Constraints and Creativity
In Search of Creativity Science

This book presents a new theoretical model, constraint theory, for how to study creativity using scientific methods and clarifying concepts.

Feiwel Kupferberg (Author)

9781108839617, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 July 2021

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.71 kg

'… filled with fascinating examples from science, the arts, technology, rhetoric, and the natural world. The author covers trends, particularly in creative domains, focusing on, e.g., the advent of photography and its effect on the visual arts and the emerging movie industry and how in the 20th century, movies targeted a wide audience while visual art became increasingly incomprehensible … all fields of endeavor afford levels of creativity from childhood exploration to pioneering work … Recommended.' R. F. Subotnik, CHOICE

This book studies creativity in its own right in the search for a creativity science. If we assume that creativity can best be described by constraint theory, the complexity and paradoxes of creativity can be reduced by dividing it into manageable sections. The model is tested and evidenced by numerous historical cases of pioneering work within the three intellectual fields: science, art, and technology. The model guides non-specialists from the many disciplines studying creativity and demonstrates the first principles of creativity science. Going all the way back to Aristotle, the author makes the basic ideas of the original founder of creativity science accessible and up to date with current research.

Preface
Introduction
Part I. In Search of Creativity Science: 1. Disciplines in the making: What is science and what is creativity and how are the two entangled?
Part II. Elaborating the Theoretical Model: 2. Dimension I. Types of constraints
3. Dimension II. Levels of creativity
4. Dimension III. Getting it right
5. Dimension IV. Protection of vulnerable versions
6. Dimension V. Structure of creative processes
Part III. Conclusions: First Principles of Creativity Science: 7. Concepts and knowledge object
8. Data and methods.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Philosophy of science [PDA], Educational psychology [JNC], Education [JN], Psychological theory & schools of thought [JMA], Psychology [JM]