What is creativity? Where does it come from? The workings of the creative mind have been subjected to intense scrutiny over the past 25 years by an army of researchers in psychology, sociology, anthropology and neuroscience. But no one has a better overview of this mysterious mental process than Washington University psychologist R. Keith Sawyer, author of the new book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation . He's working on a version for the lay reader, due out in ...

Pablo Picasso rampaged like a minotaur through modern art's china shop. He almost single-handedly invented Cubism, and he imposed his protean creativity on painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, photography, engraving, textiles, ceramics, set design and even poetry. He was definitely one of a kind. And a thief. Picasso lifted themes, compositions, techniques and color schemes from other artists with a brazenness bordering on felony. His victims — or inspirations — included Czanne, Courbet, Cranach, Delacroix, El Greco, Goya, Ingres, Matisse, Poussin, Puvis ...

Creativity, one of man's highest qualities, is one of the least understood. It is not sheer volume of work or novelty of expression; it is not always virtuous. Creativity is what Feodor Dostoevsky had: a tremendous capacity for sustained, self-motivated work—despite an untidy outer life that included epilepsy, compulsive gambling and enough hardships to stun Job. But few teachers can recognize creativity in children or tolerate it when they do. The child who paints pretty pictures or whizzes through the IQ test is called "gifted." The one ...

Re "The Roar of the Tiger Mom" [Jan. 31]: As a young Chinese American who has been on the receiving end of this sort of discipline, I can say that the ways of the tiger mom are effective and laudable to an extent. What worries me is the lack of creativity Asians instill in their children. Without creativity, we can only follow paths that someone else has made instead of making our own paths. Grace Wu, FREMONT, CALIF., U.S. It is disturbing ...

They headed to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after news broke that Michael Jackson had died. And they're still coming. Young Russian fans, some of whom don't even speak English, bring homemade signs, pictures and drawings of Jackson, Russian religious icons, candles, teddy bears -- all signs of how much they loved the singer. "At first I couldn't believe it had happened," 23-year-old Zhenya Iordanskaya said. "I thought it was another rumor. My friend told me about it, and then ...

As he began finding success as a cartoonist, marketer and Web pundit Hugh MacLeod posted a list of 40 "keys to creativity" onto his popular blog, gapingvoid.com. His breezy advice for aspiring artists — wisdom such as "Dying young is overrated" and "Selling out is harder than it looks" — found a hungry audience and was downloaded more than a million times. Macleod has assembled his observations into a book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity, and ...

You get a quick message from a friend on Facebook, click on the link and absentmindedly log in to a website pretending to be Facebook. This is what happened last week, when scammers unleashed a new attack on Facebook, collecting users' log-in information and passwords and pilfering victims' "friends" lists to target the next dopes. Listen up, people: Although Facebook has a reputation for Internet security — it identified the scam within hours, and the ripple effects only lasted for a couple days — at 200 million ...

An amorous motorist faces a fine and a driving ban after he was caught having sex with his girlfriend while speeding on a highway, Norwegian media reported Tuesday. New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain's "moral compass" to process and could harm young people's emotional development. Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin ...

Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or updates on Twitter or Facebook could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say. New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain's "moral compass" to process and could harm young people's emotional development. Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin or the latest ...

Erica Jong knows something about love, especially its sexy side. Her first novel, Fear of Flying, electrified the literary community in 1971 with its frank sexuality and passion. The public was seduced: the book has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, and was translated into 37 languages. Many books later, and now the grandmother of three, Jong has returned to her original calling, poetry, in her compelling new volume of poems, Love Comes First. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs reached the author at her Manhattan home: ...