The Runaway Species: How human creativity remakes the world

by David Eagleman, Anthony Brandt

The Runaway Species is a deep-dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how humanity can improve our future by understanding and embracing our ability to innovate. David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt rifle through the inventions of human society like paleontologists ransacking the fossil record. Exploring examples from Apollo 13 to Pablo Picasso, they seek to answer the question: what lies at the heart of humanity’s ability—and drive—to create?

If you took a snapshot of any animal species’ behavior, from apes to barnacles, and contrasted it with the same species 10,000 years ago, they’d all be carrying on pretty much as usual (and if they aren’t, it’s likely due to human influence). Humanity, on the other hand, would be nearly unrecognizable. Above all else, our drive to create is what makes us unique among all living things. Yet where does all this creation, innovation, and change come from? Why us? And if we better understand this “cognitive software,” can we harness it more responsibly to improve our lives, schools, businesses, and institutions? Eagleman and Brandt examine hundreds of examples of human creativity through dramatic storytelling and stunning images in this beautiful, full-color volume. By drawing out what creative acts have in common and viewing them through the lens of cutting-edge neuroscience, they uncover the essential elements of this critical human ability, and encourage a more creative future for all of us.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, Neuroscience, Art, Brain, Audiobook

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2017

About the author

David Eagleman is an internationally bestselling author, a TED speaker, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO of a neurotech startup, Neosensory. At night he writes. His books have been translated into 33 languages.

Reviews

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Există un principiu pe care creierul uman îl urmează neabătut: principiul economiei, al minimului efort. Dacă am examina atent ceea ce facem într-o zi, am constata că 99% din faptele noastre sînt, în realitate, repetiții, rutine, gesturi automate. Nu ne deosebim de un zombi. Bem cafeaua la 6, ne întoarcem de la școală pe același drum, citim ziarele cam la aceeași oră, ne plimbăm pe un traseu deja cunoscut (știm dinainte că durează 60 de minute) etc. Creativitatea înseamnă ieșirea din rutină, din stereotipie, ea urmează principiul risipei. În definitiv, cinci ipoteze sînt mai bune decît una singură.

Cum ieșim din ținutul rutinei? „Cum e posibil ceva nou?” Invocînd ideile lui Arthur Koestler, Mark Turner și Gilles Fauconnier (p.265, notă), autorii vorbesc despre trei operații intelectuale creative:

a) deformarea,
b) fragmentarea,
c) amestecul, mixarea.

lemDavid Eagan și Anthony Brandt ilustrează aceste operații cu exemple luate din toate domeniile. Pe mine m-au interesat îndeosebi cele din artă (muzică, pictură) și din literatură. Numele celor trei operații sugerează că nu există creație din nimic: „Ex nihilo nihil fit”. Înainte de deformare există un „lucru” de deformat, înainte de fragmentare există ceva de fragmentat ș.a.m.d. Invenția nu poate porni de la zero. Dacă nu știi să aduni 2 + 2, e imposibili să demonstrezi, precum Andrew Wiles, Marea Teoremă a lui Fermat (pp.188-190).

O operă nouă se face, așadar, cu materiale vechi. „Cărțile se fac din cărți”, spune o vorbă cunoscută. Poetul Samuel Taylor Coleridge a pretins că a scris poemul Kubla Khan după ce a avut un vis indus de opiu. Exegetul John Livingston Lowes a cercetat jurnalul și biblioteca poetului și a descoperit că imaginația lui Coleridge a fost, totuși, alimentată de lecturile sale. „Totul avea o genealogie” (p.48). Dar a descoperi „sursele” nu înseamnă niciodată a identifica momentul de „iluminare”, saltul creativ din care s-a ivit Balada bătrînului marinar. Ar fi prea simplu. Negreșit, creativitatea presupune cele trei operații, dar nu poate fi epuizată de ele.

Pe lîngă aparatul creativ, e nevoie de răbdarea de a testa o mulțime cît mai mare de „ipoteze”. Autorii numesc acest proces „proliferarea opțiunilor”. Din consultarea manuscrisului romanului Adio, arme, rezultă că Hemingway a scris 47 de variante ale finalului. Într-un tîrziu, a ales versiunea cunoscută de noi:

naratorul le alungă pe infirmiere și rămîne singur cu soția lui moartă: „Dar după ce au plecat și am închis ușa, am stins lumina și mi-am dat seama că totul e în zadar. Era ca și cum mi-aș fi luat rămas bun de la o statuie. După o clipă am ieșit, am plecat de la spital și m-am întors la hotel prin ploaie”. Eu aș fi ales un alt final (unul lăsat la o parte de Hemingway): „Asta e toată povestea. Catherine a murit și tu vei muri și eu voi muri și asta e tot ce-ți pot promite” (pp.158-159). Poate că acest final i s-a părut prea retoric.

În concluzie, David Eagleman și Anthony Brandto au redactat carte care dă de gîndit.

P. S. Blaise Pascal a notat cîndva: „Să nu se afirme că n-am spus nimic nou: rînduirea materialului este nouă”.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been missing my nonfiction kicks. I thought this one sounded fantastic, so I picked it up to revel in all the grand things that creativity does (and why we need to foster it, dammit).

Of course, books like this are pretty much preaching to the choir. The people who read them are usually very aware of the uses and needs and the universality of the IDEA of creativity.

No matter who you are, where you come from, you're just as likely to be creative or not creative, as is your natural proclivity. No amount of money or lifestyle can change it, but conversely, all creative works, whether scientific, by expression, or composition, necessarily draws from the ideas and forms that came before it. In other words, no art is created in a vacuum and the creation of true creativity can't be forced.

This book is perfect for those self-selected readers because it doesn't skimp on the myriad examples of how all kinds of creativity informs each kind. Music and math have long been tied tightly together, but so is innovation to science fiction, math to graphics, and hundreds of other interconnections that lead from disparate sources like paleontology to windshields to instruction manuals aboard the Apollo to any number of meme-revolutions to the technological breakthroughs we have today, each one building on the next.

From a personal standpoint, I point to the explosion of novelists out there now. They're all building on each other and revolutionizing the direction of storytelling faster and faster, diving into stagnation and even faster revolutions until we get some truly astounding works.

Each is Bending, Breaking, Bending, and Blending the things that came before.

As a nonfiction work on what creativity is and why it should be encouraged, it delves mostly into the sociological slant but it also doesn't stint on the personal reasons. As in, why each and every one of us needs to keep our minds supple, and why the counter-arguments are bogus since we do all of the three B's anyway. :) The argument is to expand it across all areas so that the ideas can continue to cross-pollinate. :)

Do I agree with this sentiment?

HELL YES. Did I self-select myself to read this book? Hell Yes. Am I biased as all hell? Hell yes.

Is it wrong? No. I think all the ideas expressed make perfect sense. Even objectively. :) So there.

[Yaaresse · Rating 3 out of 5]

The trend in non-fction lately seems to be what I call the Gladwell Model: have a pet theory, find some studies that shore it up, but mostly use all the anecdotes you can stuff between the covers to "prove" the pet theory. Since the science is soft and easy to digest and the anecdotes often interesting, the model sells books. It seems the public can't quite handle non-fiction anymore unless it has a high entertainment factor and not much hard science. Unfortunately, this model makes for books that are more opinion then fact and more sizzle than steak.

Look, there's nothing particularly bad about this book. It simply goes on too long after it's made its point. The bend/blend/break theory of creativity and invention holds up, and many of the stories are intriguing on their own merit. I'm just not sure they "prove" anything, and the sheer volume of them causes the book to take on the tone of a never-ending TEDTalk. The original charm of TEDTalks --which has worn thin and could seriously stand to be bent, blended or broken itself --was that they were very short, they offered one thought-provoking idea, and they left the audience wanting to learn more. I felt this book took one good point and "anecdoted" it into oblivion. (Yes, I know that's not a real word.) Condensed to its essential information, the book would have made one very good magazine article.

[Mircea Petcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creierul cauta un echilibru intre exploatarea cunostintelor dobandite anterior si explorarea noilor posibilitati.

Nu este prima data cand citesc despre echilibrul dintre familiar si surprinzator. Derek Thomposon, in cartea "Creatorii de hituri", ajunge la aceeasi concluzie. De ce s-au bucurat filmele "Star Wars" de atata succes? Pentru ca au atins acest echilibru. Sunt suficient de diferite fata de celelate filme, dar nu atat de mult incat sa nu poata fi intelese: personajele se dueleaza cu sabii, Darth Vader poarta un stahlhelm supradimensionat (casca de otel purtata de soldatii germani in cele doua razboie mondiale), navele spatiale lupta ca avioanele din Primul Razboi Mondial etc.

De-ar fi atat de simplu: "Traim intr-un perpetuu razboi intre predictibil si surprinzator. A sta prea aproape de ceea ce functioneaza risca sa epuizeze potentialul initial, dar si indepartarea accentuata de zona de confort te poate duce in situatia de a nu gasi adepti. Punctul optim dinte familiar si noutate este o tinta mobila, greu de atins. Nenumarate idei au sfarsit la cosul de gunoi al istoriei".

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Few capacities hold as much lifelong value as an active imagination: it impacts every aspect of our experience.”

The Runaway Species explores human creativity in all its forms, from Picasso and Beethoven to the Apollo 13 mission and scientific breakthroughs. Since I write fiction, I viewed the authors’ observations from a writing perspective: Where have I witnessed these principles at work in contemporary literature? How can I apply these ideas to my own writing?

The authors focus on a few key ideas, rephrasing their points throughout the book to drill them into the readers’ heads, presenting their thesis in new and beautiful ways each time. Real-world examples are plentiful, with some being explored in-depth, such as Picasso’s artistic influences, and others being glossed over as part of a litany of stories. I actually started keeping a list of topics to watch videos on later because I was so curious to learn more about the figures and inventions mentioned (such as George Washington Carver’s story, and how Shrinky Dinks inspired a cheaper way to fabricate microfluidic chips). I listened to the audiobook read by Mauro Hantman and greatly enjoyed it, although I missed out on the cool pictures and diagrams in the print version.

Here were some of my takeaways:

“We seek the sweet spot between familiarity and novelty.”
Although we don’t want to be surprised ALL the time, we crave the disruption of routine. With repetition suppression, our brains become accustomed to new stimuli and our neural responses lessen with each encounter (self-driving cars were used as an example). So, everything loses its sense of novelty over time. That’s why many readers scoff at knock-offs of The Hunger Games and Twilight, or tropes that have been done a hundred times, like the Chosen One. We don’t like our stories to be predictable…but neither do we like them to be too unpredictable.

Many popular books provide that happy middle-ground between familiar and new. Harry Potter took wizard tropes like hats and broomsticks to give us The Sorting Hat and Quidditch. Writers can create new stories by combining familiar elements with novel ones.

Bending, breaking, and blending ideas are the cornerstones of innovation.
It’s obvious that our brains love to draw connections between things, regardless of the validity of those connections. Despite the mistakes in logic our mental wiring can cause, it does allow us to bend, break, and blend ideas that already exist to create an innovative mash-up. As the authors comment, “The human brain doesn’t passively take in experience like a record; instead, it constantly works over the sensory data it receives and the fruit of that mental labor is new versions of the world.”

Bending might be best described as a “remake” of an already-existing prototype. Breaking is the rearrangement or subtraction of pieces (e.g., the word “gymnasium” being shortened to “gym”). Blending is the most self-explanatory term—the combination of different elements, as in mythological creatures like centaurs or sphinxes.

Successful novels often demonstrate at least one of these techniques. The classic Cinderella tale is given a fresh coat of paint with a new setting in Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, bending the story to suit its new surroundings. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski satirizes the world of academia by borrowing and breaking parts of its form. Jay Asher was inspired to write 13 Reasons Why after visiting an audiocassette tour at a Las Vegas museum and blended that form with his reflection on a young family member’s suicide attempt.

The number of novels that are nearly autobiographical never ceases to amaze me; Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince borrow a great amount of material from the authors’ real lives, to the point that they are “bending” their life story into fiction. The authors of The Runaway Species note that the arts aren’t divorced from our experiences; they are our experiences in distilled form.

Art redefines our view of what’s possible.
It’s interesting how we have invented our own vision for what is deemed a “futuristic” aesthetic, and so our designs become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as in Tesla’s car doors that open upwards and the sleek look of its new semi-truck design.

As far as fiction, the sci-fi genre in particular has shaped our culture, with real-life inventions borrowing their names from sci-fi concepts. When we discuss ethical quandaries in the real world, we often reference fictional worlds, such as the government surveillance of Orwell’s 1984 and the Three Laws of Robotics from Asimov’s I, Robot.

True innovators proliferate options, cut most of them, and never shy away from change.
The authors also state something along the lines of “A stronger creative process entails having lots of ideas and letting most of them die” and “It’s a good habit not to commit to the first solution.” These tenets are especially important in writing fiction. In brainstorming ideas, I always try to make a list of at least ten options, knowing that the first few items in the list will be the most obvious choices and that those at the end will be the most surprising and exciting. This is true of any genre, whether one is devising jokes or creating a magic system. Options breed originality.

We can improve our education system by encouraging students to take creative risks.
I have a feeling that the authors were itching to write a book on improving the American educational system. They seemed passionate about the future of innovation and how we can encourage the next generation to pursue new ideas. We need to teach children risk tolerance so that they accept failure as part of the creative process. We need to encourage students to proliferate options and “go different distances from the hive,” to deviate from what is already established. We need to provide a “balance of unstructured play and imitating models.”

Writers, too, can become more innovative if they actively choose to take risks, formulate lists of ideas, and mix imitation of past authors with experimentation of new styles and ideas.


The Bottom Line: The very act of thinking about how creativity works inspires me to be more creative, which is why I valued this book.

“The best creative acts arise when the past is not treated as sacrosanct, but as fodder for new creations—when we renovate the imperfect and refashion the beloved. Innovation takes wing when the brain generates not just one new scheme, but many, and stretches those ideas to different distances from what is already known and accepted. Risk-taking and fearlessness in the face of error propel those imaginative flights.”

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pat yourself on the back - way to go for being born human! We are so creative and innovative!

No, this is not a quote from the book, but it is my sarcastic quote after reading it.

It was a little too self-congratulatory for my taste (we love to talk about ourselves, don't we?), I wanted more than anecdotes on awesome and inspiring things. That being said, there were some good ones here, and some larger takeaways like:
- Science needs art.
- Be open to change.
- Think outside of the box and strive for a new understanding.

I did like the bend, break, and blend models of building creativity on what already exists. I also liked the design of the book itself: attractive font, page design, and images included.

[د.أمجد الجنباز · Rating 3 out of 5]

يتحدث الكتاب عن الإبداع وكيف يحدث
يحوي الكثير جدا من قصص حدث فيها الإبداع ويفسر كيف حدثت
ويتحدث عن الإبداع في الشركات وكيف يحدث.
الكتاب جميل لمن يريد أن يتعرف أكثر عن الإبداع وتفسير الية حدوثه.

لكن الكتاب لم يضع هيكلا أو نموذجا معينا يعطينا كيف بإمكاننا تسهيل حدوث الابداع على المستوى الشخصي والشركات

[Ramnath Iyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much yet too little

What makes humans more creative than other species? What makes us innovative? Why do we have the urge to endlessly try to improve on or just change things? “Runaway Species” aims to answer these questions, but sadly does not really do so in any meaningful way. The authors make a brief foray into suggesting that human creativity and drive for innovation is due to the higher number of neurons in the human brain. But apart from that, most of the book is about examples of creativity and suggestions on how to improve or foster creativity.

The book is stronger on the latter, and its very clear on reading just a few pages that the authors are extremely smart and bright. It’s also clear that they have an understanding of a very vast range of subjects and an ability to put the ideas into examples and words. Thus, while discussing how some ideas fail while others succeed, there are entertaining stories about the brief drive to create a global language (Esperanto), and how more logical calendars failed to uproot the Gregorian calendar (one reason : different religions found their rites being thrown astray due to the extra day left over each year).

Yet, after a while, the sheer number of examples being thrown around for all sorts of things related to “creativity” starts to bring diminishing returns. One wishes there were less examples, but more detail. Take the recommendation to “Proliferate options”. This is backed up by examples of multiple versions (most of which now unknown to the public) of familiar things that were eventually not used. In the space of three pages we are rapidly given examples of Hemingway’s “Farewell to Arms”, a theater building design in New York, Audi’s personal mobility vehicle, Edison’s ideas for the phonograph, and the 38 wing surfaces crafted by the Wright brothers for their airplane prototype. The net result is a mind numbing whirl of stories, facts and factoids.

Apart from more options to increase the possibility of success, the authors do have advice - some good and some banal – for an atmosphere enabling innovation and creativity. They recommend doing multiple things even if one is particularly good at one thing (lots of examples, although the one about Einstein having patented a blouse was perhaps the most factoid worthy). Doing so augments the natural ways (bending, breaking, blending) in which most innovation occurs. Other suggestions are mixed – try lots of different things and approaches (good), don’t treat failed approaches as waste but rather as laying seeds for other successes (good but banal), think beyond borders (!!), “tolerate risk(!!!)” etc.

And apparently periodically changing the seating plans and layouts in firms helps in keeping the place revitalized.

[Gretchen Rubin]

I love the work of David Eagleman. So engaging, so interesting.

[Aydın Tezcan · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Eagleman'ın Incognito ve Beyin kitaplarını okumuş bir kişi olarak bu kitabını çok daha sade buldum.
Beynin işleyişi ile ilgili değil, daha çok insan yaratıcılığının temel özellikleri ve resimli örneklemeleri bulunan bir kitap.
Nedense bana resim ya da fotoğraf içeren bu tür kitaplar, biraz daha popüler olabilmek için bu şekilde kurgulanmışlar izlenimi veriyor. Sonuç olarak, güzel ve kolay okunan bir kitap.

[Deborah Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be on every teacher/professor--hey every person's bookshelf. It was eye-opening and gave me a lot of ideas on how to approach some of the topics that students have a hard time for. Note that this isn't a "teaching handbook"--I just used it this way. Anyone who reads the book will likely be inspired in their own careers.

[Dora · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I will read over and over again.

[Leila Gonzales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-expanding. Co-authored by a neuroscientist and a music composer, this exploration of creativity is wide-ranging and inspiring.

[Jovi Ene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un specialist în neuroștiințe și un artist (compozitor, în acest caz) își unesc forțele pentru a ne oferi o perspectivă nouă și interesantă asupra creativității umane, un proces complex și mereu aflat în evoluție. Volumul lor îmbină așadar știința cu arta, descriind atât felul în care creierul funcționează, cât mai ales felul în care omul a creat întotdeauna noul, fie tehnologic, fie artistic. Mi-au plăcut în această carte mai ales exemplificarea acestor procese complicate, volumul fiind plin de informații detaliate despre invențiile și inovațiile omenirii, dar și de imagini colorate asupra unor opere artistice necesare pentru înțelegerea și evoluția creativității umane.

[Einu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I also wrote a summary of The Runaway Species, which you can read here.

In essence, this book is an ode to creativity. It offers insights into what makes human creativity unique and what creative thinking entails, pleads for active encouragement of creative thinking in our societies, and gives practical advice on how we might go about this. All of this is supported by countless real-life examples of human creativity in both the sciences and the arts.

The main ideas can be summarised as follows: human creativity is rooted in our ability to consider what-if scenarios, making our world a lot richer than it would be if we only saw things the way they actually are. By bending, breaking and blending aspects of the world around us we can change it – either a little by tweaking the familiar, or a lot by introducing something completely new. We need to find the right balance between the two as familiar ideas run the risk of going unnoticed, whereas far-out ideas might disorient people. But unsuccessful ideas can teach us things that might lead to the success of our next idea, which is why creative thinking requires a risk-tolerant mindset and the understanding that it usually takes many ideas to think of one really good one.

Despite the hardback’s chunky size, this is a light read with no assumed (scientific) knowledge. The many anecdotes illustrate the authors' theories, which adds to this lightness. Without them, the book would have been less engaging but there is a flip side to this: the main ideas could have been summarised in a fraction of the book's actual length, and I did think the anecdotes were overstaying their welcome a little. By the time I was about halfway through I found myself skimming most of them to get to the next idea faster. The second issue is that the anecdotes were often used as proof for claims. The only proof anecdotes offer is that there have been instances in the past where something worked or was the case.

There were also a number of instances where I thought the anecdotes didn't quite work for the point being made. In chapter 7 the authors posit that due to the restlessness of our brains, we always seek to change things, even if we think they're already perfect. One example put forward as proof is Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes, which was the result of him taking The Street of Crocodiles, one of his favourite books, and cutting away large chunks of it to turn what was left into a new story. The thing is that the original book wasn't going to be lost forever after he had changed it into something new. I would argue that it would've been much less likely for Safran Foer to undertake this project if that wasn't the case. Another example is the story of two violin makers who used the idea of the Stradivarius to make an even better violin that is cheaper, lighter and more durable. Here I'd argue that the innovators didn't change the Stradivarius despite thinking it was perfect, but because they thought it could be even even better. A more nuanced version of the authors' claim, focusing on our drive to improve imperfection (because when is something ever perfect?) – ideally with a short analysis of why that is – would have been more credible, but probably less catchy and light.

That, in a nutshell, is my main criticism of this book as a whole. Big ideas and light delivery seem to have been given priority over nuance and analysis. There were some interesting facts about the neurology of creativity but they left me with more questions than answers as to why our brains are like that. And a few big claims were discussed so briefly they seemed almost like throwaway comments. One example is the idea that our creativity thrives on our interaction with other people, which is why machine creativity is so mechanical since machines don't create within a community and “whatever you put in is exactly what you get back out”. While this is an interesting idea I seriously wonder whether most AI researchers would agree, and yet it's posited in the book as an unshakable fact.

All that said, I did enjoy reading this book. The main points made me consider creativity in a different light and the wide variety of anecdotes gave me a fresh perspective on all its different forms and applications. It reminded me that creativity isn't just about creating art or doing something groundbreaking. It's really about keeping an open mind and not letting everything that's been done before intimidate you.

[Krish · Rating 3 out of 5]

The synopsis of the book is that creative work is often a result of the three B's: "bending" existing ideas, "breaking" down of existing structure in order to see them in a different light, and "blending" of numerous seemingly unrelated ideas into a coherent and novel idea. It proffers a number of interesting real-life examples from history and current times to elucidate the main premise. But on the whole, I found the book to be trite, and ironically, not that creative.

[JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watchword of this book
"New idea doesn't appear from nowhere
Instead we manufacture them from the raw material of experience"
New idea are from the past and future enter present
A great book about creativity
Superb!!

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Runaway Species is a very engaging book about creativity. There are three sections: The first section connects many examples of creativity with some basic neuroscience without any jargon or difficult science concepts. The second section focuses more on creativity and some ways that the human brain takes what it experiences and plays with these ideas, images, etc. The last section is aimed at education and ways we can allow our students to engage their creativity so that they learn basic concepts and facts but also are engaged, learning how to use their own creativity and how to take risks.
The book concludes with acknowledgements, an extensive image credits list (there are lots of art and other images), a bibliography, notes by chapter, an index, and a short biography of the authors.
I highly recommend this book: every one will enjoy the first two sections and the last is most important for parents and educators.

[Costin Cocioabă · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scrisă de David Eagleman, profesor de neuroștiințe de la Stanford University. și compozitorul Anthony Brandt, 📚 «Specia rebelă» este o colecție de exemple de creativitate umană, de la arte la știință, dar și mecanismele care stau în spatele mentalității creative.

*** @costinro on Instagram ***

Personal, exemplele mi-au plăcut (este o carte de weekend care va declanșa de multe ori factorul wow), însă nu m-a convins teoria celor doi conform căreia creierul modifică ceea ce cunoaște deja, prin urmare, există trei strategii ale creativității: deformarea, fragmentarea și mixarea.

Mi se pare o concluzie deterministă, iar majoritatea exemplelor sunt alese pentru a demonstra această teorie. Și spun majoritatea pentru că veți găsi unele (sursele, de exemplu) cărora nu li se aplică neapărat teoria.

[Emil Fichtner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing new, kind of boring, would not recommend to read this

[Einu]

This is a summary of The Runaway Species. I also wrote a review, which you can find here.


Humans have the unique ability to consider what-if scenarios

One thing that sets humankind apart from other animals is the extent of our ability to be creative. Essentially this means that we can take what already exists and turn it into something new.

The neurological basis for creativity is the fact that our behaviour is mediated, rather than automated. When behaviour is automated, it follows a straight line from input (sensation) to output (action). Our neurons are organised in such a way that there is more space between the part of our brain that is responsible for sensations, and the part that is responsible for actions. This means that we can consider our sensations and run what-if simulations based on them before deciding what to do. In other words, humans have the unique ability to consider what the world could be like, rather than only what it is like.


Creativity lies in the tension between the known and the unknown

Our brains are constantly performing a balancing act between novelty and predictability. We are always looking for patterns to help us do things more efficiently, but the more we get used to a pattern (i.e. the more something is repeated) the less we notice it. Our brains only respond when things surprise us – the more we get used to something, the less brain activity takes place.

One consequence of this, according to the authors, is that we naturally want to keep changing things, because the familiar, no matter how good it is, will lose its impact after a while. In order to avoid this from happening, we take the familiar and turn it into something new.

So too much predictability makes us tune out, but on the other hand, too much novelty disorients us. This is called the exploration/exploitation trade-off. Creativity lies in this tension. That’s why a lot of innovation is reminiscent of what came before. Take online stores for example, even though many aspects of the shopping experience are different from physically going to a store, some old features are still present, such as the virtual shopping cart that your chosen items are dropped into. Such features, that imitate the design of what has come before, are called ‘skeuomorphs’.


Community shapes creativity

Human creativity thrives in social settings. We need feedback, new input and interesting exchanges in order to innovate. Community also plays a vital role in the success of creative ideas. This is related to the exploration/exploitation trade-off. Many ideas in the past have failed because they were either asking too much of the community by straying far from the status quo, or they were initially successful but faded into the background when they failed to adapt to their changing environment.

Considering the influence of community and the aesthetic differences between cultures, it might not come as a surprise that no matter how much they tried, researchers could not identify a single universal aspect of aesthetic appreciation. The reason for this, they concluded, is that taste is not hardwired into our brains at birth. As babies we will pay attention to anything that is new, regardless of whether it fits into the general taste of our community or culture. As we grow older, we become more and more familiar with the prevalent tastes in our surroundings, until we start to favour them, making it harder for us to appreciate things that are vastly different from what we have come to consider beautiful.


Creativity happens through bending, breaking and blending

According to the authors, most creative ideas are forms of bending, breaking and/or blending existing objects and ideas.

Bending happens when we take something that already exists as a model and twist or bend it into something different. Examples can be found anywhere around us: painters make stylistic choices to represent reality in their own way, the meanings of words change with time as people start using them differently, and engineers come up with innovative ways to build things based on constructs found in nature.

Breaking entails taking something apart and creating something new out of its individual parts. This is often done to make complex things more workable. Breaking is so ubiquitous that we often don’t notice it happening. Our language is full of figures of speech in which we refer to parts of things to represent a whole (called ‘synecdoches’), like asking for someone’s “hand” in marriage. In films, the flow of time is condensed into short scenes, pixels are fragments of our visual reality, and the human genome project was made possible by breaking strands of DNA into workable chunks.

Finally, in blending we are combining two or more things that merge to form something new. Just like with bending and breaking, we can see examples of this in many different fields. Mythology is full of creatures that are half human, half animal. An engineering example is the nose of the bullet train. It was modelled after the king fisher’s beak, with which he can dive into the water while barely making a ripple. The same principle allows the train to drive at incredibly high speeds without making a huge amount of noise. Blending also happens a lot in music. Take hip-hop for example, which often uses samples, lyrics and other aspects of pre-existing music.


Creative thinking drives innovation

We’ve seen many different applications of creative thinking so far, artistic and cultural ones but also technical and scientific ones. It’s clear that creativity drives innovation, and few people need to be convinced of the importance of innovation in the sciences. Science gave us running water, electricity, and airplanes. But it’s less easy to convince everyone that the arts are equally important. And yet, they play an instrumental role in driving culture and innovation forwards by showing us what things could be like. Sometimes they can even influence the course of history. Napoleon said that The Marriage of Figaro, in which a servant outwits a count, showed lower classes that it was possible to overthrow their masters and thus helped spark the French revolution.

Creative thinking is more important than ever. Our world is constantly changing and as old jobs are starting to disappear due to new technology, new creative jobs are emerging. To thrive in this changing landscape, we need to be flexible and innovative. To foster these traits, we have to encourage scientific and artistic creative thinking both in schools and in business.


Creativity is risky explorative production work

To be truly creative, we need to let go of the security of what we know and venture into the unknown. All things new are inherently risky, which is why new ideas emerge most easily in environments that tolerate failure.

Tolerating failure also means practicing delayed gratification. If we expect everything to go quickly and smoothly, the reality of creative work might make us give up before we get anywhere. Delayed gratification also reduces the risk of accepting our first idea blindly. Our minds tend to look for the quickest solution for any problem, not the best. It might sound like a waste of time to come up with many ideas only to let most of them die, but it’s a good approach to ensuring the best idea wins.

Another strategy for hitting upon successful ideas is to find a good mix between ideas that fit in with current standards, and ideas that deviate far from them. If you focus all your efforts on making small tweaks to what has come before, you’ll likely never come up with anything ground-breaking. But if you spend all your time cooking up fantastical ideas that are impractical and unlike anything the world has seen before, you don’t develop the practical skills necessary to realise your ideas. Innovation often comes from a mix of both; sometimes very experimental ideas can form the basis for more realistic ones, and other times, realising something is impossible can give you new insights about what to try next.


Summary

Human creativity is rooted in our ability to consider what-if scenarios, making our world a lot richer than it would be if we only saw things the way they actually are. By bending, breaking and blending aspects of the world around us we can change it – either a little by tweaking the familiar, or a lot by introducing something completely new. We need to find the right balance between the two as familiar ideas run the risk of going unnoticed, whereas far-out ideas might disorient people. But unsuccessful ideas can teach us things that might lead to the success of our next idea, which is why creative thinking requires a risk-tolerant mindset and the understanding that it usually takes many ideas to think of one really good one.


Reasons to read the book

This book is an easy and quick read with a plethora of real-life examples to illustrate the theories mentioned in this summary. The last section of the book offers practical advice, coupled with more real-life examples, on how to foster creative thinking in businesses and schools - a lot of which can be applied to personal practice as well.

[Miriam Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

There used to be a test to judge which side of the brain you functioned best with—the right side or the left side. The right side is the creative side; the left side the more methodical and scientific. After taking the test at school, the principal lined up the staff based on their scores. Lots of teachers were in the middle of the range; I, of course, was on the far right side of the line and one of my friends was on the far left. As we talked about it at lunch, i commented about how I created whole scenarios with my dolls when I was a child. My left-brained friend said that she spent her childhood organizing her Barbie dolls' shoes by color and category. Both of us used our dolls for creative imagining. The results were different, but no less creative.

The Runaway Species delves deeply into human creativity. Brandt is a musician and composer and Eagleman is a neuroscientist, and their combined research into creativity—of all sorts—is both refreshing and enlightening. The authors introduce us to the process of creativity by suggesting that the work of NASA and the work of Picasso are basically the same. What separates us from animals is cognitive flexibility. "We absorb the raw materials of experience and manipulate them to form something new." We open our eyes, see what is around us, and envision other possible worlds. They also believe that creativity is going to be our salvation going forward as a society.

There are three parts of this creative process—bending, breaking and blending. "We take the raw materials of experience and then bend, break and blend them to create new outcomes." In bending, an original is modified or twisted out of shape. In breaking, of course, it is taken apart, and in blending, two or more sources are merged. Time is spent exploring each of these concepts, and there are remarkable examples both in the text and with photographs. I particularly liked the section on how to design the creative school and the authors' dramatic recommendations about creative opportunities for children. One of the reasons that students of science need the arts is that the arts encourage risk taking and the arts operate "as dynamic remixes of real life."

Two examples: My first husband Lee was a science teacher but an extremely creative man. He would always say, "You know what you could do." It could be about a dish I served for supper or the redecoration of a room or the repair of a gutter. It used to annoy the heck out of me. He didn't live long enough to see how his "You know what you could do" played out in his children's lives. However, our oldest son is now a toy inventor, the next son is a professional problem solver, and our daughter is a preschool teacher. "You know what you could do" is the mantra of their lives.

Then—my daughter said that she thought her 4-year-old was just scribbling when he had a paper and crayons. Then she realized that he was drawing a couple of figures on the paper and creating an entire script involving those figures. The scribbling was the action happening to the figures. He was bending, breaking and blending.

My husband and I read The Runaway Species aloud to each other. We found it so inspiring. He said, that it helped him understand the "strait-jacket of the politically correct" and how that strait jacket curtails creativity. I had never thought about how creativity in science and the arts are intimately connected. These are the major take-aways from our reading.

The book received a star rating from Kirkus Reviews. They said "The book is astonishing for its simplicity in explaining the threads that link creativity in the arts, sciences, and technology." Kirkus calls it "essential—and highly pleasurable" reading. We recommend The Runaway Species. It engendered a tremendous amount of discussion—our favorite kind of book. Look for it, It will be published next week.

[Stanley Xue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was given this on my birthday. It's been sitting on my shelf and I finally got around to reading it.

The book is divided into three parts and for the most part heavily retells paragraph-lengthed anecdotal snippets (e.g. NASA engineers in the Apollo 13 mission; Picasso and cubism; the iPhone). Each of these anecdotes do seem like they could be stories published in their own right. I feel like I would enjoy separate books about these anecdotes. But, this is not the purpose of this book.

These anecdotes are broadly categorised under the general theme/idea of the chapter. Some broad conceptual phrases like "Tolerate Risk" or "Proliferate Options". It seems like this book was written to instruct, advise, or at least inspire. Ending with: "Now close this book and remake the world." However, broad conceptual phrases like these often feel and read empty to me. It feels like only with the power of hindsight are we able to attribute when someone was creatively successful because they "tolerate risk" enough to see their ideas come to fruition; or when someone was creatively successful because they "don't glue down the pieces" and kept their ideas adaptable.

As such, I feel like the ideas in these books, at least in their broad conceptual state, lack genuine predictability and hence applicability. Feeling like a mix of desktop wallpaper quotes. And I guess that's okay and expected. There is no one technique/solution to being creative or solving problems.

(Although, I do feel like I came at this book with this feeling/bias already. So maybe I was too close-minded to appreciate the book's earlier broader more conceptual ideas.)

Nevertheless, the third part of the book was the most interesting to me. (The first establishes humans as a creative species and how humans create (by "Bending, Breaking, and Blending" says Brandt and Eagleman), and the second part establishes some sort of manifesto to being creative). The third part contained more anecdotes. Anecdotes on how businesses encourage their employees to be creative. And how some schools/teachers have encouraged children to be creative.

I guess the lesson is something that we all probably know already: You gotta exercise that creativity muscle (prolifically).

[Oriol - Feel The Brain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decepción total.

Este libro no es en absoluto lo que parece. Para hablar de la creatividad se centra practicamente al 100% en la creatividad occidental; más concretamente en la Estadounidense. En la Europea cuando hay que tirar de historia.

Parece un libro patrocinado por Apple. Se habla mucho de los adelantos tecnológicos y hace mucho incapié en ellos pero solamente habla de Apple y de Google. Es gracioso que ponga como ejemplos de creatividad en los smartphones a Apple (por supuesto), Google (??) y ojo!! Nokia! ¿Dónde está Samsung, por ejemplo? Y en términos de teconología, dónde se menciona a Microsoft con el que seguramente se haya escrito el libro.

Por otro lado, la guest star es Thomas Edison. Una y otra vez vuelven a Edison. Eso sí quirúrgicamente apartado de cualquier relación con Tesla.

En resumen, este libro es un pasatiempo. Una colección (casi una regurgitación) de datos y hechos curiosos articulados en lo que intenta ser una teoría de la creatividad humana, con un capitulo final puesto con calzador que habla sobre el sistema educativo.

Podéis pasar el rato con él; pero si queréis o bucáis algo sobre el cerebro humano, con las primeras 30 páginad hay de sobras.

Repito, una decepción total.

[Teresa Meng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely engaging non-fiction book on creativity! Filled with a great variety of pictures and examples throughout history that demonstrate ingenuity in visual-arts, dance, poetry, music, medicine, engineering and architecture. The authors also explain how the human brain is able to process all these different visual inputs. I found the chapter on enhancing the education system "The Creative School" especially intriguing. "An education in creativity lies in the sweet spot between unstructured play and imitating models. This sweet spots gives the students precedents to build on but it doesn't condition or constrain their choices."The authors offer examples of how teachers can encourage students to break "the mold of the past" in subjects such as art, literature, history, science, engineering, etc. I would love to see some of these ideas being incorporated in future classrooms to better cultivate students' creativity.

[Yanick Punter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed most parts. A few parts couldn't keep me focused. Contains some useful information.

Read with: Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation, Life Finds a Way: What Evolution Teaches Us About Creativity, and Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind.

[ecebilgic.txt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yaratıcılığın izlediği yolları, insanların farkında olmadan izlediği yolları anlatıyor.

Ben okuduğum anlatı türündeki kitaplardan çoğunlukla arkasında durduğu ya da karşı çıktığı fikrin temellerini sağlam kurmasını, deneylerle desteklemesini, akademiye dayanmasını bekliyorum.

Kitabın sevmediğim yanı, kavramları anlaşılır kılmak için yaşanmış hikayeleri örnek olarak kullanması oldu. Çok keyifli örnekler kitabı gerçekten çok akıcı hale getirmiş fakat günün sonunda hoş hikayelerden öte akılda kalıcılığını çok zayıf buldum.

Bu türde çok iyi örnekleri bilen bir okur olarak tatmin olmadım hatta yüzeysel ve fazla görsel buldum. Kitabı bitirdikten sonra belgeselleştirilerek farklı ve daha çağdaş örneklerle yeniden anlatıldığını gördüm, bana göre doğru tercih okumak yerine izlemek olur.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasant enough survey in which the authors describe bending, blending, and breaking as pathways to human creativity. Plenty of breadth across the arts, science, and technology but little in the way of depth. Ultimately a book more valuable for its tantalizing examples and references than for its own original contributions. Imagine six solid TED talks about creativity in book form and you pretty much get the picture - solid intellectual entertainment.

[Sjors · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The Runaway Species” starts engagingly enough but runs out of juice about half way and ultimately fails to deliver on its promise nor live up to its potential. It is easy to start but hard to finish. I should know, because it took me well over two years and I’m a fast reader. This is one of these books we leaf through in a bookshop, get our eyes caught on a few thought-provoking quotes, a few well-picked illustrations and kaboom we are buying it. Ugh.

[Janine Zachariae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inhalt (in meinen Worten)

David Eagleman und Anthony Brandt haben sich mit dem Thema der Kreativität beschäftigt und sich gefragt, woher manche Menschen ihre Ideen erhalten und was mit all den Gedanken passiert, die nie an die Oberfläche kommen.

In diesem Buch beschreiben sie viele Themen, die unseren Alltag beherrschen oder die uns das Leben erleichtern. Sie blicken hinter die Kulissen von bestimmten Marken und Firmen und erläutern die Werke von Picasso. Es geht um Musik – die Beatles, Shakespeare und unsere sprachliche Entwicklung. Selbst ‚Zurück in die Zukunft‘ wird erwähnt.

Biegen, Brechen und Verbinden.

Was genau hat es damit auf sich und wie können wir unser eigenes Leben und unsere eigene Kreativität beeinflussen?

Stil:

Es gibt viele Fakten und manchmal hat man eine Aneinanderreihung von Begriffen, die vielleicht etwas viel auf einmal wirken.

Doch wenn man sich eingelesen hat, möchte man einfach weitermachen und mehr wissen.

Es ist ein Fachbuch und sehr gut aufgebaut, ohne groß aufzutragen. Der Leser braucht keinen Uni-Abschluss um zu verstehen, was hier erklärt wird. Das Einzige, was man vielleicht benötigt, ist ein Verständnis für unsere Welt und wie viel man selbst dazu beitragen kann.

Fazit:

In ‚Zurück in die Zukunft‘ hat Doc Brown Marty McFly dazu angetrieben, vier Dimensional zu denken, um alles zu berücksichtigen.

Auch in ‚Alice in Wunderland‘ lernen wir, dass das Unmöglich möglich sein kann, wenn man daran glaubt.

Und genau das übermittelt uns auch dieses Buch – mehr oder weniger. Man nimmt etwas, was schon vorhanden ist und ändert es für die aktuellen Bedürfnisse um und erhält etwas komplett innovatives, in dem man die Dinge aus mehreren Blickwinkeln betrachtet.

Es gibt Beispiele von Schulen, wo Viertklässler eine Aufgabe erhalten, um die Lösung für ein Problem herauszufinden und sie sind sehr kreativ und denken über mehrere Ecken. Denn, das finde ich sehr schön, Kinder sollte man nie unterschätzen in ihrer Kreativität und das eine kreative Erziehung sehr gut für die Entwicklung eines Kindes sein kann.

Ich bin der Meinung, dass dieses Buch sehr anregend für den Geist sein kann. Denn man lernt hinter dem zu blicken, was war, um an etwas zu kommen, was es noch nicht gibt. Das Denken wird gefördert und die Kreativität gepflegt.

Da ich mich selbst als kreativ betrachte, konnte ich sehr viel von diesem Fachbuch mitnehmen und hab mir wahnsinnig viele Postits hineingeklebt, um einfach noch einmal nachzuschlagen.

Das Buch ist sehr modern und doch trägt es viel von ‚damals‘ in sich.

Gesamtbewertung:

Cover: Einfach, schlicht und cool 4.5/5

Titel: Kreativität – Wie unser Denken die Welt immer wieder neu erschafft – ist sehr lang, aber passt nun einmal 4.5/5

Inhalt: Es wird nicht langweilig, auch wenn an manchen Stellen etwas viel ‚drumherum‘ geschrieben wird. Picasso wird auffallend oft erwähnt und auch Bilder sind vorhanden. Alles in allem aber ist es ein wirklich interessantes Werkt und ich kann es einfach empfehlen