What do you think?
Rate this book
Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology
The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity
The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the brain, education, business, and world cultures. The first section, 'Basic Concepts', is designed to introduce readers to both the history of and key concepts in the field of creativity. The next section, 'Diverse Perspectives of Creativity', contains chapters on the many ways of approaching creativity. Several of these approaches, such as the functional, evolutionary, and neuroscientific approaches, have been invented or greatly reconceptualized in the last decade. The third section, 'Contemporary Debates', highlights ongoing topics that still inspire discussion. Finally, the editors summarize and discuss important concepts from the book and look to what lies ahead.
509 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 3, 2006
45 people are currently reading
240 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 21, 2020
1 – Vlad P. Glaveanu and James C. Kaufman, Creativity: A Historical Perspective, pp.9-26
p.10 – The etymological roots of the word “creativity” take us back to the Latin verb creare, which meant bringing something forth – making or producing something. However, this notion was not applied to human creativity for several centuries. Instead, the idea of “creation” was associated with God and the generative powers of nature. Different terms, ars and artis, more similar to today’s notion of art, were applied to human forms of making, both technical and artistic.
The earliest, thirteenth-century, uses of “create” were in the passive past participle (Was created).
p.11 – It is only in the fifteenth century that the present tense (to create) and present participle (creating) of the verb began to be used. Thus, for hundreds of years, creativity was associated with the divine as opposed to the human. This conception was first challenged in the Renaissance and replaced more or less entirely during the Enlightenment.
The word “creativity” came into being, or at least was first documented in 1875 in Adolphus William Ward’s History of Dramatic English Literature, in reference to Shakespeare’s “poetic creativity.” The use of the word marked a radical change in our understanding of creating: from something that already happened and was out of reach to an ongoing process and, finally, a more generalizable trait or phenomenon. The word “creativity” was not very popular at first. It took more than fifty years and such significant societal transformations as World War II for it to enter standard dictionaries and infiltrate languages other than English.
From antiquity to the Renaissance and through the Middle Ages, creative acts were believed to be the outcome of divine inspiration. The Renaissance marked the beginning of the long “transition” from God to human beings as the locus of creativity. This movement culminated during the Enlightenment and Romanticism in the image of the genius.
p.12 – After World War II, the scientific study of creativity intensified, eventually leading to a better balance between individualistic and social approaches to this phenomenon. The history of creativity reflects a long search for suitable explanations for how and why we create. Initially, the answers pointed outside of the person, to God or gods; gradually, the focus became more and more internal (with the abilities and characteristics of the person). In today’s global age of connectivity and communication, there may be another great shift slowly underway in how we understand creativity.
It is easy to view creativity’s historical narrative as having only two main stages: before and after Guilford’s (1950) landmark American Psychological Associations (APA) address calling for more psychological research into creativity. This watershed marks several key differences: the increased scientific lens used on creativity scholarship; the specific focus on creativity proper as opposed to related phenomena; and the convergence on an accepted common vocabulary.
p.13 – The Renaissance blurred the line between the human and the divine. Several key inventions, such as the printing press, led to an unprecedented ability to transmit ideas and gain new knowledge. It was also a time of invention and exploration (e. g. the discovery of the New World), of ingenuity and trade (anticipating the birth of capitalism), and one that encouraged individual thinking and hard work (through the Reformation). The Renaissance made it possible for creators to be acknowledged and paid for their services. […] Some of the greatest creators at the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci, were polymathic geniuses. A new concept of genius had its roots in this period.
The Enlightenment radically changed the landscape for creativity. A new belief in the power of human reason and capacity to change the world offered the foundation for a much more individual notion of creativity. […] The idea of progress, in particular scientific progress, became very popular and this alimented the Industrial Revolution and the major technological and societal breakthroughs that accompanied it. At the same time, the accumulation of wealth, even if acquired through the exploitation of others or of natural resources, became seen as a virtue. The ideology of individualism gained currency. Problem-solving became a paradigmatic way of expressing one’s creativity; the authority of the Bible and its views of creation were fundamentally challenged.
p.14 – Romanticism brought torment, unhinged fantasy, and disorder. It also established the genius as a natural category that was soon pathologized.
Contemporary culture is much more skeptical about glorified images of the genius. In fact, in an age of mechanical reproduction, the expression of creativity can be associated with the mixing and remixing of existing cultural elements.
The association between creativity and economic gains raised the popularity of this phenomenon to a new level. Creativity research has rapidly expanded since the 1950s, moving through different stages, from an early interest in creativity as an outgrowth of intelligence to a shift to personality and exceptional creators to new paths emphasizing both cognitive and social perspectives to current sociocultural, interdisciplinary approaches.
p.17 – After 1950, creativity started being defined more or less consistently in terms of novelty/originality and value/appropriateness. These two dimensions are considered equally important although, in practice, there is a tendency (at least within Western societies) for novelty/originality to be the object of more research studies.
p.18 – The arts and the sciences have been considered two different cultures. They are two broad domains of creativity that offer distinct views of the creative process and its products. Consider the arts – they are based on divergence and self-expression, are highly likely to produce novelty, and can be messy and unpredictable. The sciences are more likely to gravitate towards convergence and effective problem-solving, practical outcomes, functionality, and orderliness. The historical debate between Romanticism and the Enlightenment continues to play out in our understanding of artistic and scientific creativity.
If we move further back in time, we can notice that the first question that animated this debate was whether creating anything new is even possible. The dominant conception during antiquity and the Middle Ages was that God (or the gods) is the true source of novelty and that human activity is merely a reproduction of His creation. For Aristotle, arts and crafts are essentially imitative; his teacher, Plato, went even further by postulating that art is a copy of a copy since it tries to imitate nature, which already imitates eternal ideas. These views make the biblical feat of God, of creating the world our of nothingness, even more extraordinary. In contrast, human activity was reduced to a derivative form. There is “nothing new under the sun,” claims the Ecclesiastes (1.9), and striving to produce novelties only reveals our “vanity.”
In contrast, today “making the new is our culture’s agenda.” So how exactly did we get from believing novelty is impossible to placing it as the cornerstone of our societies? The key to understanding this resides in the notion of self-expression and its glorification during the Romantic period.
Later on, at the dawn of Modernism, this focus on self-expression gave way to novelty; for example, Impressionist painters started being concerned with the novel aspects of their work and with visibly breaking with the old traditions of the Academy.
More contemporary echoes of these concerns can be found in the work of Maslow (1943) and his ideas about self-actualization. The actualized self experiences like fully, spontaneously, and independently of others’ opinions and views. It is, ultimately, a person who embraces novelty, lives a psychologically healthy life, and is capable of acting creatively in relation to both self and others.
More contemporary associations with creative value move us away from the sphere of individual well-being and health and toward capitalist concerns for production and consumption. Much of creativity’s current popularity is its perceived contribution to the economy and rapidly evolving technology. A great deal of current creativity work is conducted by business or organizational researchers. This market orientation is interested in novelty inasmuch as it can attract interest and produce tangible rewards – in other words, as long as it sells. The whimsy or process-orientation of mini-c creativity is of much less interest to most companies given its indirect connection to more tangible products.
p.19 – The creativity that leads to innovative breakthroughs is a more advanced level. Further, creative contributions that are highly original run the risk of being ahead of their time and only appreciated in retrospect, whereas small incremental advances can be more profitable in the short term.
Why do these historical considerations matter? It is because our contemporary definition of creativity is not accidental and neither are the measures we use to evaluate creative work.
Divergent thinking is quintessentially a task aimed at revealing self-expression and spontaneity. Converging thinking tasks (as well as related insight and problem-solving tests) take a more orderly and oftentimes logical approach. It should not surprise us, then, if the creativity we measure with one differs from the creativity we identify with the other. The key question, from a historical perspective, is which “legacy” are we actually continuing and with what consequences?
p.20 – In European cultures, the arts – particularly the fine arts – have been considered superior, whereas craft objects are seen as less worthy and certainly not very creative. This hierarchy, however, is a product of the past couple of centuries. It does not reflect how the relationship between art and craft has been conceived for much of Western history.
The story again begins in antiquity, in the discussion about novelty and imitation. It is not only that arts and crafts were all imitative (like any other form of human creativity) but that both relied on craftsmanship or technique. The Greek word techne, which can be roughly translated as making or the making of things according to rules, referring to both types of activities. In other words, there was no distinction between artists and artisans, at least not in the way we make it today. Art was not about creative ideas but “a practice that could be taught and learnt.” It was a notion applied by the Romans to any kind of masterful activity. This meaning is rare in contemporary culture but not altogether gone (e.g. references to the art of cooking or the art of management).
In medieval times, “art was still defined as skill, and imitation was fundamental to it.”
The Renaissance marked a shift in this conception by considering the great artists of the time as more than craftsmen and separating artistic creativity from mere technique. It is by appealing to this superior status that artists were able to claim and receive the support of rich patrons interested in cultivating “real” creations. It is then no surprise that, when the word “creative” appeared, it was first associated with the arts, in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Romantic elevation of art to a superior status was done at the expense of craft activities, which became mundane and considered less (or not) creative. The distinction between “fine” and “applied,” “folk,” or “decorative” arts date from this time and continues to be popular today, despite other efforts to consider both within an integrative framework (for instance, the Arts and Crafts movement). Interestingly, this distinction is being deliberately blurred today, with craftsmen aspiring to be recognized for their art and artists relinquishing their status and trying to go beyond “intentional” and “conceptual” art with the help of craft techniques.
5 – Robert J. Sternberg, “Enhancing People’s Creativity” pp.88-103
p.88 – Creativity involves an individual’s generating ideas that are novel, surprising, and compelling. Creative people are not only intellectually capable of coming up with such ideas. They also are people who have a creative attitude towards life and approach problems insightfully. They also are motivated to solve problems in a creative way. Although average levels of creativity may vary from one time or place to another, the major variable in creativity is simply a mindset toward thinking in novel, surprising, and compelling ways – and this mindset can be taught.
p.99 – Although being creative usually involves making mistakes along the creative path, schools tend often to be relatively unforgiving of mistakes – or at least so the students think.
Enabling students to explore mistakes can provide the students with an opportunity to learn and to grow.
p.100 – In sum, creativity is in large part a decision – a set of attitudes toward life – that teachers and parents can encourage in students or in themselves.
16 – Robert J. Sternberg, James C. Kaufman, and Anne M. Roberts, “The Relation of Creativity to Intelligence and Wisdom,” pp.337-352
p.337 – Creativity is often studies in isolation from other principal mental skills and attitudes but it is closely related, especially to intelligence and wisdom, as well as insight. Creativity is one’s ability to generate ideas that are novel, surprising, and compelling. In addition, intelligence is one’s ability to learn, to think, and to adapt to the environment. Lastly, wisdom is one’s ability to seek a common good, to understand multiple points of view, and to balance one’s own interests with those of others and of larger entities.
p.347 – Creativity involves quite a bit more than creative intelligence. Largely, it represents an attitude toward life. In other words, creative individuals are creative not just because of their creative intelligence but also because they are willing to defy the crows – as well as their own past lives – and the presuppositions of the surrounding Zeitgeist. Similarly, wisdom involves not only the ability to think wisely but the willingness to adopt a wise attitude toward life. One needs not only to be able to think wisely, an ability, but also to want to apply one’s wisdom to one’s everyday problems.
p.10 – The etymological roots of the word “creativity” take us back to the Latin verb creare, which meant bringing something forth – making or producing something. However, this notion was not applied to human creativity for several centuries. Instead, the idea of “creation” was associated with God and the generative powers of nature. Different terms, ars and artis, more similar to today’s notion of art, were applied to human forms of making, both technical and artistic.
The earliest, thirteenth-century, uses of “create” were in the passive past participle (Was created).
p.11 – It is only in the fifteenth century that the present tense (to create) and present participle (creating) of the verb began to be used. Thus, for hundreds of years, creativity was associated with the divine as opposed to the human. This conception was first challenged in the Renaissance and replaced more or less entirely during the Enlightenment.
The word “creativity” came into being, or at least was first documented in 1875 in Adolphus William Ward’s History of Dramatic English Literature, in reference to Shakespeare’s “poetic creativity.” The use of the word marked a radical change in our understanding of creating: from something that already happened and was out of reach to an ongoing process and, finally, a more generalizable trait or phenomenon. The word “creativity” was not very popular at first. It took more than fifty years and such significant societal transformations as World War II for it to enter standard dictionaries and infiltrate languages other than English.
From antiquity to the Renaissance and through the Middle Ages, creative acts were believed to be the outcome of divine inspiration. The Renaissance marked the beginning of the long “transition” from God to human beings as the locus of creativity. This movement culminated during the Enlightenment and Romanticism in the image of the genius.
p.12 – After World War II, the scientific study of creativity intensified, eventually leading to a better balance between individualistic and social approaches to this phenomenon. The history of creativity reflects a long search for suitable explanations for how and why we create. Initially, the answers pointed outside of the person, to God or gods; gradually, the focus became more and more internal (with the abilities and characteristics of the person). In today’s global age of connectivity and communication, there may be another great shift slowly underway in how we understand creativity.
It is easy to view creativity’s historical narrative as having only two main stages: before and after Guilford’s (1950) landmark American Psychological Associations (APA) address calling for more psychological research into creativity. This watershed marks several key differences: the increased scientific lens used on creativity scholarship; the specific focus on creativity proper as opposed to related phenomena; and the convergence on an accepted common vocabulary.
p.13 – The Renaissance blurred the line between the human and the divine. Several key inventions, such as the printing press, led to an unprecedented ability to transmit ideas and gain new knowledge. It was also a time of invention and exploration (e. g. the discovery of the New World), of ingenuity and trade (anticipating the birth of capitalism), and one that encouraged individual thinking and hard work (through the Reformation). The Renaissance made it possible for creators to be acknowledged and paid for their services. […] Some of the greatest creators at the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci, were polymathic geniuses. A new concept of genius had its roots in this period.
The Enlightenment radically changed the landscape for creativity. A new belief in the power of human reason and capacity to change the world offered the foundation for a much more individual notion of creativity. […] The idea of progress, in particular scientific progress, became very popular and this alimented the Industrial Revolution and the major technological and societal breakthroughs that accompanied it. At the same time, the accumulation of wealth, even if acquired through the exploitation of others or of natural resources, became seen as a virtue. The ideology of individualism gained currency. Problem-solving became a paradigmatic way of expressing one’s creativity; the authority of the Bible and its views of creation were fundamentally challenged.
p.14 – Romanticism brought torment, unhinged fantasy, and disorder. It also established the genius as a natural category that was soon pathologized.
Contemporary culture is much more skeptical about glorified images of the genius. In fact, in an age of mechanical reproduction, the expression of creativity can be associated with the mixing and remixing of existing cultural elements.
The association between creativity and economic gains raised the popularity of this phenomenon to a new level. Creativity research has rapidly expanded since the 1950s, moving through different stages, from an early interest in creativity as an outgrowth of intelligence to a shift to personality and exceptional creators to new paths emphasizing both cognitive and social perspectives to current sociocultural, interdisciplinary approaches.
p.17 – After 1950, creativity started being defined more or less consistently in terms of novelty/originality and value/appropriateness. These two dimensions are considered equally important although, in practice, there is a tendency (at least within Western societies) for novelty/originality to be the object of more research studies.
p.18 – The arts and the sciences have been considered two different cultures. They are two broad domains of creativity that offer distinct views of the creative process and its products. Consider the arts – they are based on divergence and self-expression, are highly likely to produce novelty, and can be messy and unpredictable. The sciences are more likely to gravitate towards convergence and effective problem-solving, practical outcomes, functionality, and orderliness. The historical debate between Romanticism and the Enlightenment continues to play out in our understanding of artistic and scientific creativity.
If we move further back in time, we can notice that the first question that animated this debate was whether creating anything new is even possible. The dominant conception during antiquity and the Middle Ages was that God (or the gods) is the true source of novelty and that human activity is merely a reproduction of His creation. For Aristotle, arts and crafts are essentially imitative; his teacher, Plato, went even further by postulating that art is a copy of a copy since it tries to imitate nature, which already imitates eternal ideas. These views make the biblical feat of God, of creating the world our of nothingness, even more extraordinary. In contrast, human activity was reduced to a derivative form. There is “nothing new under the sun,” claims the Ecclesiastes (1.9), and striving to produce novelties only reveals our “vanity.”
In contrast, today “making the new is our culture’s agenda.” So how exactly did we get from believing novelty is impossible to placing it as the cornerstone of our societies? The key to understanding this resides in the notion of self-expression and its glorification during the Romantic period.
Later on, at the dawn of Modernism, this focus on self-expression gave way to novelty; for example, Impressionist painters started being concerned with the novel aspects of their work and with visibly breaking with the old traditions of the Academy.
More contemporary echoes of these concerns can be found in the work of Maslow (1943) and his ideas about self-actualization. The actualized self experiences like fully, spontaneously, and independently of others’ opinions and views. It is, ultimately, a person who embraces novelty, lives a psychologically healthy life, and is capable of acting creatively in relation to both self and others.
More contemporary associations with creative value move us away from the sphere of individual well-being and health and toward capitalist concerns for production and consumption. Much of creativity’s current popularity is its perceived contribution to the economy and rapidly evolving technology. A great deal of current creativity work is conducted by business or organizational researchers. This market orientation is interested in novelty inasmuch as it can attract interest and produce tangible rewards – in other words, as long as it sells. The whimsy or process-orientation of mini-c creativity is of much less interest to most companies given its indirect connection to more tangible products.
p.19 – The creativity that leads to innovative breakthroughs is a more advanced level. Further, creative contributions that are highly original run the risk of being ahead of their time and only appreciated in retrospect, whereas small incremental advances can be more profitable in the short term.
Why do these historical considerations matter? It is because our contemporary definition of creativity is not accidental and neither are the measures we use to evaluate creative work.
Divergent thinking is quintessentially a task aimed at revealing self-expression and spontaneity. Converging thinking tasks (as well as related insight and problem-solving tests) take a more orderly and oftentimes logical approach. It should not surprise us, then, if the creativity we measure with one differs from the creativity we identify with the other. The key question, from a historical perspective, is which “legacy” are we actually continuing and with what consequences?
p.20 – In European cultures, the arts – particularly the fine arts – have been considered superior, whereas craft objects are seen as less worthy and certainly not very creative. This hierarchy, however, is a product of the past couple of centuries. It does not reflect how the relationship between art and craft has been conceived for much of Western history.
The story again begins in antiquity, in the discussion about novelty and imitation. It is not only that arts and crafts were all imitative (like any other form of human creativity) but that both relied on craftsmanship or technique. The Greek word techne, which can be roughly translated as making or the making of things according to rules, referring to both types of activities. In other words, there was no distinction between artists and artisans, at least not in the way we make it today. Art was not about creative ideas but “a practice that could be taught and learnt.” It was a notion applied by the Romans to any kind of masterful activity. This meaning is rare in contemporary culture but not altogether gone (e.g. references to the art of cooking or the art of management).
In medieval times, “art was still defined as skill, and imitation was fundamental to it.”
The Renaissance marked a shift in this conception by considering the great artists of the time as more than craftsmen and separating artistic creativity from mere technique. It is by appealing to this superior status that artists were able to claim and receive the support of rich patrons interested in cultivating “real” creations. It is then no surprise that, when the word “creative” appeared, it was first associated with the arts, in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Romantic elevation of art to a superior status was done at the expense of craft activities, which became mundane and considered less (or not) creative. The distinction between “fine” and “applied,” “folk,” or “decorative” arts date from this time and continues to be popular today, despite other efforts to consider both within an integrative framework (for instance, the Arts and Crafts movement). Interestingly, this distinction is being deliberately blurred today, with craftsmen aspiring to be recognized for their art and artists relinquishing their status and trying to go beyond “intentional” and “conceptual” art with the help of craft techniques.
5 – Robert J. Sternberg, “Enhancing People’s Creativity” pp.88-103
p.88 – Creativity involves an individual’s generating ideas that are novel, surprising, and compelling. Creative people are not only intellectually capable of coming up with such ideas. They also are people who have a creative attitude towards life and approach problems insightfully. They also are motivated to solve problems in a creative way. Although average levels of creativity may vary from one time or place to another, the major variable in creativity is simply a mindset toward thinking in novel, surprising, and compelling ways – and this mindset can be taught.
p.99 – Although being creative usually involves making mistakes along the creative path, schools tend often to be relatively unforgiving of mistakes – or at least so the students think.
Enabling students to explore mistakes can provide the students with an opportunity to learn and to grow.
p.100 – In sum, creativity is in large part a decision – a set of attitudes toward life – that teachers and parents can encourage in students or in themselves.
16 – Robert J. Sternberg, James C. Kaufman, and Anne M. Roberts, “The Relation of Creativity to Intelligence and Wisdom,” pp.337-352
p.337 – Creativity is often studies in isolation from other principal mental skills and attitudes but it is closely related, especially to intelligence and wisdom, as well as insight. Creativity is one’s ability to generate ideas that are novel, surprising, and compelling. In addition, intelligence is one’s ability to learn, to think, and to adapt to the environment. Lastly, wisdom is one’s ability to seek a common good, to understand multiple points of view, and to balance one’s own interests with those of others and of larger entities.
p.347 – Creativity involves quite a bit more than creative intelligence. Largely, it represents an attitude toward life. In other words, creative individuals are creative not just because of their creative intelligence but also because they are willing to defy the crows – as well as their own past lives – and the presuppositions of the surrounding Zeitgeist. Similarly, wisdom involves not only the ability to think wisely but the willingness to adopt a wise attitude toward life. One needs not only to be able to think wisely, an ability, but also to want to apply one’s wisdom to one’s everyday problems.
June 8, 2017
good
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 19, 2018
Best overview of current scientific status!
Read
July 26, 2013153.35 C1785 2010
November 4, 2021
Rich in context and at times way to much but over all this book served it's purpose for what I needed it for.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews