WE HAVE all heard of the great “Aha!” moments that typify legends of sudden genius. But such moments, argues Andrew Robinson, are merely anecdotal. In reality, he says, the emergence of a creative solution to a difficult problem takes a great deal of conscious work. To make his case, Robinson offers vignettes of four scientists, a linguist, an architect, a musician, a writer, a film-maker and a photographer in this lively book.
So how does the moment of creativity occur? One explanation was proposed a century ago by the great French polymath Henri Poincaré, based on his own profound mathematical…
