Systemic Creative Cognition

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book outlines new research practices to capture the origin of ideas. Latour enjoins researchers to adopt a resolutely ethnographic methodology to trace the process by which a creative product, be it a technological innovation or a work of art, is constructed, or instaured. Creativity is explained in terms of the microprocesses that guide and constrain the development of a new idea. These microprocesses operate on and are triggered by material objects, be they maquettes, models, drafts or data representations. The resulting perspective is systemic, casting creativity as emerging from the interaction among heterogenous elements and actants. The book provides critical reflections on problem-solving research and stresses the importance of William James's radical empiricism and the primary role of experience. The book redefines the concept of insight as an outcome rather than the cause of a new idea.
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