Novelty : a history of the new Michael North takes us on a dazzling tour of more than two millennia of thinking about the problem of the new from the puzzles of the pre Socratics to the art world of the 1960s and 70s. The terms of the debate North shows were established before Plato and have changed very little since: novelty philosophers argued could only arise from either recurrence or recombination. The former found in natures cycles of renewal and the latter seen most clearly in the workings of language between them have accounted for nearly all the ways in which novelty has been conceived in Western history taking in reformation renaissance invention revolution and even evolution. As he pursues this idea through centuries and across disciplines North exhibits astonishing range drawing on figures as diverse as Charles Darwin and Robert Smithson Thomas Kuhn and Ezra Pound Norbert Wiener and Andy Warhol all of whom offer different ways of grappling with newness as such. Page 4 of cover How newness comes into the world Newness comes into the world Two traditions of the new: cycles and combinations Darwins renovation of the new Counting and accounting for the new: probability information theory genetics Novelty in the twentieth century The structure of scientific discovery: Kuhn and Weiner Making it new: novelty and aesthetic modernism Modernist novelty and the neo avant garde If art and science have one thing in common its a hunger for the new new ideas and innovations new ways of seeing and depicting the world. But that desire for novelty carries with it a fundamental philosophical problem: If everything has to come from something how can anything truly new emerge Is novelty even possible In Novelty Michael North takes us on a dazzling tour of more than two millennia of thinking about the problem of the new from the puzzles of the pre Socratics to the art world of the 1960s and 70s. The terms of the debate North shows were established before Plato and have changed very little since: novelty philosophers argued could only arise from either recurrence or recombination. The former found in natures cycles of renewal and the latter seen most clearly in the workings of language between them have accounted for nearly all the ways in which novelty has been conceived in Western history taking in reformation renaissance invention revolution and even evolution. As he pursues this idea through centuries and across disciplines North exhibits astonishing range drawing on figures as diverse as Charles Darwin and Robert Smithson Thomas Kuhn and Ezra Pound Norbert Wiener and Andy Warhol all of whom offer different ways of grappling with newness as such. Novelty North demonstrates remains a central problem of contemporary science and literature an ever receding target that in its complexity and evasiveness continues to inspire and propel the modern. A heady ambitious intellectual feast Novelty is rich with insight a masterpiece of perceptive synthesis. Jacket $ahttps: library.leeds.ac.uk site custom_scripts authentication link.cgiItem=MyiLibrary&targetExtra=526356$zView this book online via MyiLibrary both on and off campus$51$B1