Expect the Unexpected (Or You Won’t Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus: Roger Von Oech
Editorial Reviews
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first “creativity teacher,” says Roger von Oech, whose bestselling book A Whack on the Side of the Head set the standard for out-of-the-box thinking. In Expect the Unexpected, Von Oech uses 30 of Heraclitus’s pithy and paradoxical epigrams to approach problems in a fresh manner. He explains his premise: “Creative thinking involves imagining familiar things in a new light, digging below the surface to find previously undetected patterns, and finding connections among unrelated phenomena.”
Von Oech uses the epigrams as creativity exercises–accompanied by mental puzzles, anecdotes, questions, and punchy footnotes–to demonstrate that Heraclitus’s 2,500-year-old creative insights have aged well. With his whimsical wand, von Oech transforms the epigram “A Donkey prefers garbage to gold” into an exploration of values. He uses Heraclitus’s observation that “A wonderful harmony is created when we join together the seemingly unconnected” to examine the use of metaphors in understanding problems. When Heraclitus observes that “Dogs bark at what they don’t understand,” Von Oech crafts a meditation about criticism. Executives, students, teachers, and parents will find an exciting and entertaining map for changing thought patterns, tolerating ambiguity, confounding expectations, and searching for hidden meanings. –Barbara Mackoff
From Library Journal
Von Oech, a creativity consultant, lecturer, and president of Creative Think, penned the best seller A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative (1986). Not as dry as the subtitle makes it sound, his latest book has certainly benefited from his recent studies of the creative process. Even though Von Oech does cite Heraclitus extensively (in Greek, no less), this is no classics text. Instead, Von Oech presents and offers his take on 30 of Heraclitus’s epigrams, such as “On a circle, an end point can also be a beginning point” and “When there is no sun, we can see the evening stars.” He then lists questions to help readers apply the insight gained from the epigrams to their own situation. Each of the 30 chapters is bite-sized but substantial. Recommended for all public libraries; academic libraries would probably also benefit.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
