Repository | Book | Chapter

224881

(1969) Le domaine humain / The human context, Dordrecht, Springer.

On ecstasy and originality

Alex Comfort

pp. 253-258

The solving of a problem is an aesthetic experience. It involves a reward- mechanism going beyond the practical outcome of the solution and the sense of achievement in the eyes of others — for an unsolved intellectual problem, explicit,as in mathematics, or inexplicit, as a trick recurrence of pattern in wallpaper, rankles as a state of physical unease. This experience appears to be common to scientists and to chimpanzees, and must have played an important adaptive part in fostering the restlessly exploratory behaviour of primates.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-2745-3_10

Full citation:

Comfort, A. (1969). On ecstasy and originality, in Le domaine humain / The human context, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 253-258.

This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.