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Inspired: Understanding Creativity
A review of

Inspired: Understanding Creativity

A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul


The Mystery of Creativity

by David Meyer

Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist Matt Richtel probes the mysteries of human inspiration.

Creativity is innate to human beings. It’s primitive – embedded in your biology. It resembles and stems from the incremental process of evolutionary development. As organisms reproduce, some offspring show genetic mutations. Many of these mutations are unimportant or unhelpful. But occasionally, a mutation or mutations enable an organism to better adapt to its environment and outlive its peers. These mutations, like great works of art, endure.

Creativity lives inside each of us, and, collectively, we create our world.Matt Richtel

Creativity is a divergence from the status quo that offers something influential or important, Matt Richtel argues. From the discovery of fire to the invention of modern medicine, humans have proven to be “creativity machines.”