The Creative Spark
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The Creative Spark by Agustin Fuentes
A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth?Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight. Agust n Fuentes argues that your child's finger painting comes essentially from the same place as creativity in hunting and gathering millions of years ago, and throughout history in making war and peace, in intimate relationships, in shaping the planet, in our communities, and in all of art, religion, and even science. It requires imagination and collaboration. Every poet has her muse; every engineer, an architect; every politician, a constituency. The manner of the collaborations varies widely, but successful collaboration is inseparable from imagination, and it brought us everything from knives and hot meals to iPhones and interstellar spacecraft. Weaving fascinating stories of our ancient ancestors' creativity, Fuentes finds the patterns that match modern behavior in humans and animals. This key quality has propelled the evolutionary development of our bodies, minds, and cultures, both for good and for bad. It's not the drive to reproduce; nor competition for mates, or resources, or power; nor our propensity for caring for one another that have separated us out from all other creatures. As Fuentes concludes, to make something lasting and useful today you need to understand the nature of your collaboration with others, what imagination can and can't accomplish, and, finally, just how completely our creativity is responsible for the world we live in. Agust n Fuentes's resounding multimillion-year perspective will inspire readers--and spark all kinds of creativity.
Fuentes, Agustin: - Agustin Fuentes completed a B.A. in Zoology and Anthropology, and an M.A.& Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and teaching interests include the evolution of social complexity in human and primate societies, conflict negotiation across primates, including humans, and reproductive behavior and ecology. He is also interested in issues of human-nonhuman primate interactions, disease and pathogen transfer. Fuentes' recent work includes publications such as It's Not All Sex and Violence: Integrated Anthropology and the Role of Cooperation and Social Complexity in Human Evolution in the American Anthropologist, Re-visiting conflict resolution: Is there a role for emphasizing negotiation and cooperation instead of conflict and reconciliation? in R. Sussman and A. Chapman Eds., The Origins and Nature of Sociality Aldine de Gruyter, Pub. He has published two edited volumes and is currently in the process of finishing three other texts. His current research projects include assessing behavior and disease transmission in human-monkey interactions in Asia and Gibraltar and examining the roles of cooperation, social negotiation, and patterns of niche construction in human evolution.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781101983942 |
| ISBN 10 | 1101983949 |
| Title | The Creative Spark |
| Author | Agustin Fuentes |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Penguin Putnam Inc |
| Year published | 2017-03-21 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |