How Creativity Happens in the Brain

Arne Dietrich's new book, How Creativity Happens in the Brain, is an outstanding synthesis of the science of creative thinking, and not before time. As the author remarks; "I cannot think of a mental faculty so central to the human condition for which we have so little understanding as to how brains do it". By focusing on the neural mechanisms of creativity Dietrich introduces a genuinely fresh, coherent, bottom up explanation. It is lively and controversial and it will change the way you think, you think. A brief summary of highlights follows. Dietrich prepares for his journey by seeing off the numerous traditional and popular "mythconceptions of creativity", replacing Aristotelian rationalism with Darwinian materialism. Then the groundwork. The brain's general operations, its connectionist or network architecture, its (explicit vs. implicit) dual information-processing system and how information stored or produced in the brain emerges, from unconscious to conscious, are lucidly described. How we make sense of a stream of conscious experiences is also addressed, while the familiar mental illusions we have of the working mind, described by philosopher Daniel Dennett as the Cartesian Theatre, is farewelled.

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