To demystify creative work without reducing it to simplistic formulas, Doris Wallace and Howard Gruber, one of the world's foremost authorities on creativity, have produced a unique book exploring the creative process in the arts and sciences. The book's original "evolving systems approach" treats creativity as purposeful work and integrates cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and motivational aspects of the creative process. Twelve revealing case studies explore the work of such diverse people as William Wordsworth, Albert Einstein, Jean Piaget, Anais Nin, and Charles Darwin. The case study approach is discussed in relation to other methods such as biography, autobiography, and psychobiology. Emphasis is given to the uniqueness of each creative person; the social nature of creative work is also treated without losing the sense of the individual. A final chapter considers the relationship between creativity and morality in the nuclear age. In addition to developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists, this study offers fascinating insights for all readers interested in the history of ideas, scientific discovery, artistic innovation, and the interplay of intuition, inspiration, and purposeful work.

Howard E. Gruber: The evolving systems approach to creative work; Doris B. Wallace: Studying the individual: The case study method and other genres; Frederic L. Holmes: Antoine Lavoisier and Hans Krebs: Two styles of scientific discovery; Linda R. Jeffrey: Writing and rewriting poetry: Wordsworth; Ryan Tweney: Fields of enterprise: On Michael Faraday's thought; Robert T. Keegan: How Darwin became a psychologist; Jeffrey V. Osowski: Ensembles of metaphor in thepsychology of William James; Doris B. Wallace: Stream of consciousness and reconstruction of self in Dorothy Richardson's "Pilgrimage"; Arthur I. Miller: Imagery and intuition in creative scientific thinking: Albert Einstein's invention of the special theory of relativity; Fernando Vidal: Self and oeuvrein Piaget's youth; Vera John-Steiner: From life to diary to art in the work of Anais Nin; Crystal E. Woodward: Art and elegance in the synthesis of organic compounds: Robert Burns; Margery B. Franklin: A convergence of streams: Dramatic change in the artistic work of Melissa Zinc; Howard E. Gruber: Epilogue; Index.