Scott Barry Kaufman's Review of Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development, Edited By

Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development is a novel and appropriate attempt to synthesize various threads on the nature of reasoning and the nature of creative thinking to investigate their interplay and educational impact. Such general questions that are posed are: To what extent do creativity and imagination decline in childhood?,, Is there something about the development of one kind of thinking that undermines imaginative and creative thinking?, What is the role of domain knowledge in creative thinking?, and How does the process of schooling affect creative thinking skills?. A variety of perspectives are brought to bear on the relationships among creativity, reason, knowledge, and schooling. The list of contributors is impressive, as is the scope. The reader will walk away from the book realizing that the general questions the book hopes to answer are very complex, and riddled with many caveats. The first part of the book is theoretical in nature, and includes empirical research findings on the relationship between reason and creativity. Unlike many academic compilations, each chapter stands out as unique and there is very little overlap of research findings, or even in particular theoretic orientation. For instance, all specifically take up the topic of the role of domain knowledge in creative production yet present different research on the issue which is reflected in their different theoretical perspectives. Weisberg and Simonton emphasize the important role domain knowledge plays in the achievement of world class eminence. Weisberg's position is that knowledge and expertise are required for high level performance. In Weisberg's view, the relationship between knowledge and creative production is linear, and what distinguishes geniuses from non-geniuses is the amount of knowledge they have acquired. Simonton's chapter also shows the importance of expertise, but uses a histriometric approach to show that there is a trend for an optimal level of expertise, upon