cover image The Origin of Ideas: Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark

The Origin of Ideas: Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark

Mark Turner. Oxford Univ, $29.95 (312p) ISBN 978-0-19-998882-2

Turner, a professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University, examines how we build ideas or other mental creations whose elements come from different conceptual realms. He calls this process “blending” and explores it across various media, but is particularly interested in “advanced blending,” which yields “a new result not contained in the mental space the blend draws upon” and which “make[s] it possible for us to get some traction with vast mental webs stretching over vast distances of time, space, causation, and agency.” He uses a political cartoon as one example of how blending can represent complex issues on a compressed “human scale.” This is not an easy book, in part because Turner is prone to esoteric tangents. Moreover, he never really explains what he means by “the human spark” and he over-focuses on blending in individual creativity as opposed to group efforts. In the book’s appendix, Turner surprisingly acknowledges that “advanced blending is only one part of what is needed for human thought, and it is relatively tiny.” Still, Turner makes a cogent and often colorfully argued case for blending’s importance as crucial to the development of new ideas and imaginative works. Illus. (Jan.)