Burton Raffel Artists All. Creativity, the University, and the World

Artists All is a spirited defense--- against specialization, materialism, and relative philistinism of the contemporary academic marketplace-- of the ideals and conceptions of post-enlightenment art and esthetics, of artistic individuality and the essentially modern idea of originality." ---Frederick Turner, University of Texas, DallasBasic human drives--- curiosity, passion, the need to provide shape and structure, the excitement of discovery--underlie all human creativity. Different minds and sensibilities necessarily focus on different aspects of human experience. However, in our educational systems and professional lives, we give undue and untrue emphasis to our differences rather than to our similarities. In Artists All Burton Raffel demonstrates that the creative force in the natural and social sciences is essentially the same as the creative energies of the arts; that the arts and aesthetic experiences frequently inspire insight in scientists and sociologist; that the arts themselves, though mutually untranslatable, share a deep unity; that disciplinary boundaries and divisions can frequently stunt creativity; that "what we chose to call artistic creativity is nothing more or less than the heightened engagement of human beings with themselves, their fellows, and their environment"; and that there is always "a link between what artists produce and their stance toward their society's place and posture in the world."When used to define intellectual...