Life Finds a Way: What Evolution Teaches Us About Creativity

How the principles of biological innovation can help us overcome creative challenges in art, business, and science
In Life Finds a Way, biologist Andreas Wagner reveals the deep symmetry between innovation in biological evolution and human cultural creativity. Rarely is either a linear climb to perfection--instead, "progress" is typically marked by a sequence of peaks, plateaus, and pitfalls. For instance, in Picasso's forty-some iterations of Guernica, we see the same combination of small steps, incessant reshuffling, and large, almost reckless, leaps that characterize the way evolution transformed a dinosaur's grasping claw into a condor's soaring wing. By understanding these principles, we can also better realize our own creative potential to find new solutions to adversity.
Ultimately, Life Finds a Way offers a new framework for the nature of creativity, enabling us to better adapt, grow, and change in art, business, or science--that is, in life.

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• A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life
• The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe
• Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought
• Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition
• Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It
• The Spirit of Inquiry: How one extraordinary society shaped modern science
• The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets
• Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society
• The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes