Anthony Brandt Books
Anthony Brandt is a composer and professor of music at Rice University, focusing on creativity and the intersection of art and science.
Known for: The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Books by Anthony Brandt
The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Human beings are not content merely to survive in the world as it is. We redesign it. We turn stone into sculpture, sound into symphony, symbols into mathematics, and raw materials into technologies that alter how entire civilizations live. In The Runaway Species, neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt argue that creativity is not a rare talent possessed by a gifted few, but a core feature of the human mind. Our species is “runaway” because we continually transform our environment through imagination, experimentation, and invention. What makes this book especially valuable is its unusual partnership of disciplines. Eagleman brings deep expertise in brain science, perception, and cognition, while Brandt contributes the perspective of a working artist and composer. Together, they show that creativity can be studied, understood, and cultivated. Drawing on examples from music, architecture, language, science, education, and technology, they reveal the mental tools behind innovation: bending, breaking, and blending existing ideas into something new. The result is an accessible, illuminating exploration of why humans create and how that creativity has become our defining evolutionary advantage.
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The Brain Is a Recombination Engine
The most original ideas rarely appear out of nowhere. One of the book’s central claims is that the human brain is fundamentally a remix system: it takes existing materials, memories, patterns, and experiences and recombines them into new forms. Creativity is not magic and not ex nihilo invention. In...
From The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Bending Creates Novelty Within Limits
Many breakthroughs begin not by rejecting tradition, but by stretching it. The authors call this process bending: taking a familiar structure, rule, tool, or convention and transforming it without destroying its identity. Bending matters because creativity often works best when it starts with someth...
From The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Breaking Opens Space for New Systems
Sometimes progress does not come from refinement but from rupture. Breaking, in the authors’ framework, means challenging or discarding inherited assumptions so completely that a new system becomes possible. If bending stretches convention, breaking snaps it. This is riskier, but it can produce revo...
From The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Blending Combines Worlds Into New Possibilities
Some of the most powerful creative leaps happen when separate domains collide. The authors call this blending: merging elements from different categories, disciplines, or traditions to produce something neither could generate alone. Blending is a major engine of innovation because the brain thrives ...
From The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Creativity Has Deep Neuroscientific Foundations
Creativity can feel mysterious from the inside, but the book shows that it emerges from ordinary brain processes doing extraordinary work together. Perception, memory, prediction, association, emotion, and motor control all contribute to innovation. The same brain that helps you recognize patterns i...
From The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
Culture Accumulates and Amplifies Innovation
No creator works alone, and no idea appears in a vacuum. One of the book’s broader contributions is showing that human creativity is cumulative: each generation inherits tools, symbols, stories, techniques, and problems from the last, then modifies them. Culture is not just a backdrop for invention;...
From The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
About Anthony Brandt
Anthony Brandt is a composer and professor of music at Rice University, focusing on creativity and the intersection of art and science.
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Anthony Brandt is a composer and professor of music at Rice University, focusing on creativity and the intersection of art and science.
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