The Nature of Insight

Book Overview

The Nature of Insight brings together diverse perspectives, including recent theories and discoveries, to examine the nature and origins of insightful thinking, as well as the history of theory and research on the topic and the methods used to study it. There are chapters by the leading experts in this field, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ronald Finke, Howard Gruber, Marcel Just, David Meyer, David Perkins, Dean Simonton, and Robert Weisberg, among others.

The Nature of Insight is divided into five main parts. Following an introduction that reviews the history and methods of the field, part II looks at how people solve challenging puzzles whose answers cannot be obtained through ordinary means. Part III focuses on how people come up with ideas for new inventions, while part IV explores the thinking of some of the most insightful people in the history of civilization. Part V considers metaphors such as evolution and investment as bases for understanding insight. An epilogue integrates all these approaches.

Contributors
R.E. Mayer, R.L. Dominowsk, P. Dallob, C.M. Seifert, D.E. Meyer, N. Davidson, A.J. Patalano, I. Yaniv, J.E. Davidson, R.W. Weisberg, M.L. Gick, R.S. Lockhart, S.M. Smith, R.A. Finke, M.I. Isaak, M.A. Just, M. Csikszentmihalyi, K. Sawyer, K. Dunbar, H.E. Gruber, M.F. Ippolito, R.D. Tweney, D.K. Simonton, D.N. Perkins, R.J. Sternberg, T.I. Lubart

A Bradford Book

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262691876
• ISBN13: 9780262691871
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Bradford Book
• Length: 636 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 8.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Challenging but worthwile read.

This is not a book for the faint of heart. It's wordy, academic and scattered; the structure of the content seems to be an afterthought. That being said, if you're really looking for a deep and rigorous dive into the topic of how people generate insight, this is the book. It's incredibly rich in terms of information, and a welcome change from the low-grade crap that other books offer when they touch on this underexplored subject. Well worth the price, but don't expect to finish this on an airplane flight. For serious students of insight only!

The Nature of Insight

This is a scholarly book edited and written by leading researchers in the area of human development. It includes contributions from several respected scholars on insight that are very thought provoking. It isn't a book that will deliver answers as much as promote more questions.My purpose for reading this book was to look at several different ways of explaining insight....what is it? How does it work? Where does it come from? Can it be taught or is it something we are born with? Is it tied to intelligence or is it an independent variable? This book helped me gain all of that and much more. The authors provide theories about insight that are well grounded in empirical research, including ties to organization development and social insight, where my interest lies. As an extra bonus, there were several pages of visual puzzles that can be used to test and promote the development of insight, that I will try using in my research.