Creativity, Psychology and the History of Science

by Howard E. Gruber (Editor), Katja Bödeker (Editor)

Creativity, Psychology, and the History of Science offers for the first time a comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Howard E. Gruber, who is noted for his contributions both to the psychology of creativity and to the history of science. The present book includes papers from a wide range of topics. In the contributions to creativity research, Gruber proposes his key ideas for studying creative work. Gruber focuses on how the thinking, motivation and affect of extraordinarily creative individuals evolve and how they interact over long periods of time. Gruber’s approach bridges many disciplines and subdisciplines in psychology and beyond, several of which are represented in the present cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, history of science, aesthetics, and politics. The volume thus presents a unique and comprehensive contribution to our understanding of the creative process. Many of Gruber's papers have not previously been easily accessible; they are presented here in thoroughly revised form.

Genres: Science

556 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2005

About the author

Howard Ernest Gruber was a scholar of cognitive psychology who was noted for his books on the development of Darwin's thinking on evolution.

He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1943 and received his Ph.D. in psychology at Cornell in 1950. From 1967 to 1986, Dr. Gruber taught at Rutgers University, where he was the founding director of the Institute of Cognitive Studies. He also taught at the University of Colorado and, in the 1960's, at the New School for Social Research, where he rose to professor and department chairman at the Graduate School. He later held the Piaget Chair at the University of Geneva and until 2000 was an adjunct professor at Columbia's Teachers College.