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What BOOK are you reading right now?

 
 
spidergal
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Mar, 2006 07:43 am
Re: What BOOK are you reading right now?
PoetSeductress wrote:
I've just started reading...

Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People

by Robert & Michèle Root-Bernstein

Excerpts:

Our tour of mental cookery begins in the kitchen of the mind, where ideas are marinated, stewed, braised, beaten, baked, and whipped into shape. Just as real chefs surprise us by throwing in a pinch of this and a handful of something else, the kitchens of the creative imagination are full of unexpected practices. Great ideas arise in the strangest ways and are blended from the oddest ingredients. What goes into the recipes often bears no resemblance to the finished dish. Sometimes the master mental chef can't even explain how she knows that her dish will be tasty. She just has a gut feeling that this imagined mixture of ingredients will yield a delicious surprise.

Gut feelings don't make obvious sense. Consider, for example, the experience of young Barbara McClintock, who would later earn a Nobel Prize in genetics. One day in 1930 she stood with a group of scientists in the corn fields around Cornell University, pondering the results of a genetics experiment. The researchers had expected that half of the corn would produce sterile pollen, but less than a third of it actually had. The difference was significant, and McClintock was so disturbed that she left the cornfield and climbed the hill to her laboratory, where she could sit alone and think.

Half an hour later, she "jumped up and ran down to the field. At the top of the field (everyone else was down at the bottom) I shouted, 'Eureka, I have it! I have the answer! I know what this 30 percent sterility is.'" Her colleagues naturally said, "Prove it." Then she found she had no idea how to explain her insight. Many decades later, McClintock said, "When you suddenly see the problem, something happens that you have the answer - before you are able to put it into words. It is all done subconsciously. This has happened many times to me, and I know when to take it seriously. I'm so absolutely sure. I don't talk about it, I don't have to tell anybody about it, I'm just sure this is it."

This feeling of knowing without being able to say how one knows is common. The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is famous for his aphorism "The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know."

(pages 1-2)
____________________________________________________

Gut feelings, emotions, and imaginative images do make sense in science, but, like the meaning of a dance or musical theme, that sense is felt rather than defined. - page 4-5

To think creatively is first to feel. The desire to understand must be whipped together with sensual and emotional feelings and blended with intellect to yield imaginative insight. - page 6

As we will show in subsequent chapters of this book, if you can't imagine, you can't invent. "Illusion," as Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and artist Paul Horgan has written, "is first of all needed to find the powers of which the self is capable." If you can't conceive of things that don't exist, you can't create anything new. If you can't dream up worlds that might be, then you are limited to the worlds other people describe. You see reality through their eyes, not your own. - page 22

____________________________________________________


(On Algebraic versus Geometric Thinking)

What are we to understand by Faynman's statement that he treated algebra problems geometrically and Hoyle's that he treated geometric problems algebraically? A concrete example may help.

A classic word problem concerns a man rowing a boat when his hat falls into the river, which is flowing at 3 kilometers per hour downstream. He is rowing upstream 2 km per hour faster than the stream is taking him down. He discovers his hat is missing one half-hour after it has fallen in the river. If he turns around and rows back at the same speed relative to the river to fetch his hat, how long will it take to catch up to it?

(page 68)
____________________________________________________


I'll make sure I buy that one. Is it available on the Internet,PS?
0 Replies
 
Vietnamnurse
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Mar, 2006 02:54 pm
I am on a George Washington kick:

First I read "The War That Made America...A Short History of the French and Indian War".

Next I read "1776" by David McCullough

Presently I am reading "Washington's Crossing" by David Hackett Fischer and "His Excellency: George Washington" by Joseph Ellis at the same time. I am enjoying this!
0 Replies
 
PoetSeductress
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Mar, 2006 08:32 pm
Re: What BOOK are you reading right now?
quote:

spidergal wrote:
PoetSeductress wrote:
I've just started reading...

Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People

by Robert & Michèle Root-Bernstein

Excerpts:

Our tour of mental cookery begins in the kitchen of the mind, where ideas are marinated, stewed, braised, beaten, baked, and whipped into shape. Just as real chefs surprise us by throwing in a pinch of this and a handful of something else, the kitchens of the creative imagination are full of unexpected practices. Great ideas arise in the strangest ways and are blended from the oddest ingredients. What goes into the recipes often bears no resemblance to the finished dish. Sometimes the master mental chef can't even explain how she knows that her dish will be tasty. She just has a gut feeling that this imagined mixture of ingredients will yield a delicious surprise.

Gut feelings don't make obvious sense. Consider, for example, the experience of young Barbara McClintock, who would later earn a Nobel Prize in genetics. One day in 1930 she stood with a group of scientists in the corn fields around Cornell University, pondering the results of a genetics experiment. The researchers had expected that half of the corn would produce sterile pollen, but less than a third of it actually had. The difference was significant, and McClintock was so disturbed that she left the cornfield and climbed the hill to her laboratory, where she could sit alone and think.

Half an hour later, she "jumped up and ran down to the field. At the top of the field (everyone else was down at the bottom) I shouted, 'Eureka, I have it! I have the answer! I know what this 30 percent sterility is.'" Her colleagues naturally said, "Prove it." Then she found she had no idea how to explain her insight. Many decades later, McClintock said, "When you suddenly see the problem, something happens that you have the answer - before you are able to put it into words. It is all done subconsciously. This has happened many times to me, and I know when to take it seriously. I'm so absolutely sure. I don't talk about it, I don't have to tell anybody about it, I'm just sure this is it."

This feeling of knowing without being able to say how one knows is common. The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is famous for his aphorism "The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know."

(pages 1-2)
____________________________________________________

Gut feelings, emotions, and imaginative images do make sense in science, but, like the meaning of a dance or musical theme, that sense is felt rather than defined. - page 4-5

To think creatively is first to feel. The desire to understand must be whipped together with sensual and emotional feelings and blended with intellect to yield imaginative insight. - page 6

As we will show in subsequent chapters of this book, if you can't imagine, you can't invent. "Illusion," as Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and artist Paul Horgan has written, "is first of all needed to find the powers of which the self is capable." If you can't conceive of things that don't exist, you can't create anything new. If you can't dream up worlds that might be, then you are limited to the worlds other people describe. You see reality through their eyes, not your own. - page 22

____________________________________________________


(On Algebraic versus Geometric Thinking)

What are we to understand by Faynman's statement that he treated algebra problems geometrically and Hoyle's that he treated geometric problems algebraically? A concrete example may help.

A classic word problem concerns a man rowing a boat when his hat falls into the river, which is flowing at 3 kilometers per hour downstream. He is rowing upstream 2 km per hour faster than the stream is taking him down. He discovers his hat is missing one half-hour after it has fallen in the river. If he turns around and rows back at the same speed relative to the river to fetch his hat, how long will it take to catch up to it?

(page 68)
____________________________________________________


I'll make sure I buy that one. Is it available on the Internet,PS?


Yes, spidergal. Excellent, phenominal... I purchased it from a book club, but you can buy it, anywhere. Mine is copyrighted 1999, but this piece is written for the 2000. As you can probably tell, after reading just a few small excerpts posted above, the following review really doesn't give the full credit it deserves:

Harvard Business School

Working Knowledge

for business leaders

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/images/reviews/book-report.gif
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/images/07_B_02_092500_sparks.gif
Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People

Houghton Mifflin, 2000

September 25, 2000source
0 Replies
 
crucifixation
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Mar, 2006 07:33 am
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

the prelude to the Lords of the Rings
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Mar, 2006 12:32 pm
Just finished reading "Shackleton" by Gavin Mortimer that expands the story of "Endurance."

I'm now reading "Cities of Vesuvius - Pompeii & Herculaneum" by Michael Grant, because I visited there this past November. Grant is a classicial historian who shows us how life was like almost two thousand years ago from the well preserved artifacts frozen in time since the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.
0 Replies
 
NobodySpecial
 
  1  
Reply Sat 11 Mar, 2006 11:34 am
Finished off 'First Ark to Alpha Centauri' by A. Ahad.
What was it like? Very amazing book, a real ey-opener. This guy has given here a glimpse of the future to come when people leave earth one day. I woz always thinkin' we'd be goin' like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. Not so. If anyone's interested in real star travel, check it out. It's something special.

Now reading 'Space Ark!' by Nathan L. Carnes. Not terribly exciting on the opening, but I like the theme of this book.

Reading next: 'Winter Moon' by Dean Koontz
0 Replies
 
dagmaraka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 11 Mar, 2006 11:40 am
I am reading Rohit Gupta's Play-on Edward

It's a book I ordered a YEAR ago online from an Indian bookstore. Rohit is a friend of mine, and I wanted to read it long ago. It's good. He has a new one out though.

Rohit is also putting on a small traveling show in Mumbai - or in Mumbai's bars and pubs, to be more exact. Wish I could go see it.
0 Replies
 
AbleIIKnow wong
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Mar, 2006 08:08 pm
Just read "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami. It was a great book and it did offer what the other opinions said it would. I didn't understand the ending though... Still a wicked book though.
0 Replies
 
shewolfnm
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Mar, 2006 09:28 pm
I just finished The Secret Lives of Bees.

Loved it. :-)

Have no clue what i will pick up next.
0 Replies
 
Vietnamnurse
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Mar, 2006 07:38 am
Shewolf...I loved that book too!
0 Replies
 
californiadreamin
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Mar, 2006 10:29 am
Right now I am reading through three books


The Ruby Knight - David Eddings
Lady Sophias Lover- Lisa Kleypas
Seven Up - Janet Evanovich
0 Replies
 
Heeven
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Mar, 2006 10:50 am
"Ireland" by Frank Delaney.
0 Replies
 
mystery girl
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Mar, 2006 02:26 pm
I'm reading

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
I Am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe
The 2005 O.Henry anthology of short stories
0 Replies
 
tagged lyricist
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Mar, 2006 05:36 pm
I'm reading the swallows of Kabul by Yasmin Khadra... very sad and disturbing.
0 Replies
 
plainoldme
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Mar, 2006 06:05 pm
I just finished reading "In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick, the true story of the sinking of the whale ship Essex which inspired not only Poe's "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," but "Moby Dick."

Philbrick is a masterful writer but that does not make the reading easy or pleasant although the book is thoroughly engrossing.

I recommend it to people interested in the state of the planet and to global-warming-deniers as well as to staunch New Englanders, people curious about the 19th C and whaling and social structures.
0 Replies
 
bobrath
 
  1  
Reply Fri 24 Mar, 2006 01:50 am
The Argumentative Indian - Amartya Sen
The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Robin S. Sharma
0 Replies
 
shewolfnm
 
  1  
Reply Fri 24 Mar, 2006 07:26 am
The known world.
0 Replies
 
Eryemil
 
  1  
Reply Fri 24 Mar, 2006 08:31 am
At the moment I am reading:

.The Standing Dead by Ricardo Pinto
.The Picture of Dorian Gray
.The English version of Bram Stoker's Dracula (I read it in Spanish a few years ago)
0 Replies
 
Ticomaya
 
  1  
Reply Fri 24 Mar, 2006 08:40 am
Disinformation, by Richard Miniter
0 Replies
 
Odd Rabbit
 
  1  
Reply Fri 24 Mar, 2006 04:47 pm
Watchers - Dean Koontz. So good this one Smile
0 Replies
 
 

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