Chapter INTRODUCTION Charles Sanders Peirce is quickly becoming the dominant figure in the history of American philosophy. The breadth and depth of his work ...

Workplace stressors were identified to have critical impacts on employee creativity. However, little is known about how and when involuntary citizenship behavior (i.e., compulsory citizenship behavior, CCB)-induced stress might exert influence on employee creativity. To fill this void, the present study firstly develops a moderated mediation model to investigate the CCB—employee creativity association as well as the underling mechanism and contextual condition of this relationship. By integrating social cognitive theory such as self-efficacy theory and conservation of resources (...) (COR) theory, we propose that CCB predicts employee creativity through the mediating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE), with the individual characteristics (i.e., personality traits) of negative affect acting as a boundary condition. Using two-wave time-lagged survey data collected from a sample of 251 front-line employees in 10 manufacturing firms in Southern China, the results show that: (a) CSE mediates the negative relationship between CCB and employee creativity; (b) negative affect moderates the relationship between CCB and CSE; (c) negative affect moderates the indirect influence of CCB on employee creativity through CSE. As the level of negative affect rises, this indirect relationship is stronger. Finally, important theoretical and managerial implications and promising avenues for future research are addressed. (shrink)

The pervasive nature of social media can result in excessive use and addiction, but whether excessive use of social media is good or bad for individuals' creativity is unclear. This study explored the direct and indirect impact of excessive use of WeChat on individuals' creativity in workplace, focusing on how excessive use of WeChat promotes or restrains creativity through knowledge sharing and psychological strain. Based on the person–environment fit model and motivation theory, this study examined the three (...) paths of excessive WeChat use affecting individuals' creativity in workplace. We used the structural equation model to test our research model. A survey of 364 employees revealed that excessive WeChat use directly promotes creativity and indirectly improves creativity via knowledge sharing, but excessive WeChat use does not lead to psychological strain. These findings, obtained by theoretically and empirically investigating the positive outcomes of excessive WeChat use, suggest an upside to excessive WeChat use. The implications and limitations of this study and future research on excessive-use behavior are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper surveys some of the central issues in the philosophy of creativity and argues that an adequate treatment of them requires attention to the rich psychological literature on creativity. It also shows that the range of interesting philosophical questions to be raised about creativity is much wider than concerns its role in art. Issues covered include the definition of ‘creativity’; the relation of creativity to imagination; whether the creative process is rational; whether it is (...) teleological; the relation of creativity to knowledge; whether creativity can be explained; computational and Darwinian theories of creativity; whether creativity is a virtue; the relation of creativity to tradition; the aesthetic value of creativity; and whether creative activity is different in science and art. (shrink)

Many traditional theories of creativity put heavy emphasis on an incubation stage in creative cognitive processes. The basic phenomenon is a familiar one: we are working on a task or problem, we leave it aside for some period of time, and when we return attention to the task we have some new insight that services completion of the task. This feature, combined with other ostensibly mysterious features of creativity, has discouraged naturalists from theorizing creativity. This avoidance is (...) misguided: we can maintain unconscious incubated cognition as (sometimes) part of the creative process and we can explain it in scientifically responsible ways. This paper, focusing on the effects of attention on the functional networking of the brain, attempts just such an explanation. It also serves to assuage the naturalist's scepticism about other features of creative cognition. The broad upshot, one would hope, is that philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists return some attention to the long neglected topic of creativity. (shrink)

One of the foremost scientists and thinkers of our time, David Bohm worked alongside Oppenheimer and Einstein. In _Science, Order and Creativity_ he and physicist F. David Peat propose a return to greater creativity and communication in the sciences. They ask for a renewed emphasis on ideas rather than formulae, on the whole rather than fragments, and on meaning rather than mere mechanics. Tracing the history of science from Aristotle to Einstein, from the Pythagorean theorem to quantum mechanics, the (...) authors offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks to creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself. _Science, Order and Creativity_ looks to the future of science with elegance, hope and enthusiasm. (shrink)

The Vedanta of conciousness : transcendence, enlightenment and everyday life -- The alienated self and the Kabbala of transformation -- The Zen of creativity and the critique of the discursive intellect -- The Tao of love and unconditionality in commitment -- The yoga of action and effortless efficiency -- The nous of perception and the re-enchantment of the tree of life -- The gnosis of freedom and the Fana of fulfilment.

"This is the second of two volumes dealing with the history of philosophy, especially of metaphysics.

The Novelty-Seeking Model does not address the iterative nature of creativity, and how it restructures one's worldview, resulting in overemphasis on the role of curiosity, and underemphasis on inspiration and perseverance. It overemphasizes the product; creators often seek merely to express themselves or figure out or come to terms with something. We point to inconsistencies regarding divergent and convergent thought.

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of (...) a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

Seventeen philosophical thinkers ask: What is creativity? What are the criteria of creativity? Should we assign logical priority to creative persons, processes, or products? How do various forms of creativity relate to different domains of human activity?

At least since Aristotle, phronesis (practical wisdom) and poetics (making or creating) have been understood as essentially different activities, one moral the other (in itself) non-moral. Today, if anything, this distinction is sharpened by a Romantic association of poetics with inner subjective expression. Recent revivals of Aristotelian ethics sometimes allow for poetic dimensions of ethics, but these are still separated from practical wisdom per se. Through a fresh reading of phronesis in the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, I argue that (...) phronesis should be viewed as at least in part poetic at its very core. That is, phronesis deals with the fundamentally tragic human situation of moral incommensurability, and it responds to this by making or creating new moral meaning. Such a poetics of practical wisdom helps phronesis stand up to significant and important critiques made of it by a range of modernists and post-modernists, pointing a way forward for some important contemporary moral debates. (shrink)

This essay presents a reading of Nietzsche's untimely consideration On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life that reevaluates the importance of animality and animal forgetfulness in Nietzsche's conception of history. It argues that the novelty of Nietzsche's essay On the Use and Disadvantages of History for Life is contained in the insight that animal is prior and primordial to human memory; that life is historical through and through because it is forgetful through and through. Furthermore, it contends that (...) the perspective of animal forgetfulness reveals that memory is an artistic force, and, as a consequence, historiography must be understood as an artwork rather than a science, concerned with interpretation rather than the factual representation of the past. Dieser Artikel vertritt die These, dass die Originalität von Vom Nutzen und Nachthiel der Historie für das Leben darin besteht, das tierische, Vergessen als die Bedingung und Möglichkeit des menschlichen Erinnerns festgestellt zu haben. Dies beduetet, dass das menschliche Leben nicht deswegen als geschichtlich zu begriefen ist, weil der Mensch sich erinnert, sondern weil er wie das Tier vergisst. Es wird dafür argumentiert, das es diese Einsicht in den Vorang des tierischen Vergessens ist, welche Nietzsche dazu geführt hat einerseits das menschliche Erinnerungvermögen als eine Künstlerische Kraft neu zu definieren und andererseits die Geschichtsschreibung als ein Kunstwerk, dass sich mit Interpretation und nich mit der faktischen Widerspiegelung der Vergangenheit befasst, neu ze bestimmen. (shrink)

A personal story of the ways in which persistence, chance, and creativity interact in biomedical research. This first book by the author of Zen and the Brain examines the role of chance in the creative process. James Austin tells a personal story of the ways in which persistence, chance, and creativity interact in biomedical research; the conclusions he reaches shed light on the creative process in any field. Austin shows how, in his own investigations, unpredictable events shaped the (...) outcome of his research and brought about novel results. He then goes beyond this story of serendipity to propose a new classification of the varieties of chance, drawing on his own research and examples from the history of science—including the famous accidents that led Fleming to the discovery of penicillin. Finally, he explores the nature of the creative process, considering not only the environmental and neurophysiological correlates of creativity but also the role of intuition in both scientific discoveries and spiritual quests. This updated MIT Press paperback edition includes a new introduction and recent material on medical research, creativity, and spirituality. (shrink)

A qualitatively new, much more liberal and efficient organisation of science is proposed and justified in connection with emerging international science structures, such as the European Research Council, and growing debates about further role and development of fundamental science. Although the ideas are expressed in terms of "common sense" arguments accessible to a "general" audience, they are based on the rigorous analysis within the recently advanced "universal concept of complexity", which can be applied, due to its universality, also to science (...) structure itself considered as a complex system. We demonstrate thus the application of this ultimate criterion of completeness of a system of knowledge (and viability of related intelligence) that should be able to derive consistent, provable, and practically relevant conclusions about its own purpose, sense, evolution, and current state. (shrink)

The ability to improvise represents one of the highest levels of musical achievement. An improviser must master a musical language to such a degree as to be able to spontaneously invent stylistically idiomatic compositions on the spot. This feat is one of the pinnacles of human creativity, and yet its cognitive basis is poorly understood. What musical knowledge is required for improvisation? How does a musician learn to improvise? What are the neural correlates of improvised performance? In 'The Improvising (...) Mind' these questions are explored through an interdisciplinary approach that draws on cognitive neuroscience, study of historical pedagogical treatises on improvisation, interviews with improvisers, and musical analysis of improvised performances. Findings from these treatises and interviews are discussed from the perspective of cognitive psychological theories of learning, memory, and expertise. Musical improvisation has often been compared to 'speaking a musical language.' While past research has focussed on comparisons of music and language perception, few have dealt with this comparison in the performance domain. In this book, learning to improvise is compared with language acquisition, and improvised performance is compared with spontaneous speech from both theoretical and neurobiological perspectives. (shrink)

In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a period of lockdown that impacted individuals’ lifestyles, in both professional and personal spheres. New problems and challenges arose, as well as opportunities. Numerous studies have examined the negative effects of lockdown measures, but few have attempted to shine light on the potential positive effects that may come out of these measures. We focused on one particular positive outcome that might have emerged from lockdown: creativity. To this end, this paper compared (...) self-reported professional creativity and everyday creativity before and during lockdown, using a questionnaire-based study conducted on a French sample. We expected participants to be more creative during than prior to lockdown, in both professional and everyday spheres. Regarding Pro-C, we did not see any significant differences between the two comparison points, before and during lockdown. Regarding everyday creativity, we observed a significant increase during lockdown. Furthermore, our results suggest that participants with a lower baseline creativity benefited more from the situation than those with a higher initial baseline creativity. Our results provide new insights on the impact of lockdown and its positive outcomes. These measures may have inarguably negative consequences on the physical and mental health of many, but their positive impact exists as well. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical survey and analysis of empirical studies on creativity, with emphasis on how imagination plays a role in the creative process. It takes as a foil the romantic view that, given features like novelty, incubation, and insight, we should be skeptical about the prospects for naturalistic explanation of creativity. It rebuts this skepticism by first distinguishing stages or operations in the creative process. It then works through various behavioral and neural studies, and corresponding philosophical (...) theorizing, that concern the preparation, generation, insight, and evaluation stages of creative processes. The result is not a complete explanation of creativity, but it identifies an explanatory path towards such an explanation, including the features of creativity that motivate that skepticism. (shrink)