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Wednesday, October 4, 2017

The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World



by Anthony Brandt & David Eagleman
Catapult     2017
304 pages     Nonfiction

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.


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