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The Blackwinged Night
F. David Peat |
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Why does the creation of matter in the universe have to do with humanity's creative spirit? What is the connection between, on the one hand, art, literature, and music, and, on the other hand, mathematical formulae and scientific theories? Taking an over-arching scientific view of the universe and our place in it, scientist-philosopher F. David Peat explores the profound similarities and connections between the Universe's "creativity", which reveals itself in the laws of nature and in the creativity of human consciousness. Peat provides an unparalleled view of the origins of the universe and asks: What acts transform matter into art? And how does creativity enter into the lives of each of us? Peat defines creativity simply but expansively - not only as the act of making something new, original, or unexpected, but also of renewing and sustaining what already exists and of healing and making things whole. "All perception is itself an essential creative process", Peat writes. He argues persuasively that creativity takes an infinitude of forms and expressions, and he encourages a stance against the traditional "heroic" model of creation: that creativity is the exclusive purview of a tiny elite. "Creativity is possessed by all of us", he writes. "It is deeply embedded within our bodies and extends throughout the material world from the atom to the Big Bang origin of all that is." Peat touches on both our most interesting and our most seemingly mundane cultural achievements - and ingeniously reveals the ligature that connects the baking of bread to Michelangelo's carving of his David. All of this human activities are profoundly connected to the natural world, but Peat notes with concern civilisation's ever-increasing "seperation from nature as a living being" and muses over the effect of this rift upon creativity. And, in a daring and original departure from conventional notions of creativity, Peat argues for the nourishing of those times in our lives when we must confront "silence and the void" - these fallow periods are in fact tremendous engines of growth and regeneration, he writes, a fact testified to by this book itself: The Blackwinged Night ist the product, Peat reveals, of his months-long sojourn in an Italian hill town, during which time he did nothing but stare off into space. More information:
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