NEW BOOKS BY DIVISION 10 MEMBERS
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NEW DIRECTIONS IN AESTHETICS, CREATIVITY AND THE ARTS
Paul
Locher, Colin Martindale and Leonid Dorfman, Editors
2006, Baywood Press.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The
contributing authors to this book, all preeminent scholars in their
fields, present their current thinking about the processes that
underlie creativity and aesthetic experience. They discuss
established theory and research, and provide creative speculation on
future problems for inquiry and new approaches to conceptualizing and
investigating these phenomena. The book contains many new findings
and ideas, never before published or new by virtue of the novel
context in which they are incorporated. Thus, the chapters present
both new approaches to old problems and new ideas and approaches not
yet explored by leading scholars in these fields.
The first
part of the book is devoted to understanding the nature of the
perceptual/cognitive and aesthetic processes that occur during
encounters with visual art stimuli in everyday settings, in museums,
and while watching films. Also discussed in Part I is how cultural
and anthropological approaches to the study of aesthetic responses to
art contribute to our understanding about the development of a
culture's artistic canon and to crosscultural aesthetic
universals.
Part II presents new dimensions in the study of
creativity. Two approaches to the development of a comprehensive
theory of creativity are presented: Sternberg's Investment Theory of
Creativity and a systems perspective of creativity based on a
metaindividual world model. Also covered are the factors that
contribute to cinematic creativity and a film's cinematic success,
and the complex nature of the creative processes and research
approaches involved in the innovative product design necessitated by
the introduction of electronics in consumer products.
Part III
deals with the application of concepts and models from cognitive
psychology to the study of music, literary meaning, and the visual
arts. The contributors outline a model of the cognitive processes
involved in real-time listening to music, investigate what readers
are doing when they read a literary text, describe what research
shows about the transfer of learning from the arts to non-arts
cognition, and discuss the kinds of thinking skills that emerge from
the study of the visual arts by high school students.
To Order From Baywood:
http://www.baywood.com/books/previewbook.asp?id=0-89503-305-4
EVOLUTIONARY AND NEUROCOGNITIVE APPROACHES TO AESTHETICS, CREATIVITY AND THE ARTS
Colin Martindale, Paul
Locher and Vladimir Petrov, Editors
Soon To Be Released,
Baywood Press
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this book,
well-known scholars describe new and exciting approaches to
aesthetics, creativity, and psychology of the arts, approaching these
topics from a point of view that is biological or related to biology
and answering new questions with new methods and theories. All known
societies produce and enjoy arts such as literature, music, and
visual decoration or depiction. Judging from prehistoric
archaeological evidence, this arose very early in human development.
Furthermore, Darwin was explicit in attributing aesthetic sensitivity
to lower animals. These considerations lead us to wonder whether the
arts might not be evolutionarily based. Although such an evolutionary
basis is not obvious on the face of it, the idea has recently
elicited considerable attention. The book begins with a consideration
of ten theories on the evolutionary function of the arts, and this is
followed by several chapters that consider the possible evolutionary
function of specific arts such as music and literature. The theory of
evolution was first drawn up in biology, but evolution is not
confined to biology: genuinely evolutionary theories of sociocultural
change can be formulated. That they need to be formulated is shown in
several chapters that discuss regular trends in literature and
scientific writings. Psychologists have recently rediscovered the
obvious fact that thought and perception occur in the brain, so
cognitive science moves ever closer to neuroscience. Several chapters
give overviews of neurocognitive and neural network approaches to
creativity and aesthetic appreciation. The book concludes with two
exciting chapters describing brain-scan research on what happens in
the brain during creativity and presenting a close examination of the
relationship between genetically transmitted mental disorder and
creativity.
To Order From Baywood:
http://www.baywood.com/books/previewbook.asp?id=0-89503-306-2
The Psychology
of Science and Origins of the Scientific Mind
Gregory J. Feist
(2006, Yale University
Press)
Book Description
In this book, Gregory Feist reviews and
consolidates the scattered literatures on the psychology of science,
then calls for the establishment of the field as a unique discipline.
He offers the most comprehensive perspective yet on how science came
to be possible in our species and on the important role of
psychological forces in an individual’s development of scientific
interest, talent, and creativity. Without a psychological
perspective, Feist argues, we cannot fully understand the development
of scientific thinking or scientific genius.
The author
explores the major subdisciplines within psychology as well as allied
areas, including biological neuroscience and developmental,
cognitive, personality, and social psychology, to show how each sheds
light on how scientific thinking, interest, and talent arise. He
assesses which elements of scientific thinking have their origin in
evolved mental mechanisms and considers how humans may have developed
the highly sophisticated scientific fields we know today. In his
fascinating and authoritative book, Feist deals thoughtfully with the
mysteries of the human mind and convincingly argues that the creation
of the psychology of science as a distinct discipline is essential to
deeper understanding of human thought processes.
To Order From Yale University Press:
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=030011074X
To Order From Barnes & Noble:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=030011074X&itm=1
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