Scientists are famous for believing in the proven and peer-accepted, the very ground that pioneering artists often subvert; they recognize correct and incorrect where artists see only true and false. And yet in some individuals, crossover learning provides a remarkable kind of catalyst to innovation that sparks the passion, curiosity, and freedom to pursue--and to realize--challenging ideas in culture, industry, society, and research. This book is an attempt to show how innovation in the "post-Google generation" is often catalyzed by those who cross a conventional line so firmly drawn between the arts and the sciences.
David Edwards describes how contemporary creators achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science is easily defined. These creators may innovate in culture, as in the development of new forms of music composition (through use of chaos theory), or, perhaps, through pioneering scientific investigation in the basement of the Louvre. They may innovate in research institutions, society, or industry, too. Sometimes they experiment in multiple environments, carrying a single idea to social, industrial, and cultural fruition by learning to view traditional art-science barriers as a zone of creativity that Edwards calls artscience. Through analysis of original stories of artscience innovation in France, Germany, and the United States, he argues for the development of a new cultural and educational environment, particularly relevant to today's need to innovate in increasingly complex ways, in which artists and scientists team up with cultural, industrial, social, and educational partners.
David Edwards is Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University and is founding director of Le Laboratoire in Paris and the Idea Translation Lab at Harvard. His work spans the arts and sciences and lies at the core of a network of multi-disciplinary labs in Europe, Africa, and the United States. Edwards is the founder of Medicine in Need and the Boston-based Cloud Foundation, which oversees Cloud Place, a dynamic center for urban youth arts, and launched the $100K ArtScience Innovation Prize. The youngest-ever member of the National Academy of Engineering, Edwards was a featured speaker at Davos in 2010. His creative work is described at www.davidideas.com.
Table of Contents
Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Chapter 1. Catalyst Chapter 2. Process Chapter 3. Idea Translation in Cultural Institutions Chapter 4. Idea Translation in Academia Chapter 5. Idea Translation for Humanitarian Causes Chapter 6. Idea Translation in Industry Chapter 7. The Idea of the Lab Acknowledgments
What People are Saying About This
The tenor of this convivial, onrushing book makes one think that what the best workers in both fields have in common is what this book consistently offers: a great and moving intellectual generosity.
William S. Hammack
ArtScience champions the virtues of interdisciplinary work. Using captivating anecdotes of how both disciplines can enhance each other Edwards offers one of the strongest and most original contributions to the literature on creativity.
— William S. Hammack, Commentator for National Public Radio's Marketplace, and Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Jay Cantor
The tenor of this convivial, onrushing book makes one think that what the best workers in both fields have in common is what this book consistently offers: a great and moving intellectual generosity.
