Reasons; Varieties of Relativism (with Rom Harre), Limits of Rightness; and Interpretation and Transformation. Denis Dutton is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Publications include The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Natural Selection. He edits the Journal Philosophy and Literature and Arts & Letters Daily.Karen Bardsley, PhD (McGill, 2004) Currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Morehead State University. Her research interests include philosophy of film, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and ethics. In ethics, she has written on the rationality of feelings of gratitude toward nature.