Customer Reviews

The Blackwinged Night: Creativity in Nature and Mind

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This is an excellent book, one of those very few that manage to be both disarmingly simple yet profound at once. Peat is a past-master at grasping the most arcane and difficult theories. He has studied and written on chaos theory, the science of complexity, fractals, quantum mysteries, David Bohm's implicate order, and subjects of special interest in the art world. Simultanously, he has translated these ideas into digestible portions for the intelligent layman reader. He is the best of the bunch when it comes to science writing and he is also very knowledgeable about the higher echelons of the current art world.

In this book, however, I got the impression he wrote just for himself. He does not bother to explicate complex theories or even to give references for many of the facts and phrases which well up in him. Instead, he just uses his background in science and the arts to make this beautiful pure statement on the varied expressions of creativity, from the human to the universal. Indeed, his book edges into the metaphysical by implying that the Supreme Ultimate behind all things is in fact creativity itself -- the first creative act being the creation of form out of the infinite creative potential of the void. (If anyone wants more excruciating detail about how such creativity could manifest itself, they may need to read A. N. Whitehead.) Peat notes that creative chaos, the Dionysian, begins the furor of all creative inspiration, but also that this phase must be followed by the long period of laborious, ordered endeavour to find appropriate form for this initial inspiration, that is, the Apollonian. He compares this pattern among many of his current favorite art forms as well as in the creative dynamics of Nature as revealed through science.

The result is, well, beautiful and moving and, yes, inspiring. I truly appreciated the idea that a sort of blind creativity is the "Prime Mover" beyond the forms of reality. To deny creativity it is to become unconscious and moribund. But creativity is not novelty; it often means seeking new depths in the old or reexperiencing current patterns as though for the first time, as in, for example, human relations.

The book is a short, easy read, but one that demands full--creative--attention if one is to comprehend its implied depth. Highly recommended.

Throughout the 230 pages of Peat's musings I often came to the questions, "Who is he writing this for?" and "why am I continuing on with this?". Often, it seemed just as I was once again considering putting the book down for good, I'd come to some gem of insight or information that would keep me going for another 20 or so pages. Still, the insights were seldom original, but instead reminders of something I'd read before -- "Ah yes, maybe I should go read THAT again." And seldom were these gems enough for me to leave the day's reading inspired or my thinking altered. (Not even "a millionth of an inch" to quote Peat's quoting of Beat writer Gary Snyder.) You want to read about creativity as the meeting of Dionysus and Apollo? Go to Nietzche's Birth of Tragedy, or even its Cliff Notes. You want to find the connection between quantum physics and Eastern Mysticism there are many New Age pop books that will explain it if not much better, at least leaving you with that buzz of sustained inspiration. The entire sections on the Big Bang and Science and the Void, I nearly skipped from bewilderment and impatience. (Why did he need to pepper us with algebraic formula's about angular momentum and evidence for "neutrinos?") The section on Language, however, was by far the most insightful and thought-provoking section of the book, perhaps followed by Creativity and the Body. For those two sections, it was possibly worth the time trudging through to get there. If you buy the book and get bogged down, I'd recommend just skipping to those two chapters.

I began the book already wondering if we've chewed the word "creativity" into an overworked and overused piece of triteness. Between the first sentence, "We are all creative," to the moment on page 212 where he writes the anthropomorphic, "The universe is freely giving out energy because it wants to sing for joy," I became convinced of it. And even then, if you are one to be inspired by such sentiments, you, too, may possibly leave the book disappointed.

When I finally finished this book, I still didn't know what it's major themes or premises seemed to be. Then shortly after, even the little I gleaned from it started fading from my mind. Just as well, I guess.

The topic of creativity fascinates me, for practical as well as esthetic and philosophical reasons. In the first two pages, Peat sets out what seems to the be basis of his thinking: that creativity is not just a human action, but something inherent in any living creature and in the inanimate cosmos itself. Then he broadens the to include not only development of novelty, but "sustaining what already exists [and] healing and making things whole." At some point, this defintion becomes so inclusive of just about anything and everything that it becomes vacuous. In information theory, information is a distinction between two or more possibilities. When there is no distinction, when there is only one all-inclusive possibility, there is no information.

The rest of the book bore that out: there is no information. If you like rambling essays and stream-of-consciousness musings, have a blast. My copy will be back in the used market soon, so you might even get to enjoy that one.

-- wiredweird.

David Peat excell his ability to explain abstract and complex concepts in this book which surely will help the reader to understand what creativity realy is about. The author masterly summarizes a subject that frequently is approach in more than 400 pages in half that number. The book is exactly what I expected from it.

To start with I am not generally a science reader, but I thought that the relationship of science and creativity would be interesting. This book caused reactions in me ranging from decent enjoyment (few and far between) to a revulsion for its trite, simplistic conclusions on creativity in life. To be fair I found the chapter on language very interesting and thought Peat did an excellent job in explaining certain scientific theories in a basic understandable manner. However his conclusions on "creating the curve and story of your life" have all been said before, and Peat seems singularly unrealistic and (I think I said this before) TRITE. In addition he occasionally goes quite far afield with his examples, and his attempts at figurative language are sickeningly clumsy (almost purple prose if you know what I mean, it's apparent he's trying much too hard to prove his creative writing ability). This book has very little to say that's new, and if you're looking for something about the joy, creativity, and meaning of everyday life, (which is basically what he is trying to prove) try someone with more skill and knowlege of how to craft glistening prose and who also thinks a little more deeply (Annie Dillard is forever wonderful).