Product Description
From the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright to the rock gardens of Zen Buddhism, Coleman explores applied, fine, and folk arts in order to uncover points of coalescence between art and religion. Drawing from six living faiths (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism), this book philosophically analyzes relations between art and religion in order to explain how the concepts "art," "beauty," "creativity," and "aesthetic experience" find their place or counterparts in religious discourse and experience. Coleman repeatedly shows that aesthetic ideas can serve as bridges to spiritual categories, as when he relates aesthetic bliss to "the peace that passes all understanding."

The author follows a three-fold approach; first, he examines ideas and motifs from religious classics in world literature, such as Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching and The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila, in order to relate them to aesthetic phenomena. Second, he turns to the statements of artists, such as Leo Tolstoy, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Shih-t'ao, and Wassily Kandinsky, for themes and practices that have religious significance. Third, he analyzes and evaluates the writings of various theoreticians--philosophers, theologians, art critics, sociologists, and psychologists--on the relations between art and religion. Coleman demonstrates, for example, that Martin Buber's I-Thou relationship captures much that is central to art, creativity, and aesthetic experience as well as to religious life.

Among the themes that receive sustained treatment are: the varieties of union in art and religion, the child as a paradigm for artists and saints, and creativity as essential to religion. Finally, the author critically weighs proposed distinctions between art and religion and between the broader categories of the aesthetic and the spiritual, rejecting some and showing how others are compatible with his proposal that the aesthetic and the spiritual are cognate categories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Articulate and Mind-Opening
I rented this book from my university's library, intrigued by the title. Being both a highly passionate artist and a deeply spiritual person, I was immediately interested. I have always suspected that there were relations between artistic and religious acts, and author Earle J. Coleman expands on this theory, with a lot of illuminating, penetrating insight. He discusses that both art and religion involve a communication and inspiration from a divine source (possibly the same source) and that all artists and theologists should strive to remain in touch with that divinity in many ways, such as expressing your inner child (in order to be open, faithful, and nonjudgmental), being a receptive vessel for inspiration and creative energy, and setting aside shallow ego desires in order to be fully immersed in the creative/spiritual process. Coleman states that while he does not believe that art and religion are completely intertwined, he believes that the two subjects intermingle in many ways like the creative art and fables found in religions and churches, and the transformative, cathartic power of creative work. Reading this article renewed my passion and faith in my craft, as well as the enigmatic Higher Power that works through me in order to express that craft. ... Read more

Product Description

What is truth? This fascinating spectrum of studies into the various rationalities of our human dealings with life - psychological, aesthetic, economic, spiritual - reveals their joints and calls for a new approach to truth. Putting both classical and contemporary conceptions aside, we find the primogenital ground of truth in the networks of correspondences, adequations, relevancies, and rationales at work in life's becoming.

Does this plurivocal differentiation mean that the status of truth is relative? On the contrary, submits Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, given the universal significance of the crucial instrument of the logos of life, "truth is the vortex of life's ontopoietic unfolding".

Product Description
Updated to inspire a new generation of visual artists in their quest for creative growth, this book shows artists how they can experience a new awakening of creativity and add fresh meaning to their work by using simple techniques found in this inspirational guide. A working artist who has coped successfully with the daily challenge of facing a blank canvas shares her methods for overcoming creative blocks. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Wonderful book
I have often been accused of having too much imagination.
But this book made me say wow a couple of times, due to its usefulness and simplicity.
I have to read this book in little bits because before long I am jumping up and running to my drawing table because inspiration has struck,or some idea has been presented that I MUST explore furthur.
That is what I call a gem of a book.
Even nicer is that it is a book that anyone who does creative work or hobbies can use.
I dont give a 5 lightly, but I'm doing it for this book.

Inspired reading!

The Artist's Quest for Inspiration is a book that will appeal to artists at many different stages of their career and in most artistic fields.If you are creative at any level this is a title that will help you find new ways of being inspired.

The author offers many suggestions to help you break through any creative blocks such as: journal writing, working with other artists, meditation, and music... just to name a few techniques!Throughout The Artist's Quest for Inspiration you will find highlighted ideas for you to try.One of them that I like in particular goes like this:

`I think creative responses are helped by singing old songs.I know it can lift my mood.Even in private, singing can help you remember incidents from your past that might have drifted off to a corner of your mind's attic.'

This is NOT a how-to book with step-by-step instructions in using various media or lessons in perspective etc.However, this is a book that will draw on your true creativity and individual offerings to the world that will truly reflect what you have to offer.

The author has done a fabulous job in providing you with a multitude of `block' busters that will help you break through any creative barriers you may be suffering from.Even if you don't suffer from this problem The Artist's Quest for Inspiration is bound to provide you with even more energising ideas than you already have!The language is easy to understand and friendly.

I would recommend this book to anyone involved in a creative pursuit - particularly if you are looking for new ideas - but also for those of you looking for a fresh approach.I must admit that I don't suffer from a shortage of ideas, but this title certainly gave me a lot more to think about!

Not bad book
Book has interesting exercises. Many which I had done.
There is one GLARING mistake in this book
The publishers printed twice the last two chapters,index and bibliography.!
One in the proper place an the mistake is starts at page 235
...
I would repurchase it if Allworth press came out with a new
edition.

Recommended reading for the serious, practicing artist.
Working artist Peggy Hadden shares her secrets for overcoming artistic blocks, from meditation to exercises designed to release artistic expression. Her book Artist's Quest For Inspiration reveals insights on how creativity is awakened, covering subjects ranging from working with otherartists to revisiting childhood and creating an inspirational work and playenvironment. A fine gift for the practicing, serious artist. ... Read more

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This thought-provoking collection of essays and photographs gives us an inside look at the life, art, home, and collections of legendary glass artist Richared Marquis. This eclectic journey of the eye and mind takes the reader from Melville to Proust, math to physics, metaphor to fantasy, while exploring Marquis's way of life - filled with creativity, lived in the present, and in tune with the rhythms of nature. Photographs capture his glass work and the collections of cast-off objects that fill his home - bowling balls, oil cans, fishing poles.

Artist Richard Marquis is a leader in the studio glass movement. He lives on an island in Puget Sound. ... Read more

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The author generates a critical analysis of the value ofa music education emphasizing the right brain/left-brain aspect ofprocessing music. ... Read more

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"The Creativity of Perception" is a phrase which resonates with significance in literary criticism, art history and philosophy, and which is a fitting epitaph for Philip Brockbank, doyen of recent Shakespearean editions and passionate student of art, verse and human perception. Coined by Leavis, in conversation with Ernst Gombrich, it also precisely captures the concerns of this book - how do we see the world and how do we render that world in art (literary and pictorial). This volume contains essays on Milton, Marvell, Blake, Pope, Keats, Jouce and Renaissance painting. It is a stimulating, provocative and urbane collection by a master of creative perception. It argues passionately for the unfashionable belief that appreciation is more important than criticism, and that the tendency of recent criticism to cleave to crisis and disruption overwhelms the details, and nature, of art and verse. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Entertainment, Beauty, Perception, Harmony, Eroticism, Avant-Garde, Creativity, Camp, Style, Art Manifesto, Sublime, Taste, Magnificence, Mimesis, Boredom, Disgust, Rasa, Work of Art, Cuteness, Life Imitating Art, Aesthetic Emotions, Ecstasy, Elegance, Interpretation, Judgment. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 201. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Creativity is a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. Although intuitively a simple phenomenon, it is in fact quite complex. It has been studied from the perspectives of behavioural psychology, social psychology, psychometrics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, aesthetics, history, economics, design research, business, and management, among others. The studies have covered everyday creativity, exceptional creativity and even artificial creativity. Unlike many phenomena in science, there is no single, authoritative perspective or definition of creativity. And unlike many phenomena in psychology, there is no standardized measurement technique. Creativity has been attributed variously to divine intervention, cognitive processes, the social environment, personality traits, and chance ("accident", "serendipity"). It has been associated with genius, mental illness, humour and REM sleep. Some say it is a trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple techniques. Creativity has also been viewed as a beneficence of a muse or Muses. Although popularly associat...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=142910 ... Read more

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An engaging and innovative book about Architecture, Creativity and a Balanced World.

At its highest level, architecture is the pursuit of poetic form. As in literary poetry it employs images and symbols to achieve its essence. These are the common language of the psyche that transcends the purely physical.

Architecture is important in the life of every human being and is used here as the vehicle to demonstrate how creativity unfolds. Observing how the creative process works for one person in tangible terms can make it easier for another to understand. The broad aim of this book is to inspire people of all ages to be creative.

The experiential process of being creative is fully explored, from early influences, through the evolutionary development of ideas and forms and, finally, to the reality of multiple expressions. We are made aware of how the unconscious mind is our most essential creative tool. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Rare Achievement
One of the most difficult things to achieve in life is the rare kind of personal integrity we call authenticity. Lured off track by the pressure to be somebody else, most of us never get there. Man Between Earth and Sky is the gripping story of how one man did it. Through photos, text and art, that bring to life the rare places of this earth, the mind, and a vision for his journey, Louis Roberts shows how, through the power of creativity, many more of us can do it. Looking at and reading this book is like watching Michelangelo chip by chip craft real life out of stone. It is a rare achievement.

David Loye,psychologist, evolutionary systems scientist, author of the award-winning The Healing of a Nation and Darwin's Lost Theory

Getting at the nature of creativity through Architecture
"`Man Between Earth and Sky,' the recently published reflections of architect / philosopher Louis O. Roberts, succeeds at many levels in its goal of raising the consciousness of its readers about the creative process.Using architecture as the medium, the book invites us along on Mr. Roberts' personal journey in the discovery of his own creative talents. His innovative and unusual book helps guide us to a better understanding of the role of our unconscious, and of nature's built-in symbols, in the process of expressing our own creativity. Mr. Roberts skillfully and subtly guides us on this exploration not simply with his concise and thought-provoking text, but with a multitude of imaginative images and illustrations, and by the very high aesthetic values in the production of the book itself.It represents a valuable contribution to the literature on creativity for people in all fields. This book is the thoughtful outcome of a career of architectural practice and teaching which has brought Mr. Roberts a keen focus on the `symbolic awareness of architecture through a process of creativity,' as the subtitle of the book suggests."

Gary E. Davis, JD, University of Chicago, Senior United Nations Development Officer in Africa, the Middle East and New York.
... Read more

Product Description
In this eclectic and entertaining study of the interrelationship between the arts and the sciences, Barrow explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Photos, line drawings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A Mixed Bag
This book is an odd mixture of the extremely good and the very bad.Barrow is a good writer and a top-notch scientist; this combination comes through best when he sticks to what he knows best, the hard sciences.His discussion of time, astronomy, and geology are extremely informative, including such matters as why the sky is blue and the sun is yellow, why the most common color of berries is red, why the seashell makes the `ocean' sound when you put your ear up to it (you're hearing the sound of your own blood circulating).But now for the bad.When Barrow tries writing about the humanities, things go downhill fast.As with too many scientists opining about the humanities, they present only the most absurdly caricatured view of scholars in this area, as if they were all Lockians believing in the tabula rasa, and also Derrida disciples believing that all knowledge is socially constructed, and that all humanities professors are willfully ignorant and contemptuous of science.To be sure, there are some who are like this, but Barrow needs to get out more and meet humanities professors, and he will find that most are not like this at all.I imagine a reason for this belief is the unwillingness to acknowledge that many humanities professors are not hostile to science, but rather have listened to what scientists have to say about interpreting literature or art and found it simply not very useful.To the overly-defensive scientist perhaps this comes across as hostility, but it should not.And this book is an unfortunate example of how science, even in the hands of an intelligent and accomplished practitioner, has limited usefulness in its application to the arts.Consider for example his `evolutionary' explanation of the role of heroic stories:`they endow life with meaning, they move back the frontier of the unknown, and promote the sense of self-confidence that comes when sense is made of the world'.This statement is typical; it is so vague as to be vapid, it reminds one of something a very bad teacher would say in a high school English class, and anyway it is hard to see why we would need modern biology to teach us these clichés.Nor is it even clear how these are scientific claims: what sort of data could verify or falsify them?Or consider this gem: he `explains' our love of the New England fall colors as a result of our having evolved on the African grasslands, where there is a strong seasonal variation in rainfall.This makes us `sensitive' to seasonal changes, hence `people flock to New Hampshire for the fall.'OK, wait a minute here.We evolved where there are no deciduous trees, and no pronounced seasonal patterns except a wet versus dry season.And this is supposed to explain why we visit an environment about as different from the savannah as you could imagine?Moreover, on this theory, we should be equally attracted to ANY seasonal change in ANY environment - so why do people choose the New England fall as special? And while wildlife safaris in Africa are extremely popular, I'm pretty sure that most of these tours do not advertise themselves as taking place at the transition between the dry and wet season! In short, this is just the kind of speculative just-so story lacking either evidence or plausibility that has given evolutionary psychology such a bad name.
I don't want to overemphasize the negative however, as there is an awful lot of good stuff in here too, especially when Barrow sticks closer to his field of astronomy and doesn't try to be a biologist as well.But one feels the problem is that Barrow just doesn't respect the scholarship of humanities professors because they don't measure up to the standards of science.This is unfortunate, and it is ironic that Barrow is convinced that humanities professors have simply ignored the sciences, when the problem is clearly at least as great in the opposite direction: too many scientists have failed to appreciate the nature of knowledge in other fields besides their own.

No mind was ever a tabula rasa
John Barrow illuminates in this book the relationship between the sciences and the arts with a new perspective on our emergence in the Universe by means of natural selection.
As the philosopher Victor Zuckerkandl says (quoted in this book): 'Art does not aim at beauty. It uses beauty (or ugliness) to arrive ultimately at knowledge, at truth.' (as science)

Many natural adaptations have given rise to curious by-products, some of which have played a role in determining our aesthetic sense.
Although sometimes very tentative, this rich book sheds an insightful light on more or less hidden links, like
- the connection between the heavenly bodies and the pattern of life on earth (28 days)

- the importance of symmetry: living beings are symmetrical, which is rare for inanimate objects. Also, our evaluation of physical beauty focuses on symmetry.

- size as a key to survival, with the adage 'small is best'. 'The Almighty had an inordinate fondness of beetles.'

- the origin of painting: a natural outgrowth of the fallibility of human memory and the need to communicate. Also, the reason why we like savannah landscapes and not computer paintings because they seem unnatural.

- the Chomsky (innate patterns) / Piaget (blank slate) controversy on the origin of language

- the origin of literature: the craving for social cohesion and well-being met by oral history and stories in which the hearers appear in a leading role. More, 'The pen is mightier than the sword.'

- the origin of dance: a need for frenzied activity or heightened sensibilities in preparation for war, in celebration of fertility or birth or in mourning death. The rhythmic gyrations of primitive dance bind people together.

- the origin of music (the purest form of art): animal mating calls.
John Barrow explains clearly the relationship between music and mathematics as well as theories on mathematics (Platonism, intuitionism, inventionism, formalism) and music (absolutism and referentialism).

This book is an excellent exploration of a vast and very interesting human domain. Not to be missed.

Science and Art Do Meet
"Kristor" review "The Cosmic Anthropological Principle" is thoroughly apt, and I've noticed that the book is being supplanted by an "expanded" version, although the description of the expanded version seems identical to this book.

The thesis of this book is quite simple: Science has found that we humans are wired so that certain things in the universe are necessarily that way and could not be otherwise. Because of this "hard wiring" as one commentator observes, the strict methodology of science has just recently began to branch out of its "models" of uniformity and embraced diversity. Meanwhile, the diversity of human creativity, especially as it applies to the arts, has avoided at all costs any semblance of having a "model" by which to judge the universal appeals of so much diversity. It's time that the creative arts started taking a look for "models" into serious view as it evaluates themselves. I think this is a reasonable and defensible thesis against solipsism.

The argument is not an either/or dysjunction, but an and/both conjunction. Science has discovered a number of theories which serve to explain the universe as we know it. It strives to find the common ground on which to evaluate the world as we have come to know it. Conversely, the creative arts and the humanities have avoided, to the extreme, any effort for artists to "conform" to similar models found in nature and described by science. Barrow thinks it is time to reverse this odd peculiarity.

After all, when we evaluate painting or music, for example, we see that certain patterns emerge which give each endeavor a backbone for acceptance or rejection. The archetonics of harmonic cords and pictoral perspectivism require that certain creative arts fulfill these a priori demands, otherwise we regard such works as "distorted" or even worse "contorted." This result is not arbitrary, but developed over years of knowing that representational art must be "three dimensional," not two, and that in music a chord is composed of certain harmonic notes that please the natural disposition of the ear both aesthetically and physiologically.

Barrow illustrates these patterns of proportionality, perspectivism, chordal harmonies, etc., in light that they shed on the acceptability or rejection of certain "given" patterns innate in life. His thesis that the creative arts ought at least entertain the association of these innate given patterns in their evaluation as "works of art," just as science has decreed that the universe itself operates on the principles of certain immutable laws. I found his argument persausive, as one who is endeared more towards the artistic endeavors more than to the scientific ones. Thus, not all that passes itself off a "art" ought to be evaluated on the basis of its diversity, but also on the basis of its conformity to certain aesthetic criteria that are found in nature itself. Thus, many of those artistic endeavors that are meant to shock the observer by their discordance and lack of proportionality are incongruent with certain immutable aesthetic judgments based on nature's inherent designs. Ergo, the creative arts may have a certain degree of freedom to create outside the boundaries of our natural dispositions, but for the most part they must play within certain rules enough of the time in order to constitute pleasing versus unpleasant art. How much of a jump there is between "good" versus "bad" art from these immutable rules is at least partially determined by objective criteria. The question becomes, How much?

As one who is a "conservative" aesthete, I find Barrow's argument more than persuasive. I'm not sure just how conformable a work of art must be to the innate rules of nature before it passes from acceptable to unacceptable. But now that I know there are indeed such naturally innate rules, I am much better able to evaluate, as well as articulate, the creative arts on a more expansive, yet nonetheless "natural" criteria. Barrow's book is an engaging and worthwhile polemic.

Evolutionary Psychology, Art, and Science
This is a good book for a beginner, e.g., an undergraduate student in philosophy, psychology, or art. It can provide some solid basic understanding of the issues involved in interpreting and reproducing the world(s) around us. The book's thesis is that we are hard-wired by the process of evolution to interpret the world a certain way and that same process limits the kinds of art and science we are able to create. Those already familiar with this thesis will find little that is new in this book. Also, I was a bit disappointed that the book contained only black and white illustrations, it would seem that the subject matter chosen cries out for some color. The topics covered in the book are diverse and hang together loosely, which can be a challenge to a reader accustomed to a more focused and sustained discussion.

The Cosmic Anthropological Principle
Barrow, of course, is with Frank Tipler the author of The AnthropicCosmological Principle, which argues that the fundamental constants andinitial conditions of the cosmos had to be more or less exactly as they areor life - thus our conscious, self-aware human life - could not havehappened.

In The Artful Universe, Barrow explores in great andfascinating detail just exactly how the fine structure of the cosmos bearsfruit in the structure of the human body, and in particular the structureof our ideas, preferences, values, aesthetic reactions, ways of thinking;our minds. The primary thrust of this wide-ranging survey is that animalminds and bodies subjected to natural selection are in big trouble if theyembody propositions about the world, and therefore about the appropriateway to behave, that are in any important way essentially wrong. He arguesthat just as the structure of the eye constitutes evidence one way or theother for the correspondence to reality of our ideas about light, so thestructure of, e.g., our mathematical faculties constitutes evidence for themathematical structure of reality.

Barrow is terrifyingly erudite, and aclear, graceful writer. He manages to convey boatloads of highly technicalconcepts from numerous fields in crystalline arguments accessible to anyonewith a basic scientific education. You will learn a ton from this book.You'll work for it - Barrow never condescends - but you will be wellrewarded. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A book for all seasons and climes this is not.
A book for all seasons and climes this is not: it is suited for those who already know what "creativity" is and practice it in their spirits, art, and life.The authors feel they are part of this sublime andvisionary company of love, but regrettably, they are not, and this book wasa disappointment in its conventional and quite unoriginal terms. Dutton'searlier book on the art of "fraud" promised to expose his deepertalents, but I was sadly disappointed in this wordy effort.

A book in search of a thesis and purpose
I bought this book with the best of intentions (I am a creative writer myself), but found it to be over-priced, under-theorized, and in search of a clear thesis or contemporary purpose.The bitterness of the authorstowards critical theory makes the book a bit too narrow and irrelevant, inthese postmodern and postcolonial times.

Creativity mingles into banality in this prosaicbook.
Creativity mingles into banality in this prosaic book.The essays are obvious, the framework of little theory or interest: it could have been written in 1955, when it could have made an intervention into "NewCritical" debates on art. As it stands, the book is obsolete on firstprinting and deserves to be (as it is) ignored by artists, culturalcritics, and theorists who care about such matters as"creativity" in art and science. I wasted my money on this book;please turn to more creative and interesting authors than these. ... Read more

Product Description
THE MYSTERIOUS GUEST

An enquiry on creativity from Arts Therapy's perspective.

What is creativity? How does it work? How can it help us to improve our lives?

The Mysterious Guest is a study of creativity, rooted in the ground of Arts Therapies.

It opens with a general definition of creativity, and then explores two main themes:

1. Its importance in the healthy development of individuals, therefore its value as a resource in therapeutic, educational and social fields;

2. A thorough analysis of the creative process, showing how it works and reflecting on the possibilities of activating, managing, and assessing it.

The discussion on creativity is enriched with discussions and examples ranging from neurosciences to psychoanalysis, from literature to the history of art, from philosophy to symbolism, from science to poetry. The results of the treatment are synthesized, at the end of the second and the fourth part, in two clear and coherent patterns, graphically visualized.

It is the first book on the creativity issue written from an Arts Therapies point of view; it offers a model of creativity that explores the complexity of the phenomenon, but at the same time it is a model that is easy to understand and rich of practical cues. It is a creatively written book in which scientific thought and poetry meet. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Black Issues Book Review, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1888 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Creativity on fire: the Black Arts Movement took root in and gave meaning to the political dynamics of an era.
Author: Sam, III Fulwood
Publication: Black Issues Book Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 9Issue: 2Page: 13(3)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
How could "the most brilliant civilization in humanhistory" bring about so much misery, anxiety, stress, and insecurity?How could "the highest standards of living the world has ever known"leave practically everybody dissatisfied with life? To illustrate:

* Why are there so many "emotionally disturbed children" and "troubled young people?"
* Why do so many students "hate school," or perceive their academic experience as an inconvenience they would rather avoid?
* Why are there so many "busy-yet-bored employees" whose hearts are not in their daily work?
* Why do modern workplaces engender so much alienation, stress, burnout, and nervous breakdown?
* Why are there so many "outwardly successful, and yet emotionally troubled" executives?
* Why do so many rich people view life as "empty and meaningless" and yearn for "something" that some of them say their material success does not give them?
* Why are leaders finding it increasingly difficult to lead? Why are people increasingly unwilling to follow?
* Why is the sense of community and relatedness declining? Why are people's superficial differences becoming more significant than their common humanity?
* Why, metaphorically, do most people go to their graves with their stories untold and their music still inside: unplayed and unheard?

Conventional wisdom regards these problems as separate, and attributes them to such factors as neurosis, genetic inferiority, culture deficiency, dependency, deviant character, lack of achievement motivation, dysfunctional family, learning disability, inferior teaching tools, incompetent leadership, and other convenient explanations. Depending on what is perceived as the "cause" of specific problems, various solution strategies have been proposed and tried, including therapy, counseling, behavior modification, mass literacy, more modern learning devices, management reforms, new technology, retraining, motivational seminars, administrative controls, tougher laws, stiffer punishment, etc. The limited success (in many cases, abysmal failure) of many of these strategies needs no elaboration.

Only recently has it been realized that so many of the widely reported psychological and social crises are not separate problems, but aspects (or symptoms) of a single fundamental problem: undiscovered, underutilized, or actively repressed human potential and, consequently, a deeper lack of fulfillment in people's lives.

In Great Insights on Human Creativity, the world's greatest thinkers observe that, in the single-minded pursuit of material well-being, humanity has inadvertently reduced its existence to one partial (material) aspect and, in the process, neglected what is most important in people's lives: their creativity and personal sense of worth. Further, they remind us that if we sincerely want to deal with the increasingly complex global crisis and to build a more durable human civilization, what is needed is a system that allows people to experience themselves as intelligent and creative, and that also enables them to engage their creative talents in socially and environmentally beneficial ways and, thus, to find meaning and purpose in their lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

See is Transforming
Efiong Etuk has provided the first ever view of popular western creativity by an "non-westerner". Whether you are a novice in the field of creativity or a world class expert, you will love this book. Not only will you harvest fresh insights, you will have a tool box to grow your creative life and be much more effective in the game of life. The absolute beauty of this book is that it positions your creative potential to its proper place; the path to a far better and joyful world. ... Read more

Product Description
Creativity, traditionally seen as a special gift of remarkable and exceptional personalities, is considered in Gestalt therapy to be a quality of spontaneous adaptation in interpersonal processes, as well as an important ingredient of healthy social living. This revolutionary concept of creativity is approached in the book from three aspects: the theoretical foundations, the healing relationship, and applications to certain social issues, such as the couple's relationship, treating psychosis and understanding children's suffering.

The authors are among the most relevant contemporary Gestalt psychotherapists and researchers. Their contributions, solid representations of American and European reflections on the theme, bridge a divide between continents and reflect the productive discourse among schools of Gestalt therapy today. Edited by two experienced Gestalt psychotherapy trainers, this book is not only addressed to professionals, but also to all those who make art and curiosity about human nature an important aspect of their lives. ... Read more

Product Description
In this long-awaited work, Dalibor Vesely proposes an alternative to the narrow vision of contemporary architecture as a discipline that can be treated as an instrument or commodity. In doing so, he offers nothing less than an account of the ontological and cultural foundations of modern architecture and, consequently, of the nature and cultural role of architecture through history. Vesely's argument, structured as a critical dialogue, discovers the first plausible anticipation of modernity in the formation of Renaissance perspective. Understanding this notion of perspective against the background of the medieval philosophy of light, he argues, leads to an understanding of architectural space as formed by typical human situations and by light before it is structured geometrically. The central part of the book addresses the question of divided representation--the tension between the instrumental and the communicative roles of architecture--in the period of the baroque, when architectural thinking was seriously challenged by the emergence of modern science. Vesely argues that to resolve the dilemma of modernity-- reconciling the inventions and achievements of modern technology with the human condition and the natural world--we can turn to architecture and its latent capacity to reconcile different levels of reality, its ability to relate abstract ideas and conceptual structures to the concrete situations of everyday life. Vesely sees the restoration of this communicative role of architecture as the key to the restoration of architecture as the topological and corporeal foundation of culture; what the book is to our literacy, he argues, architecture is to culture as a whole. He concludes by proposing a new poetics of architecture that will serve as a framework for the restoration of the humanistic role of architecture in the age of technology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Categorial Background
This insightful book provided me with a fundamental understanding of not only the history of architectural representation, but also scientific, psychological, philosophical and metaphysical backgrounds of the architectural expressions of epochs throughout the Western culture. What is especially interesting to me is how the idea of 'architecture as language' especially in relation to Bauhaus and modernism is investigated. Since the manifestation of fragments of contemporary cities continuously surfaces in our environments to be comprehended or to take in charge, the text seems to be very relevant to our present time, perhaps even more so in developing countries. One passage reads: "... (I)n amnesic aphasia, the discontinuity between the possible and actual reality of words, between their concrete and abstract meanings, destroys the physiognomic qualities of experience, perception, and language. The loss of physiognomic qualities is directly related to the loss of categorial background, affecting language and perception... This shows just how critical is the communication between articulated, conceptual experience and its background; even more important, it shows that the background is common to our experience as a whole, including our language." ... Read more