Sparks of Genius

The 13 Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People

Robert Root-Bernstein, Michèle Root-Bernstein, Robert Root-Bernstein, Michèle Root-Bernstein

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780618127450
• eBook ISBN: 9780547525891
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

Discover the cognitive tools that lead to creative thinking and problem-solving with this "well-written and easy-to-follow" guide ( Library Journal).
 
Explore the "thinking tools" of extraordinary people, from Albert Einstein and Jane Goodall to Mozart and Virginia Woolf, and learn how you can practice the same imaginative skills to become your creative best. With engaging narratives and examples, Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein investigate cognitive tools such as observing, recognizing patterns, modeling, playing, and more.
 
Sparks of Genius is "a clever, detailed and demanding fitness program for the creative mind" and a groundbreaking guidebook for anyone interested in imaginative thinking, lifelong learning, and transdisciplinary education ( Kirkus Reviews).
 
"How different the painter at the easel and the physicist in the laboratory! Yet the Root-Bernsteins recognize the deep-down similarity of all creative thinking, whether in art or science. They demonstrate this similarity by comparing the accounts that various pioneers and inventors have left of their own creative processes: for Picasso just as for Einstein, for Klee just as for Feynman, the creative impulse always begins in vision, in emotion, in intuition. . . . With a lavishly illustrated chapter devoted to each tool, readers quickly realize just how far the imagination can stretch." — Booklist
 
"A powerful book . . .  Sparks of Genius presents radically different ways of approaching problems." — American Scientist

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Abbott, Edwin A., 204

Abell, Paul I., 271

Abstracting, 25, 70–75, 76–77, 90–91

as cross-disciplinary, 87, 320

and Kandinsky, 320, 322

in language, 76

mathematics as, 75, 294–95

and modeling, 230, 240, 243

and Mondrian, 226

in motion analysis, 82–87

multiple forms of, 80–82

in neuroanatomy drawings of Ramón y Cajal, 88–89

in revision of writing, 87–88

science as, 75–76, 87, 89–90

simplicity in, 77–79

and transforming, 271, 273–274, 276–79, 286–88, 290, 294–95

Acting. See Theater

Activity sets, 323

Acupuncture figure, 235

Adams, Ansel, 54, 99, 303

African tribal music, 119–21, 122, 129, 152

Aka Pygmy music, 119–20, 124

Akari lamps, 149, 150

Albers, Josef, 7, 222, 254

Alberti, Leon Baptista, 207

Alexjander, Susan, 285

Alfvèn, Hannes, 196

Algebraic thinking vs. geometrical thinking, 62–64, 68–69

Alice in Wonderland (Carroll), 256–58

Allende, Isabel, 2, 9, 273

Allison, V. D., 248

Ambigrams, 263–65

Anagrams, 262–64

Analogizing, 25, 142–44

in arts, 145–54

development of, 154–59

and Helen Keller, 141–42

invention from, 145

and modeling, 230, 243

and resonance of ideas, 140–41

in science, 144–45, 151–52, 153; atomic physics, 136–40

in synthesizing, 309

in transforming, 272, 276

Anamorphosis, 208–12

Antheil, George, 59, 60, 170

Anthropomorphizing, 194

Architecture, 145, 214, 220, 325

Aperiodic tilings, 258, 260

Apollo 13 (film), 183

Arakawa, Shusaka, 158, 159

Arber, Agnes, 1...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Epigraph
• Rethinking Thinking
• Schooling the Imagination
• Observing
• Imaging
• Abstracting
• Recognizing Patterns
• Forming Patterns
• Analogizing
• Body Thinking
• Empathizing
• Dimensional Thinking
• Modeling
• Playing
• Transforming
• Synthesizing
• Synthesizing Education
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Minds-On Resources
• Illustration Credits
• Index
• About the Authors
• Connect with HMH