May 26
You will see a very diverse set of books on this list. It will give us the chance to cover a lot of ground.
- Jonathan S. Feinstein (2006). The Nature of Creative Development. Stanford Business Books.
- An incredible tour de force. One of the most important books on creativity. Please allow enough time to read it
- Dean Keith Simonton (2004). Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist. Cambridge University Press.
- Dean Keith Simonton (1999). Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. Oxford University Press.
- Two books written by Dean Keith Simonton who has dedicated his career to understanding genius and creativity:
- Tim Harford (2016). Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World. Little, Brown.
- Jacques Hadamard (1945). An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Dover Publications.
- The child prodigy Norbert Wiener writes in his autobiography “I Am a Mathematician”: “Professor Jacques Hadamard, of Paris, played a great part at the congress. He was then only in his middle fifties, but his reputation had been well established before the end of the nineteenth century, and to us fledglings he was a great historical landmark”. This short book is full of fascinating insights.
- Gerald Holton (1996). Einstein, History, and Other Passions. Harvard University Press.
- Holton is a physicist, one of the most influential historians of science, and an expert on Einstein. In this book he employs an engaging style to discuss topics such as the public image of science, the evolution of trust in scientific findings, or the imagination in science, and provides insights into what we can learn from Einstein.
- Joi Ito and Jeff Howe (2016). Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future? Grand Central Publishing
- Why is the MIT media lab so creative? Joi Ito, the current director of the MIT Media Lab points out that in one of the primary meeting rooms at the Media Lab you see the following message on the screen: Disobedience over Compliance. How is possible that you can organize a conference entitled Forbidden Research? A testament of the power of “antidisciplinarity”, positive deviance, breaking rules, freaks, hackers, misfit ideas, experimentation, and the four Ps of creative learning – Projects, Peers, Passion and Play. In Whiplash, Joi Ito points out that leading the Media Lab “is more like being a gardener than being a CEO – watering the plants, tending to the compost, trimming hedges, and getting out of the way so that the explosion of creativity and life of all of the plants and wildlife in the garden are allowed to flourish”. Books that discuss how to reform universities are rare. The oldest university in the world was founded in Bologna (1088). But there is no guarantee that universities (as any institution) will survive another 1000 years. We will see what we can learn from the following two books.
- Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring Zu (2011). The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Insight Out. Wiley.
- Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein (2010). Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the Twenty-First Century. University of North Carolina.
- Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Harriet Zuckerman, Jeffrey A. Groen, and Sharon M. Brucker (2010). Educating Scholars: Doctoral Education in the Humanities.
- What do we know about doctoral programs? What can we learn from America’s doctoral programs? What are the facts and figures? The economist Ehrenberg together with other scholars will provide some answers.
- Howard Gardner (2011). The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach. Basic Books.
- It is hard to discuss education without looking at Gardner’s work and many of his books should be added to the reading list.
- Seymour Papert (1993). The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. Basic Books.
- Papert, a mathematician and visionary pioneer on learning (influenced by Piaget’s work) shares his insightful thoughts. He was also a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab. Here is a link to a video on learning from Seymour Papert.
- Jean Piaget (1948). To Understand Is To Invent: The Future of Education. Grossman Publishers.
- The famous pioneer of field of child development is full of wisdom. In this book he discusses the foundation of education.
- Richard Sennett (2008). The Craftsman. Yale University Press.
- Prologue: “Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake”. This is seen as one of Sennett’s key books. Sennett, one of the most interesting scholars in social sciences.
- Robert Maynard Hutchins (2009). The Higher Learning in America. Transaction Publishers.
- As a president of the University of Chicago (1929–1945) he pushed for the Great Books Program, which has been discussed and criticized by many brilliant scholars, including economists, in their autobiographies (requiring to go through the Great Books as students). Here we will discover Hutchins’ thoughts on higher learning (see also The Learning Society).
- R. Buckminster Fuller (2010). Education Automation: Comprehensive Learning for Emergent Humanity. Lars Müller Publishers.
- In this book, Bucky (who many have called the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century) communicates his thoughts on education.
- Edgar Morin (2001). Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future. Unesco Publishing.
- UNESCO invited Morin to express his ideas on the essentials of education for the future. In this short book he communicates his thoughts.
- Kenneth E. Boulding (1961). The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society. University of Michigan Press.
- “Behavior depends on the image – the sum of what we think we know and what makes us act the way we do”. Boulding was one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century, forgotten by many economists despite having won the John Bates Clark Medal. In this book, he proposes a new science.
- Michael Polanyi (1962). Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press.
- Not an easy book to digest. Amartya Sen mentioned once: “what we get from Polanyi are rather rapid-fire sequences of insights – often deep insights – without much pause for examining alternative interpretations and possible counterarguments”. Polanyi was a polymath and a prominent figure, and was seen as an extraordinarily innovative scientist in the area of physical chemistry. He left that field to focus mainly on his philosophical work.