Tag Archives: tibetan uplift

A composer, a president, and a dean share in conversation about creativity and expression

While working on a new piece, composer John Adams sometimes has to experience a deep sense of failure before his ideas really start to flow.

“You can win every prize in the book … but when you are alone with yourself in that room and what you are doing is not even worthy of a five-year-old — you can’t imagine how humiliating that is,” he told an audience in Sprague Memorial Hall on Oct. 16. “You have to get to that level of abject humility to finally get to point of being receptive, then ideas come. Usually when they come they’re dressed in extremely shabby clothes. You just have to go with it.” (more…)

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Scholars and scientists explore factors underlying serendipitous discoveries

What do Velcro, Tang, penicillin, the structure of DNA and the World Wide Web have in common?

They all involved serendipitous discoveries—chance discoveries made by alert, curious scientists who were looking for other things when they happened across a fortuitous finding. Rather than ignoring their accidental discoveries, these curious, open-minded scientists harnessed their luck. “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” as Louis Pasteur put it. (more…)

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