The Aha! Moment: A Scientist's Take on Creativity

This book is about having ideas and—a much longer haul—making them work. David Jones, best known for his Daedalus column, tells a multitude of stories about creators and their creations, including his own fantastical-seeming contributions to mainstream science such as the unrideable bicycle and chemical gardens in space. His theory of creativity endows each of us with a Random-Ideas Generator, a Censor, and an Observer-Reasoner. Jones applies his theory to a wide range of weird scientific experiments that he has conducted for serious scientific papers, for challenging printed expositions, and for presentations to a TV audience. He even suggests new ones, not yet tried! Creativity is as essential to science as curiosity, physical intuition, and shrewd deduction from well-planned experiments. But, says Jones, ingenuity is very uncertain. Even for the greatest inventors, about 80 percent of ideas fail. Jokiness can help, and so can lots of random data. Jones has plenty of clever advice that will help spark that madly brilliant private thought in the first place—and will encourage you to take it further. Neither dense nor demanding, The Aha! Moment is engrossing, edifying, and scientifically serious; yet it is lightly written and asks lots of silly questions. As Jones shows, it can often pay to take an absurd idea seriously.

Table of Contents:
Preface: Creativity in My Career 1. A Theory of Creativity 2. The Creative Environment 3. Thoughts on the Random Ideas Generator 4. Intuition and Odd Notions 5. Creativity in Scientific Papers 6. Heat and Gravity 7. Astronomical Musings 8. Rotating Things 9. Explosions and Fuses 10. Tricks with Optics 11. Properties of Materials 12. Physical Phenomena I Have Noticed 13. Odd Notions I Have Played With 14. Literary Information 15. Inventions We Need but Don't Have 16. A List of Silly Questions 17. A Short Guide to Being Creative Notes Index

About the Author :
Now retired, David Jones continues to publish challenging articles, mostly for Chemistry World. He has worked in academia, industry, and television. A constant stimulus for his creativity was his weekly Daedalus column, probably the longest-running joke in science. Daedalus was the court jester in the Palace of Science; he appeared in New Scientist, Nature, and the Guardian newspaper. Each week Daedalus took some well-known bit of science and pushed it to a clever and often preposterous extreme—which sometimes came true. Daedalus frequently leaks into The Aha! Moment.

Review :
The Aha! Moment is not bogged down with scientific detail and tech talk; in fact, it asks a multitude of absurd questions meant to promote innovative and logical brainstorming. Jones gives dozens of examples from his own body of work . . . While his examples dominate more than half of the book, they are intriguing and stimulating, acting as a means to promote creativity in fellow scientists and artists. —Aimee Jodoin, Foreword Reviews A top pick not to be limited to science holdings, this will reach many a general-interest reader with its fascinating, readable and lively insights. —Midwest Book Review David Jones sees himself as the court jester of science and, as with jesters of old, he is allowed to say things that other mortals might think but dare not speak . . . Most of the book is an eclectic blend of Jones the chemist and Daedalus the mad scientist and together they make entertaining reading. You’d be mad not to buy it —John Emsley, Chemistry World A practical blueprint to bolster one's own creative process, a treasure map to innovative insights. —Bob Grant, The Scientist A fascinating insight into one man's never-ending search for ideas. —Jessica Griggs, New Scientist