Creativity: A Crtitical Realist Perspective

Creativity: A Critical Realist Perspective challenges conventional wisdom on how we define and understand the emergence of creativity. Enhancing creativity is increasingly being suggested as critical to resolving 21st century challenges such as climate change, population growth and enabling innovation in organisations. There’s also been a tradition of humanist thought that has long suggested creativity is fundamental to human flourishing. This book explores current explanations of creativity and illustrates there are still some fundamental problems with how we come to understand and explain creativity. It reflects on issues with accounts of creativity in potential, explaining creativity both prior to and without recognition and the difficulties with attempts to explain creativity without implicitly accepting creation from nothing. Utilising the philosophy of critical realism, the book offers a route to resolving these problems whilst developing an account of the emergence of creativity within the context of modern working life. This work offers a timely and critical look at the nature of creativity which will have consequences for the way it is researched, understood and developed. The book will be of interest to anyone teaching or researching creativity as well as to students of psychology, sociology, business & management and philosophy.