Introduction

p2: As for training the imagination….The Secret Language of Film, Jean-Claude Carriere, Faber and Faber p166-167

P4. Proven by academic studies.  There are numerous studies on the link between the imagination, creativity and happiness including

Tamlin S. Conner, Colin G. DeYoung & Paul J. Silvia (2018) Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13:2, 181-189, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2016.1257049

Tan, C.-Y.; Chuah, C.-Q.; Lee, S.-T.; Tan, C.-S. Being Creative Makes You Happier: The Positive Effect of Creativity on Subjective Well-Being. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 7244. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147244

Ceci, M.W., Kumar, V.K. A Correlational Study of Creativity, Happiness, Motivation, and Stress from Creative Pursuits. J Happiness Stud 17, 609–626 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-015-9615-y

p5: The only exciting life is the imaginary one….The Diary of Virginia Woolf, April 1928

P6: It is this inner landscape, this strange flora and fauna of the mind – at once so personal and yet intimately connected to the world around me – that governs even my wildest dreams. 

See GK Chesterton:‘There is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern or a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscapes of his dreams; the sort of world he would wish to make or in which he would wish to wander; the strange flora and fauna of his own secret planet…This general atmosphere and pattern or structure of growth, governs all his creations, however varied.’ From ‘In the Country of Skelt, in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, vol 18 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1991).

P7: He would even refer to the slave in his writing as a ‘living tool.’  Aristotle, Politics IV

P9: To sustain constant growth in GDP per person… See Bloom, Nicholas, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb. 2020. “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” American Economic Review, 110 (4): 1104-44.  (Also see: The End of Invention, Sam Bowman, Radio 4, and https://sambowman.substack.com/p/the-end-of-invention)

P9: In a world without digital privacy…For more on Tim Cook’s commencement speech, see https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/16/commencement-main/

P10: The imagination is what we’ve got.  See also, Creativity is the New Productivity, Scott Belsky. https://marker.medium.com/creativity-is-the-new-productivity-d287d6ad7533

How we Imagine

P13: men are but leaves on the trees, ‘now green in youth, now withering on the ground.’ Iliad Book VI, Alexander Pope translation

P14: a dense cloud of bees’ Iliad Book II.  Wine dark and rosy fingered: multiple references in Iliad and Odyssey.

P15. Stories of ancient Mande kings. See Kesteloot, Lilyan, Thomas A. Hale, and Richard Bjornson. “Power and Its Portrayals in Royal Mandé Narratives.” Research in African Literatures 22, no. 1 (1991): 17–26.

P15. With stories like Aladdin. There is some debate around the origins of the particular story of Aladdin and whether it was added at a later date by the Nights’ first translator Antonine Galland, though he, in turn, may have got it from an earlier Aleppan source.

P16. In Japan, a form of storytelling known as rakugo.  See Adams, Robert J. “Folktale Telling and Storytellers in Japan.” Asian Folklore Studies 26, no. 1 (1967): 99–118. https://doi.org/10.2307/1177701

P16: A Bushman child will be carried…’ p270, The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin (Vintage Classics).  Attributed to Richard Lee.

P17: This is but the start of their undertakings! Genesis, 11:6-8.   For more on Adam and Eve, Babel and the Hebrew term for the imagination, ‘yetser’, see Imagination in Teaching and Learning by Kieran Egan.  On Prometheus, Egan also quotes Denis Donoghue in Thieves of Fire: ‘Above all Prometheus made possible the imaginative enhancement of experience, the…distinction between what happens to us and what we make of this happening.’

P20: Homer is the most poetic of the tragedians. Plato, Republic, 10

P21. Every time one thinks one must at the same time contemplate some image.  Aristotle, De Anima, 432a.

P21: Demons are known to work on men’s imagination’ St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 5, 147

P21: Being not tied to the laws of matter. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. For a fuller exploration of Francis Bacon’s theories of the imagination, see Bacon’s Theory of Imagination Reconsidered by Eugene P. McCreary (Huntington Library Quarterly, August, 1973, Vol. 36, No. 4)

P22: As imagination bodies forth. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene I

P22/23: The primary imagination I hold to be the living power.   Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter 13.1

P22: Alongside it came the notion of originality.  For a discussion on originality, See Originality, In Our Time, March 2003, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548vy

P23: Reason is to imagination. Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821

P23: Adam and Eve were not only honour-bound to taste the apple, they should have done it sooner. I am indebted for this turn of phrase, on which I have expanded, to Kieran Egan’s interpretation from Imagination in Teaching and Learning: ‘Coleridge sems to be implying enthusiastically that Adam and Eve were right to eat the forbidden fruit and Prometheus was right to steal the fire, and that is out job to exercise the creative powers we have been given.’

P23: Thou art a symbol and a sign. Lord Bryon, Prometheus

P23.  I find myself drawn to a lesser-known German philosopher.  For an excellent, scholarly interpretation of Tetens’ work, see Chapter 10 of The Creative Imagination by Professor James Engell (Harvard University Press).  Also see Barnouw, Jeffrey. “The Philosophical Achievement and Historical Significance of Johann Nicolas Tetens.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 9 (1980): 301-335. doi:10.1353/sec.1980.0019.

P25. The thoughts and imaginations on which you frequently dwell.  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

P25: Second Order Imagining – Pegasus. The idea of manipulating the image of a horse or an animal as a prop for the imagination is not new, though Tetens gives it a new definition.  See Plato’s Republic (also quoted by Egan): ‘Imagine…the figure of a multifarious and many-headed beast, girt round with heads of animals, tame and wild, which it can grow out of itself and transform at will. That would tax the skill of a sculptor; but luckily the stuff of imagination is easier to mould than wax.’  Also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Ch2, p5: ‘The other (form of imagination) is Compounded; as when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a Centaure.’

P27. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter 13.1

P27: send ourselves out of ourselves. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letters, Vol. 2

P27: My opinion is this. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letters, Vol. 2

P28:….understand what it is to be awake.’ TS Eilot, The Family Reunion

Awakenings

P31: The imagination begins with a stone.  For an analysis of the Blombos Cave fragment, see Henshilwood, C.S., d’Errico, F., van Niekerk, K.L. et al. An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Nature 562, 115–118 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0514-3

P37. Recent studies suggest.  See Yafit Kedar, Gil Kedar & Ran Barkai (2021) Hypoxia in Paleolithic decorated caves: the use of artificial light in deep caves reduces oxygen concentration and induces altered states of consciousness, Time and Mind, 14:2, 181-216, DOI: 10.1080/1751696X.2021.1903177

P40: And with the dawn of the Pegasus Mind comes….the ability to look to the future and imagine what is not yet there.  See We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment, Martin E.P. Seligman and John Tierney. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?smid=url-share

How to Observe

P46 (The sowing of turnip) is properly done. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Vol 5. 18.35. Also cited in Observation in the Margins, 500-1500, In Histories of Scientific Observation, Ed Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbek, University of Chicago Press.

P47. Muhammad al-Idrisi’s map of the world was originally produced for Roger II, the Norman King of Sicily

P48/49: I have often resolved in my mind. Charles Bonnet to Albrecht von Haller, Geneva, 22 July 1757 (The Correspondence between Albrecht von Haller and Charles Bonnet, ed. Otto Sonntag, Hans Huber Publishers, 1983).   See also The Empire of Observation, 1600-1800 by Lorraine Daston in Histories of Scientific Observation, Ed. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (The University of Chicago Press).

P50: According to his own account.  Some critics question the truth of Turner’s story about being strapped to the mast.  See Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984 and the Late Works of JMW Turner by Sam Smiles, Yale University Press.

P52: one of the very grandest statements of sea motion.’  Ruskin, Modern Painters Volume I

How to be a Beginner

P68: All our life, so far as it has definite form. William James, Talks to Teachers and Students, 1900, Chapter VIII

P68: enormous flywheel of society…A man might be occupied all day in dressing…automatic and habitual. William James, Habit, (originally published in 1890 as part of The Principles of Psychology).

P70. Already at the age of twenty-five…own proper work…There is no more contemptible type. William James, Habit

P70: Good habits are the bedrocks of physical, mental, financial and spiritual well being.  See also Bas Verplanken & Henk Aarts (1999) Habit, Attitude, and Planned Behaviour: Is Habit an Empty Construct or an Interesting Case of Goal-directed Automaticity?, European Review of Social Psychology, 10:1, 101-134, DOI: 10.1080/14792779943000035

P71. The diminutive chains of habit. There is no precise citation for Johnson’s quote.  It is thought to be a compression of a line within a fable he published entitled ‘The Vision of Theodore.’  For a discussion on the source of the quote, see https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/07/13/chains-of-habit/

P71: The tricks of thought, the prejudices. William James, Habit

P71: This type of realisation is sometimes known as the mid-life crisis. See Death and the Midlife Crisis, Elliott Jaques. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1967.

P72: The toothbrush test. See NYT/Deal Book: In Silicon Valley, Mergers Must Meet the Toothbrush Test. David Gelles, August 2014. https://nyti.ms/2jQcZCJ

P73: cognitive lock-in…Habits promote consumer preference. Wendy Wood, David T. Neal, The habitual consumer, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 19, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 579-592,

P73: the ornamentation of the commonplace. Vladimir Nabokov, Good Readers and Good Writers, Lectures on Literature

P74: has set like plaster. William James, Habit

P76: a vivid intuitive imagination. Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1968)

P76: the mathematician’s patterns. G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (1940)

P76: Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker. Letter from Faraday to A. de la Rive, Hampton Court, 2 October 1858

P77: More recent studies of the lives of Nobel Prize winners.  Root-Bernstein, Robert et al (2008). Arts Foster Scientific Success: Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal Society, and Sigma Xi Members. Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology. 1. 51-63. 10.1891/1939-7054.1.2.51.  See also, Root-Bernstein, Robert & Bernstein, Maurine & Garnier, Helen. (1995). Correlations Between Avocations, Scientific Style, Work Habits, and Professional Impact of Scientists. Creativity Research Journal – CREATIVITY RES J. 8. 115-137. 10.1207/s15326934crj0802_2.

P77: I should observe such a beam. Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes.   See also The Light Beam Rider, Walter Isaacson, New York Times, Oct 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/the-light-beam-rider.html?smid=url-share

P78: The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition. As told to Shinichi Suzuki in Nurtured by Love. A New Approach to Education (1969)

P78. Particle physicist and 1965 Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman was also an artist.  See The Art of Richard P. Feynman: Images by a Curious Character. G+B Science Publishers SA.

P79: who are somewhat headstrong. Advice for a Young Investigator, Ramon y Cajal Santiago, translated by Neely Swanson and Larry W. Swanson. (MIT Press, Cambridge).

P80:  A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology.  George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays.

P83: like great temporary bereavements.  Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 2

P84: The fault I find with our journalism. In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1

P84:  Another friend related that what Proust most enjoyed reading was railway timetables.  See How to Take Your Time, How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton.

P84: (The hawthorn) was in holiday attire. In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1

P86: My mother was not at all moved by my tears. In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1

P88:  It is at this meeting point of intelligence, acquired knowledge and observational wonder that we tend to observe a golden period in the lifespan of the imagination.  For more analysis of the relationship between age and creative achievement, see:  A treatise on man and the development of his faculties, New York, Franklin (reprint of translation of 1835 original).  See also, Age and Achievement by Harvey C Lehman, also Lehman, H. C. (1943). Man’s most creative years: then and now. Science, 98, 393-399.  https://doi.org/10.1126/science.98.2549.393.  See also, Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton.

P88: (Newton) made big discoveries until he was nearly forty. GH Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (1940)    

P88: (Darwin) was able to give ultimate answers. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959) 

P88: The average age of a successful start-up founder.  See https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45

Imaginative Risk

P97: Four hundred other plays of the time.  See https://www.folger.edu/folger-story/shining-a-light-on-the-other-playwrights-of-shakespeares-day

P97: The world little knows. Michael Faraday, Observations on Mental Education, A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institute of Great Britain, 1867

P98: Most start-ups flounder.   See The Venture Capital Secret: 3 out of 4 start-ups fail, by Deborah Gage, WSJ, Sept 2012.

P98: For…Thomas Edison, imaginative risk was a way of life. See Thomas Edison: Success and Innovation through Failure, Ian Wills, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Springer Cham

P101: I never allow myself to become discouraged under any circumstances.  Thomas Edison, interviews (various)

P101: I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ideas that won’t work.  There are lots of sources for, and variations of this quote – the earliest appears to come from his long-time associate Walter Mallory in ‘Edison: His Life and Inventions’ (1910)

P102: If the size of your failures isn’t growing. Jeff Bezos 2019 letter to Amazon shareholders.

P103: I didn’t see it then.  Becoming Steve Jobs, How a Reckless Upstart Became a Visionary Leader, Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

P103: I watched Bob Dylan as I was growing up. Becoming Steve Jobs

P103: The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime. WH Auden, introduction to 19th Century British Minor Poets.

P103: you will never want to read him again. Jonathan Bate, Radical Wordsworth

P104: that’s not unlike allowing your head to be used as a punchbag.  Q Magazine review cited in The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg (2002)

P104: If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. Leonard Cohen Offers Rare Peek Into His Process at ‘Popular Problems’ Preview, Steve Appleford, Rolling Stone, September 2014

P106: Times are bad.  Attributed to Cicero but its provenance is unknown and its authenticity debated.

P108. Do one thing every day that scares you.  The origins of the exact quote are unclear but they seem to broadly echo Roosevelt’s words in her book, You Learn by Living (1960).  There is a discussion on the origins of her words at quoteinvestigator.com.

How to Connect

P110: What has been will be again. Ecclesiastes 1:9

P110:  Mark Twain thought something similar: he described the imagination as ‘a sort of mental kaleidoscope’.  Letter from Twain to Helen Keller.

P110: There may be nothing new under the sun. Epigram for Octavia E. Butler’s unfinished work, Trickster.

P110: If Leonardo da Vinci’s life had not been so well documented, scholars would have attempted to prove…there in fact two Leonardo’s with entirely distinct and brilliant minds.  See Ackerman, James S. “Leonardo Da Vinci: Art in Science.” Daedalus 127, no. 1 (1998): 207–24.

P111: The measurement of Milan and its suburbs.  Leonardo Notebooks, Codex Atlanticus 222a/664a, Milan

P111: describe the tongue of a woodpecker.  Leonardo Notebooks, Windsor, RCIN 919070

P111: not only the works of nature. Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

P113: The heart is the nut. Leonardo Notebooks, Windsor RCIN 919028r

P113: The sun does not move. Leonardo Notebooks, Windsor RCIN 912669v

P113: The ancients called man a lesser world. Leonardo Notebooks, Paris MS. A. 55v

P114: So pleasing that it was more divine than human…While painting her portrait. Giorgio Vasari, The Life of Leonardo da Vinci

P116: You may discover in patterns. Leonardo Notebooks, Codex Ash, 1:13a, 2:22v; Codex Urb.,66

P116: Obstacles do not bend me. The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, n.682.

P118: a collection without order. Leonardo Notebooks, General Introduction to the Book on Painting, 4, Codex Arundel (ed. Jean Paul Richter)

P121: prodigy of parts. John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, Of Retention, X.9

 P121: choice and excellent. John Locke, A new method of making common-place-books (1706)

P123:  In practical terms, the seemingly efficient cloud-based tools of digital storage possess a simple, accessible value. See also https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book-639b16c4f3bb

How to Pay Attention (to Oneself)

P129: Those who do not know the torment of the unknown.  Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine.

P131: He was listening to…the wisdom of the novel. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel

P131: something that has been anchored at great depth…when from a long distant past.  Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1

P132: Voluntary memory, the memory of the intellect.  Marcel Proust, Letter to René Blum, December 1913

P135. But when it came to the role of the imagination. See also Freud and the Imagination, Charles Rycroft The New York Review, April, 1975

P135: An artist is once more in rudiments an introvert.  Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1915)

P136: I am no connoisseur of art. Sigmund Freud, the Moses of Michelangelo (1914)

P137: Before the problem of the creative artist. Sigmund Freud, Dostoevsky and Parricide (1926)

P140: An air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison. ‘Conversations of Goethe’ by Johann Peter Eckermann, 1827.

P141.  It is now suggested by some studies.  See J.Z. de Boer, J.R. Hale, J. Chanton; New evidence for the geological origins of the ancient Delphic oracle (Greece). Geology 2001;; 29 (8): 707–710. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0707:NEFTGO>2.0.CO;2

P143: You’ve showed me I’m not an addict.  Quoted in Mathematical Genius, Human (In That Order) by Joshua Hill

P144: Beware of those whose pockets are full of esprit. Denis Diderot, Salon de 1765, ed. Else Marie Bukdahl and Annette Lorenceau (Paris, 1984), 47.

P145: This put me out and reduced me to silence.  Denis Diderot, Paradox of the Actor (1770-1778)

P148: The half hour between waking and rising. The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed Sir Walter Scott, David Douglas

Where Good Ideas Come From

P150: Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly. William Stukeley, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life.

P152. Quantum mechanics, once studied for its own sake…now underpins the technology industry.  See What Has Quantum Mechanics Ever Done For Us, Chad Orzel, Forbes, August 2015.

P152: Einstein’s abstract theory of relativity led to our very real ability today to manage a global positioning system (GPS).  See: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/einstein-s-theory-of-relativity-critical-for-gps-seen-in-distant-stars.html

P152: The work of superconductors….forms a crucial component in wind turbines, smart grids, and the MRI technology that scans the brain in ever more detail…See https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2011/12/03/resistance-is-futile

P152: The nineteenth century Bessemer process of steel production led to lower costs that greatly benefited railways and factories. See Bessemer Steel and its Effect on the World. (1898). Scientific American, 78(13), 198–198.

P153: The more inventions there are, the more there is to invent with. Invention as a combinatorial process: evidence from US patents | Journal of The Royal Society Interface https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2015.0272#.Y252zH7CX4A.  See also, W.Brian Arthur,  The Nature of Technology, p172.

P159: Origination is not just a new way of doing things. W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology, 2009, p139

P163: Fair lady mine, dame Juliet. Arthur Brooke, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, 1562

P163: Romeo: She speaks…What’s in a Name? William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1597

P164: In Elizabethan London, originality was still a vague concept.  For a study of the evolution of the Romeo and Juliet story, see Levenson, J. L. (1984). Romeo and Juliet before Shakespeare. Studies in Philology, 81(3), 325–347.

P164: The story of Romeo and Juilet had already been told many times.  See Moore, Olin H. (1930). The Origins of the Legend of Romeo and Juliet in Italy. Speculum 5 (3):264-277.  See also Mabillard, Amanda. Sources for Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare Online. 21 Nov. 2009. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sources/romeosources.html.  See also,

 P166: meanders on like a listless stream. JJ Munro 1908 introduction to The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet

P167: When a new work of art is created. TS Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919

P169: Immature poets imitate.  TS Eliot, The Sacred Wood, 1921

P170: One such work was his 1907 painting, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon. See Steinberg, L. (1988). The Philosophical Brothel. October, 44, 7–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/778974

P170: This is the moment of liberation. Herbert Read, Concise History of Modern Painting, 1959

P171: The most innovative painting since Giotto. John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, Vol 1

P172.  At the time of painting Les Demoiselles. For a study (in French) of the contents of the Musee D’Ethnographie, see: Le Gonidec Marie-Barbara. Témoins du voyage ou objets scientifiques ? Les collections ethnographiques dans les musées parisiens entre les XVIII^e et XX^e siècles et leur rapport au voyage. In: Le rôle des voyages dans la constitution des collections ethnographiques, historiques et scientifiques. Actes du 130e Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, « Voyages et voyageurs », La Rochelle, 2005. Paris : Editions du CTHS, 2008. pp. 84-93. (Actes des congrès nationaux des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, 130-4)

P172: disgusting…The flea market…My greatest artistic revelation…The masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture.   Andre Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1974

173: When I came to that realisation. Francoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, 1990

P175: Hamilton conforms to many of the safe traditions of the musical.  See also A Hip-Hop Interpretation of the Founding Fathers by Rebecca Mead. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons.  See also Lin-Manuel Miranda Breaks Down His Biggest Songs from Hamilton to Moana, Rotten Tomatoes. https://youtu.be/Urp9MjHLP0s

176: A brilliant feat of historical imagination…the great work of art so far….proof that the American musical.  AO Scott, New York Times, June 2020; Ben Brantley, New York Times, August, 201 2015

177: The sacred rights of mankind. Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

P180. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference. TS Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919

Talking to Strangers

P185 It is a simple innocent thing. The Vertue of the Coffee Drink, Pasqua Rosee, 1652.

P191: A succession of intelligent, poised and independent women.  See The Women of the French Salons, Amelia Gere Mason, Fisher Unwin, 1891

See also, “Le goût de la nation”: the influence of women in forming French and foreign taste DENISE YIM. https://tracesdefrance.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/yim_le_gout_de_la_nation.pdf

P193. She did not like heated discussions. Madame Geoffrin: Her Salon and Her Times, 1750-1777, Janet Aldis, 2015

P195. The madrasas and Baghdad’s House of Wisdom.  The Rise of Colleges by George Makdisi draws parallels between the madrasa and the Western university, arguing for an Islamic influence on Western scholasticism.  I am grateful to Fitzroy Morrissey, author of A Short History of Islamic Thought, for drawing my attention this.

P197: University and research clusters spill over into commercial clusters.  Porter, M. E. (2000). Location, Competition, and Economic Development: Local Clusters in a Global Economy. Economic Development Quarterly, 14(1), 15–34.  See also, Regional Advantage by Annalee Saxenian, Harvard University Press.

P197. The knowledge capital of Stanford University seeps into Silicon Valley.  See also, Get Rich U: There are no walls between Stanford and Silicon Valley.  Should there be? By Ken Auletta  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/30/get-rich-u

P197: The same cluster approach can be observed in the Tokyo-Yokohama region in Japan.  See Identifying and ranking the world’s largest clusters of inventive activity.  Economic Research Working Paper No.34, Kyle Bergquist, Carsten Fink, Julio Raffo (2017)

P199: To inspire and nurture the human spirit. Starbucks Mission, starbucks.co.uk

How to Build Cities Together

P201: A great epoch has begun. Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier, L’Espirit Noveau, 1920

P205: Suppose we are entering the city. A Contemporary City from The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, Le Corbusier, 1929

P211: Designing a dream city is easy. Jane Jacobs, Downtown is for People, Fortune Magazine, 1958. See also, How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult, David Roberts, Vox Dec 2018. https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friendship

P215: Cities become more imaginative as they grow.  See A Physicist Solves the City, Jonah Lehrer, New York Times, December 2010.   Also see, Scale by Geoffrey West, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018

P217. If we were to measure the economic development rate of a city. The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs, 1969

P221. One study suggests that face to face interaction drop. The Truth About Open Offices,  Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber, Harvard Business Review, Nov-Dec 2019.  See also, The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban. 2018. Phil. Trans. R. Soc.

P223: The difference in thought…we might otherwise call cognitive diversity. See https://hbr.org/2017/03/teams-solve-problems-faster-when-theyre-more-cognitively-diverse. See also, Diversity’s New Frontier: Diversity of Thought, Anesa Parker, Beth Schill and Carmen Medina.   Also, The Diversity Bonus by Scott E. Page, Princeton University Press.

P224:  Apple Park is a small city set in nature. Apple’s New Campus: An Exclusive Look Inside the Mothership, Stephen Levy, May 2017. https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple-park-new-silicon-valley-campus/. 

See also, Why Apple’s New HQ is nothing like the rest of Silicon Valley by Jennifer Magnolfi. https://hbr.org/2017/06/why-apples-new-hq-is-nothing-like-the-rest-of-silicon-valley#:~:text=The%20sheer%20magnitude%20of%20Apple’s,designed%20to%20house%2012%2C000%20employees.

P224: Rectangles or squares or long buildings. Peter Oppenheimer, CFO of Apple quoted in The Mercury News, October 2013

P227:  The global city-dwelling population is projected to increase by 2.5 billion people. See also,  https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Highlights.pdf. 

How to Tell Stories Together

P229. Never…has the hall been so full.  Gustav Linor. Comœdia, May 1913, At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées: Le Sacre du printemps

P229. There, for the expert eye. Le Coq et L’Arlequin, Oeuvres completes de Jean Cocteau, 1946-1951

P230.  A certain part of the audience was thrilled. Carl van Vechten, Music after the Great War, 1915

P230. They shouted, whistled. Lumiere, Mavra, Paul Collaer, 1922 – from Stravinsky and his World, ed. Tamara Levitz.  See also, Parisians Hiss New Ballet, New York Times, June 1913. https://www.nytimes.com/1913/06/08/archives/parisians-hiss-new-ballet-russian-dancers-latest-offering-the.html?smid=url-share

P231. Laborious and puerile barbarity. Henri Quittard, Le Figaro, 1913

P231. The work of a madman.  Giacomo Puccini: Letters., Guiseepe Adami, 1974

P231: Very little tradition lies behind it.  Quoted in Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934. Stephen Walsh, 2003

P231: No doubt it will be understood one day. Quoted in Russian Music at Home and Abroad: New Essays, Richard Taruskin, 2016

P232: The rhythm of the steppes.  TS Eliot, The Dial, London Letter, 1921

P232: Leonard Bernstein described The Rite of Spring as the most important piece of music of the twentieth century.  See https://www.leonardbernstein.com/lectures/television-scripts/on-composers/homage-to-stravinsky

P234. One study has analysed the effect… Vincent K.M. Cheung et al, Uncertainty and Surprise Jointly Predict Musical Pleasure and Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Auditory Cortex Activity, Current Biology,Volume 29, Issue 23, 2019,

 P237: Shortly the chaos seemed to unwind.  Hector Berlioz, Le Correspondent, 11 April 1829

P237. A work of genius…is hard to admire from the start if nobody else currently possesses the same genius to appreciate it.   See Proust, Vol 2, p120 (Scott Moncrieff Translation): ‘So that the man of genius, to spare himself the ignorant contempt of the world, may say to himself that, since one’s contemporaries are incapable of the necessary detachment, works written for posterity should be read by posterity alone, like certain pictures which one cannot appreciate when one stands too close to them….It is essential that the work should create its own posterity.’

P243. Bogart later recounted the making of the scene. Quoted in On Directing Film, David Mamet, 1991

Murmurs of the Soul

P250. When we hear or read. The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker, 1994

P250. The words or the language. Quoted in The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, Jacques Hadamard, 1945

P253. Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.  Gozzi’s dramatic situations were later formalised in a book by Georges Polti in 1895.

P253. More recent studies reduce this to seven basic plots.  See The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, Continuum, 2005

P257. The word is Ma.  For more on Ma, See https://medium.com/@kiyoshimatsumoto/ma-the-japanese-concept-of-space-and-time-3330c83ded4c

P257. As one poet puts it.  The Chinese poet and philosopher, Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch 11.

P259. Today’s pop song can even be pre-emptively shortened by a streaming algorithm.  See AI and music: will we be slaves to the algorithm?.  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/06/artificial-intelligence-and-will-we-be-slaves-to-the-algorithm?

Also, see Nick Cave on AI, the imagination and song at https://www.theredhandfiles.com/considering-human-imagination-the-last-piece-of-wilderness-do-you-think-ai-will-ever-be-able-to-write-a-good-song/

Imagining the Future

P266. Give the charm of novelty.  Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817

P266: Spots of Time.  See ‘Wordsworth and the ‘Spots of Time’’, Jonathan Bisoph, ELH Vol.26, No 1 (March 1959).  John Hopkins University Press, pp 45-65.

P269: What is more common. A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism, Joseph Priestly, Cambridge University Press.

P270. For Wordsworth was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets.  Thomas de Quincey, 1840

P271. Such a storm as this I never witnessed. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume I

P271. Coleridge has told me. My First Acquaintance with Poets, William Hazlitt, 1823

P271. My walking is of two kinds. Shy Neighbourhoods, The Uncommercial Traveller, Charles Dickens, 1860.  Also see Matthew Beaumont, The Mystery of Master Humphrey: Dickens, Nightwalking and The Old Curiosity Shop, The Review of English Studies, Volume 65, Issue 268, February 2014, Pages 118–136, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgt031

P272. Gastronomy of the Eye.  Theory de la demarche, Honoré de Balzac, 1833.

P272. It is our habit to think outdoors. The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882.  Also quoted in The Marginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/12/nietzsche-walking/

 P272.  The most beneficial to the imagination. Numerous studies support the benefits of walking to the imagination including:

Mexico Highlands University.  Walking increases blood flow to the brain: https://www.nmhu.edu/research-shows-walking-increases-blood-flow-brain/?onwardjourney=584162_v1. 

Stanford: Walking improves creativity: https://news.stanford.edu/2014/04/24/walking-vs-sitting-042414/?onwardjourney=584162_v1 

P276.  Can we ring the bells backward. Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol 3, 298-99, to George Dyer, 1830.

P276. The spontaneous activity of the human imagination. Karl Marx, Estranged Labour, Economic and Philosophica Manuscripts, 1844

P277. The world is growing old….What niche remains unoccupied. William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age, 1825

P277. Drawing is the Educator of the Eye.  James Nasmyth. Engineer. An Autobiography. By James Nasmyth, ed. Samuel Smiles, 1885

P278. The seemingly interminable lines of trees.  Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Anna Brownell Jameson, 1838

P279. Vast banks of fog.  Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana Jr, 1840