ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores creativity lies at the heart of major shifts in the understanding of human culture and the human imaginative capacity. It outlines ‘The Creative Mind’, where Williams traced a path for ideas about making and about value through history of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical thought, by way of the development of Renaissance and Enlightenment artistic and literary criticism, then of the revolution in Romantic artistic and literary theory and finally to modern evolutionary biology, psychology and communication theory. The book addresses a key underlying principle of the collection, which is the issue of the locale of late-life creativity – the extent to which creativity in later life is inflected, indeed determined, by local geographical contexts, which are themselves, inevitably, at base economic contexts.
