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The Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking
From Archimedes' discovery of the principle of water displacement while taking a bath to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, from Brunelleschi's development of perspective drawing to the Impressionist revolution, from the taming of fire to the creation of the laser, "breakthrough thinking" that is, a sudden, seemingly unaccountable moment of inspiration has shaped and advanced civilization. But Nature invents, too through evolutionary watersheds like vertebrate mammals and formerly grounded creatures making the leap to flight. How, then, does breakthrough thinking really work? What, if anything, does human invention have in common with biological evolution? Drawing on a rich knowledge of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, David Perkins offers a uniquely integrative theory of how breakthroughs occur, along with dozens of delightful mind puzzles and illustrations that will have you quizzing whomever happens to be nearest. B/W line drawings. Published in hardcover as Archimedes' Bathtub. "This cornucopia of brain-teasers tests your mettle, sharpens your skills, and illuminates the mysteries of human problem-solving." Howard Gardner, Harvard University, author of The Disciplined Mind
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
304 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
6 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
David N. Perkins
24 books27 followersDavid Perkins is a founding member of Harvard Project Zero, a basic research project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education investigating human symbolic capacities and their development. For many years, he served as co-director, and is now senior co-director and a member of the steering committee. Perkins conducts research on creativity in the arts and sciences, informal reasoning, problem solving, understanding, individual and organizational learning, and the teaching of thinking skills. He has participated in curriculum projects addressing thinking, understanding, and learning in Colombia, Israel, Venezuela, South Africa, Sweden, Holland, Australia, and the United States. He is actively involved in school change. Perkins was one of the principal developers of WIDE World, a distance learning model practitioners now embedded in programs at HGSE. He is the author of numerous publications, including fourteen authored or co-authored books. His books include; The Eureka Effect, about creativity; King Arthurs Round Table, about organizational intelligence and learning; Making Learning Whole, a general framework for deepening education at all levels; and Future Wise, about what's worth teaching for the contemporary era.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 11, 2023
[...]Η εξέλιξη είναι η ίδια προσαρμοσμένη ώστε να αναπτύσσει και να τελειοποιεί τους τρόπους και τις μορφές επιβίωσης, αν και είναι μόνο μια τυφλή διαδικασία. Αν δεν είχαν ανοίξει ο Νεύτωνας και οι οπαδοί του το βολικό και φαρδύ αυλάκι της κλασικής φυσικής, δεν θα μπορούσε να υπάρξει ένας Αϊνστάιν. Χωρίς την κλασική πειθαρχία της Γαλλικής Ακαδημίας, δεν θα μπορούσε να υπάρξει η επανάσταση του ιμπρεσιονισμού. Ακόμη κι αν υπήρχε κάτι που έμοιαζε με ιμπρεσιονισμό, δεν θα έφερε το νόημα και την απήχηση που είχε και έχει ο ιμπρεσιονισμός. Οι πραγματικότητες Κλοντάικ που οι άνθρωποι ερευνητές πρέπει να αντιμετωπίσουν είναι κατά μεγάλο μέρος αυτο-δημιουργούμενες τόσο σε προσωπική όσο και σε κοινωνική κλίμακα - όχι μέσω κάποιου ελαττώματος στην ανθρώπινη φύση, κάποιου προπατορικού νοητικού αμαρτήματος, αλλά σαν ένα εγγενές και αναπόφευκτο κομμάτι της δυναμικής
της εύρεσης του προβλήματος και της λύσης του προβλήματος.
της εύρεσης του προβλήματος και της λύσης του προβλήματος.
May 7, 2018
After introducing and explaining a concept, the author follows up with many logic puzzles. It's a fun and challenging read!
Read
December 23, 2009Excellent book. It really encapsulated the design process and the need for an incubation period in order for creativity to exist.
January 2, 2011
Will probably re-read this at some point. First part of the book was quite good, but I got distracted frequently during the last part.
August 16, 2012
makes you revise your perception of knowledge...
May 3, 2017
This book is doing three things and I'm not sure it manages two of them though the third one is enough to make it worth the read.
Breakthrough thinking - I give the Author full credit for putting his arguments across, fighting them, and then bringing in whole studies that discredit what he's arguing and doing it full service. While he clearly has a different argument, he gives full credit to the other studies. I don't know if I've seen this done so professionally - without a hint of shade being thrown. By the same token, his argument that XYZ items he goes through in his book are all leading to the snap loses a lot of it's impetus along the way.
I think we all have had, many times, and have seen, that moment of crystal clear understanding. Humor is very much based on that cognitive snap. But as he says, no one woke up one day and discovered a world shattering idea. It comes from long work, dedication, and focus on a problem. So you get what he's talking about, but the reality of the sudden leap is that it's all based on who you are and what you do, not some bolt out of the blue.
Second thing is insight puzzles. Again, full credit, has he dips his hat to my issues with puzzles like this in general. The reason so many memory games don't really work in the practical world is because they just make you better at that memory game. And, likewise, the reason you don't need to do insight puzzles to make yourself a better thinking is because those puzzles don't provide very much practical application. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed wrapping my brain around them all, might even look further into it, but as tools, they're useless.
As uses to figuring out breakthrough thinking? Indeterminate. Even the couple puzzles based on a real world event were synthetic. It's not like you could go to that place and get the Terroir of it and come up with a good answer. And all the questions were, in general a) out of the blue b)bereft of data and c) often needed additional explaining. Point is, as interesting as they were, the studies that came out of testing the puzzles where much like the puzzles themselves, interesting but not ultimately practical.
So, down to the third thing, which I IMMEDIATELY began using. (I'm in marketing and I'm kind of a nature enthusiast kind of guy, you'll see why I bit this pretty hard) Perkins takes the aspects of problem solving/crafting new ideas (abstracts phenomena) and realigns it to a topographic landscape to be investigated, survived, gotten lost in, and ultimately works by finding your way out. He gave real activities, set in this landscape, for how to expand idea, gather more information on an idea, re frame the problem or idea, and decenter.
It's an interrelated process in an attempt not only to home in on the idea or solution - but how to get around idea's that seem almost right or almost good enough but are not really what you're looking for. Making the abstract concrete lets you play with it, think about it in new ways.
I'm not going to do an explanation justice. However, I might just keep this one with me, either as a reminder or for a while until I can habitualize the process. I think the book was geared towards the 'art of scientific discovery' but I see nothing in here not useful to marketing, maybe even more so. I kind of question people who write and market books about marketing... stinks of the meme, "How to write a book make a million dollars" book.
Four starring this because, while I think it actually changed me for the better, the author shot himself in the foot a few times (ow!) and in trying to pull in proof of his idea, mostly showed how tenuous a thread he was tugging on.
Breakthrough thinking - I give the Author full credit for putting his arguments across, fighting them, and then bringing in whole studies that discredit what he's arguing and doing it full service. While he clearly has a different argument, he gives full credit to the other studies. I don't know if I've seen this done so professionally - without a hint of shade being thrown. By the same token, his argument that XYZ items he goes through in his book are all leading to the snap loses a lot of it's impetus along the way.
I think we all have had, many times, and have seen, that moment of crystal clear understanding. Humor is very much based on that cognitive snap. But as he says, no one woke up one day and discovered a world shattering idea. It comes from long work, dedication, and focus on a problem. So you get what he's talking about, but the reality of the sudden leap is that it's all based on who you are and what you do, not some bolt out of the blue.
Second thing is insight puzzles. Again, full credit, has he dips his hat to my issues with puzzles like this in general. The reason so many memory games don't really work in the practical world is because they just make you better at that memory game. And, likewise, the reason you don't need to do insight puzzles to make yourself a better thinking is because those puzzles don't provide very much practical application. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed wrapping my brain around them all, might even look further into it, but as tools, they're useless.
As uses to figuring out breakthrough thinking? Indeterminate. Even the couple puzzles based on a real world event were synthetic. It's not like you could go to that place and get the Terroir of it and come up with a good answer. And all the questions were, in general a) out of the blue b)bereft of data and c) often needed additional explaining. Point is, as interesting as they were, the studies that came out of testing the puzzles where much like the puzzles themselves, interesting but not ultimately practical.
So, down to the third thing, which I IMMEDIATELY began using. (I'm in marketing and I'm kind of a nature enthusiast kind of guy, you'll see why I bit this pretty hard) Perkins takes the aspects of problem solving/crafting new ideas (abstracts phenomena) and realigns it to a topographic landscape to be investigated, survived, gotten lost in, and ultimately works by finding your way out. He gave real activities, set in this landscape, for how to expand idea, gather more information on an idea, re frame the problem or idea, and decenter.
It's an interrelated process in an attempt not only to home in on the idea or solution - but how to get around idea's that seem almost right or almost good enough but are not really what you're looking for. Making the abstract concrete lets you play with it, think about it in new ways.
I'm not going to do an explanation justice. However, I might just keep this one with me, either as a reminder or for a while until I can habitualize the process. I think the book was geared towards the 'art of scientific discovery' but I see nothing in here not useful to marketing, maybe even more so. I kind of question people who write and market books about marketing... stinks of the meme, "How to write a book make a million dollars" book.
Four starring this because, while I think it actually changed me for the better, the author shot himself in the foot a few times (ow!) and in trying to pull in proof of his idea, mostly showed how tenuous a thread he was tugging on.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews