What is Poietics? The subject of "poietics" (la poïétique in French), with its origins in the Greek word poïein ("to make with the intellect"), deals with the science and/or the art or philosophy of creation. To French academics working in the field, the subject has variously meant one thing as a definition and another as a programme of research - from Valery's probes into the making of a poem to Passeron's involvement with the creator's relations with the objet d'art during the creative act. In this book, the author attempts to lay the foundation either for the formulation of a theory or, contrariwise, for the impossibility at arriving at any such formulaic circumscription on poietics. His "Disquisitions on Poietics" serves as a theoretical inquiry into the subject at large without, however, limiting itself to the fine arts. The author adopts an open-ended approach to the concept of creation. To him, the preparation of an elaborate dish in the kitchen is as worthy of attention as the Big Bang itself. As for tools, he does not exclude the methodology of experimentation in the laboratory or the theoretical calculations and observations of the exact sciences as perfectly valid means by which to unravel the mysteries of creation. The author "created" and edited the first academic bi-lingual journal on the subject: The Journal of Comparative Poietics/Revue de Poïétique Comparée in 1989, and in which appeared articles by Henri Morier, René Passeron, Eric Mottram, José Augusto Seabra, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Germaine Prudhommeau, Andrew Greig, Clive Bush, and T.Wignesan.  more >>