The Origins of Creativity

by Edward O. Wilson

Overview

“Brimming with ideas. . . . The Origins of Creativity approach[es] creativity scientifically but sensitively, feeling its roots without pulling them out.”—Economist

In a stirring exploration of human nature recalling his foundational work Consilience, Edward O. Wilson offers a “luminous” (Kirkus Reviews) reflection on the humanities and their integral relationship to science. Both endeavors, Wilson argues, have their roots in human creativity—the defining trait of our species. By studying fields as diverse as paleontology, evolution, and neurobiology, Wilson demonstrates that creative expression began not 10,000 years ago, as we have long assumed, but more than 100,000 years ago in the Paleolithic Age. A provocative investigation into what it means to be human, The Origins of Creativity reveals how the humanities have played an unexamined role in defining our species. With the eloquence, optimism, and pioneering inquiry we have come to expect from our leading biologist, Wilson proposes a transformational “Third Enlightenment” in which the blending of science and humanities will enable a deeper understanding of our human condition, and how it ultimately originated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631494857
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	11/27/2018
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	609,441
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Anthill, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Conquest of Nature. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson was a professor emeritus at Harvard University and lived with his wife in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

"Within The Origins of Creativity, E.O. Wilson returns to his most fertile—and most controversial—ideas: the role of biology within human behavior. Always forging ahead, he considers our most abstract behaviors: the apprehension of beauty and our yearning to recreate it. The grand result is a wholly new take on how even our most monumental ideas trace their origins to the organic expression of our human biology."

Hope Jahren

"As always, Wilson tosses off astonishing insights with charming ease (he’s a master of the lyrically short sentence). These profoundly humane meditations on nature, creativity, and our primal yearnings will delight his longtime fans and provide newcomers with the perfect introduction to the career and ideas of one of our most distinguished living scientists—whose high school nickname, I was enchanted to learn, was 'Snake Wilson.'"

Jim Holt

"Professor Wilson has managed to stay interesting and provocative decade after decade, and this latest volume is no exception. It will make you think long and hard and fruitfully!"

Bill McKibben

"With his trademark boundless intellect and elegant writing, Wilson argues that we need both the sciences and the humanities in order to understand the deep origins of what makes us human."

Alan Lightman

"From our senior statesman of science comes this fascinating, eloquent, and important reflection on the vital kinship between the humanities and the sciences, the well of creativity fueling them both, and our need as a species to combine their truths to deal with today’s demanding problems. It’s a message that couldn’t be more timely."

Diane Ackerman

"Brimming with ideas . . . . The Origins of Creativity approache[s] creativity scientifically but sensitively, feeling its roots without pulling them out."

Economist

"Brimming with ideas . . . . The Origins of Creativity approache[s] creativity scientifically but sensitively, feeling its roots without pulling them out."

Economist

08/01/2017
Wilson (emeritus, Honorary Curator in Entomology, Harvard Univ.; The Ants; The Social Conquest of Earth) returns to the task he previously wrote of in Consilience: uniting science and the humanities to look at the how and why of existence. Although he posits science and the humanities as complementary products of the human mind, he situates the former as the bedrock out of which springs the latter, with its broader reach going beyond physical reality into the imagination. Wilson is strongest when explaining creativity and symbolic reasoning as evolutionary adaptations that allowed the genus Homo to thrive in multiple ecologies. He describes the coevolution of genes and culture, highlighting intriguing genetic vestiges of our common heritage on the African savanna in language, aesthetics, and other endeavors. Another recent publication in this vein is Augustín Fuentes's The Creative Spark. Less convincingly argued, perhaps, is Wilson's contention that the humanities must extend the limits of human perception (e.g., the visible spectrum, the range of audible sounds) to achieve their full potential. VERDICT A rallying cry for uniting scientific and humanistic inquiry to answer big questions, this book will resonate with science enthusiasts who appreciate that a life worth living means embracing more than the material world. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]—Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Lib.

Library Journal

2017-08-07
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Wilson (Emeritus, Evolutionary Biology/Harvard Univ.; Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life, 2016, etc.) offers a philosophical examination into "the mystery of why there are universal creative arts."The author's answer exemplifies an alliance between science and the humanities that he champions throughout the book. Such a blending, he maintains, could "reinvigorate philosophy and begin a new, more endurable Enlightenment." Wilson identifies five fields of research where this blending can be especially fertile: paleontology, anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology. These fields may allow "the full meaning of the humanities" to emerge by helping the humanities overcome their shortcomings: "they are rootless in their explanations of causation and they exist within a bubble of sensory experience." The big five fields are united by a "common thread" of belief in the crucial importance of natural selection. "Nothing in science and the humanities makes sense except in the light of evolution," Wilson quotes a geneticist, including the existence of creativity. The author sees language as "the greatest evolutionary advance," setting Homo sapiens apart from other species: "Without the invention of language we would have remained animals. Without metaphors we would still be savages." Early Homo sapiens had a larger brain than their ancestors, providing "larger memory, leading to the construction of internal storytelling" and "true language," which in turn gave rise to "our unprecedented creativity and culture." That rapid transformation "was driven by a unique mode of evolution, called gene-culture coevolution," in which cultural innovation and genes favoring intelligence and cooperation occurred "in reciprocity." Wilson's writing is at its most luminous when describing the "chitinous armor" and glistening bodies of ants—"one of the most beautiful animals in the world"—to which he has devoted much of his career. His more abstract analysis, though sometimes repetitious, is nevertheless salient. A concise, thoughtful exploration of how human understanding will be enhanced by "a humanistic science and a scientific humanities."

Kirkus Reviews