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.

Doris B. Wallace received her doctorate from the Institute of Cognitive Studies at Rutgers University. She is a Senior Research Psychologist at Bank Street College of Education in New York, a family therapist, and a collaborator in an international study of children of the Holocaust. Howard E. Gruber was formerly Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers University, and Professor of Genetic Psychology at the University of Geneva. He is currently Research Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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 the psychology 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 oeuvre in 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.