THE ACT OF CREATION by Arthur Koestler PENGUIN ARKANA The Act of Creation Arthur Koestler alternated all his life between the man of action and the man of letters. Born in Budapest in 1905, he studied at Vienna University before becoming a journalist. As a foreign correspondent he travelled widely, visiting the Middle East, Paris and Moscow. In 1937, while representing the "News Chronicle" in Spain, he was captured by Franco's troops and imprisoned under sentence of death. He was eventually released on the intervention of the British Government and returned to London. During the war he served with the French Foreign Legion and the British Army and in 1945 became Special Correspondent for The Times in Palestine. In the 1940s and early 1950s he was perhaps the most widely read political novelist of our time. Darkness at Noon, considered to be his masterpiece, was published in 1940, followed by Arrival and Departure (1943), Thieves in the Night (1946), The Age of Longing (1951) and The Call Girls (1972). From 1956 he became immersed in questions of science and mysticism, and had a huge following among young people. Explaining his varied interests, Koestler wrote: 'Out of my quarrels with the human condition I made my novels; the other books are attempts to analyse that same condition in scientific terms. In my more optimistic moments it seems to me that the two add up to a whole. At any rate, without both media I would feel only half alive.' The Act of Creation (1964) is the second book in his classic trilogy on the mind of man, which began with The Sleepwalkers (1959) and ended with The Ghost in the Machine (1967). Among his other books are The Yogi and the Commissar (1945), The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971) and Bricks to Babel, a collection of non-fiction essays. Koestler received the Sonning Prize from the University of Copenhagen in 1968 and was awarded a number of honorary doctorates. He was a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was made a CBE in 1972 and a Companion of Literature in 1974, and on three occasions was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Arthur Koestler died in 1983. The Times obituary called him 'a consistently lucid and humane writer . . . His reputation as one of the most versatile and protean writers of our century is thoroughly deserved.' ARTHUR KOESTLER The Act of Creation ARKANA PENGUIN BOOKS ARKANA Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Aukland, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published by Hutchinson & Co. 1964 Published by Arkana 1989 Copyright © Arthur Koestler, 1964 All rights reserved Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser CONTENTS BOOK ONE THE ART OF DISCOVERY AND THE DISCOVERIES OF ART * PART ONE THE JESTER I THE LOGIC OF LAUGHTER 27 The Triptych -- The Laughter Reflex -- The Paradox of Laughter -- The Logic of Laughter: A First Approach -- Matrices and Codes -- Hidden Persuaders -- Habit and Originality -- Man and Machine II LAUGHTER AND EMOTION 51 Aggression and Identification -- The Inertia of Emotion -- The Mechanism of Laughter -- The Importance of not being Earnest III VARIETIES OF HUMOUR 64 Pun and Witticism -- Man and Animal -- Impersonation -- The Child-Adult -- The Trivial and the Exalted -- Caricature and Satire -- The Misfit -- The Paradox of the Centipede -- Displacement -- Coincidence -- Nonsense -- Tickling -- The Clown -- Originality, Emphasis, Economy IV FROM HUMOUR TO DISCOVERY 87 Explosion and Catharsis - - 'Seeing the Joke' and 'Solving the Problem -- The Creation of Humour -- Paradox and Synthesis -- Summary PART TWO THE SAGE V MOMENTS OF TRUTH 101 The Chimpanzee and the Stick -- Archimedes -- Chance and Ripeness -- Logic and Intuition -- Summary VI THREE ILLUSTRATIONS 121 1. The Printing press -- 2. Gravity and the Holy Ghost -- 3. Evolution through Natural Selection VII THINKING ASIDE 145 Limits of Logic -- The Unconscious before Freud -- The Mechanization of Habits -- Exploring the Shallows -- The 'Hooked Atoms of Thought' -- Exploring the Deeps -- The Word and the Vision -- The Snares of Language VIII UNDERGROUND GAMES 178 The Importance of Dreaming -- Concretization and Symbolization -- Punning for Profit--The Benefits of Impersonation -- Displacement -- Standing on One's Head -- Analogy and Intuition -- Summary IX THE SPARK AND THE FLAME 212 False Inspirations -- Premature Linkages -- Snowblindness -- Gradual Integrations -- The Dawn of Language -- Summary X THE EVOLUTION OF IDEAS 224 Separations and Reintegrations -- Twenty-six Centuries of Science - - Creative Anarchy -- 'Connect, Always Connect' -- The Thinking Cap - - The Pathology of Thought -- Limits of Confirmation -- Fashions in Science -- Boundaries of Science -- Summary XI SCIENCE AND EMOTION 255 Three Character-Types -- Magic and Sublimation -- The Boredom of Science -- Summary PART THREE THE ARTIST A. THE PARTICIPATORY EMOTIONS XII THE LOGIC OF THE MOIST EYE 271 Laughter and Weeping -- Why do we Weep? -- Raptness -- Mourning -- Relief -- Pity -- Self-Pity -- Summary XIII PARTNESS AND WHOLENESS Stepchildren of Psychology - - The Concept of Hierarchy 285 XIV ON ISLANDS AND WATERWAYS 292 B. VERBAL CREATION XV ILLUSION 301 The Power of Illusion -- The Value of Illusion -- The Dynamics of Illusion -- Escape and Catharsis -- Identification and Magic -- The Dawn of Literature XVI RHYTHM AND RHYME 311 Pulsation -- Measure and Meaning -- Repetition and Affinity -- Compulsive Punning -- Coaxing the Unconscious XVII IMAGE 320 The Hidden Analogy -- Emotive Potentials -- The Picture-strip -- On Law and Order -- On Truth and Beauty XVIII INFOLDING 333 Originality and Emphasis -- Economy -- The Last Veil -- Summary XIX CHARACTER AND PLOT 345 Identification -- Phantoms and Images -- Conflict -- Integrations and Confrontations -- Archetypes - - Cataloguing Plots -- Puppets and Strings XX THE BELLY OF THE WHALE 358 The Night Journey -- The Guilt of Jonah - - The Root and the Flower -- The Tightrope C. VISUAL CREATION XXI MOTIF AND MEDIUM 366 Looking at Nature -- Pigment and Meaning -- The Two Environments -- Visual Inferences -- Codes of Perception -- Convention and Creation XXII IMAGE AND EMOTION 383 Virtues of the Picture Postcard -- Taste and Distastep -- Motion and Rest -- Ascending Gradients -- Summary XXIII ART AND PROGRESS 393 Cumulative Periods -- Stagnation and Cross-Fertilization -- Statement and Implication XXIV CONFUSION AND STERILITY 400 The Aesthetics of Snobbery -- The Personal Emanation -- The Antiquarian Fallacy -- The Comforts of Sterility BOOK TWO HABIT AND ORIGINALITY * Introduction 413 I PRENATAL SKILLS 415 Structure and Function -- The Cell-Matrix -- Nucleus and Cytoplasm -- Regulative and Mosaic Development -- Organizers and Inducers -- Summary II THE UBIQUITOUS HIERARCHY 430 Development of the Nervous System -- Locomotor Hierarchies -- The Goldfish and the Crab -- Shuffling the Salamander's Limbs -- Limits of Control III DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM AND REGENERATIVE POTENTIAL 447 Acting and Reacting -- What is Equilibrium? -- Super-Elasticity and Regenerative Span -- Physiological Isolation IV RECULER POUR MIEUX SAUTER 454