Themes, History, Civilization & Culture, General, Comparative Religion, Social Sciences, Cultural 

Despite the best efforts of scientists, theologians and aestheticians, creation and creativity both remain mysterious. How did our world begin? Where do we come from? And how can we understand or describe that obscure source we call imagination, from which works of art emerge? Peter Conrad's book investigates these mysteries, in a survey of cultural history that begins with the differing accounts of creation and advances to our own world, where creativity seems to have warped into a fierce delight in destruction. He describes the long illness and eventual demise of the Christian God, and shows how artists and scientists were ready and eager to take over a creative role that was once a heavenly prerogative. At the same time, he probes the creative impulse of writers, painters and musicians, celebrating the audacity of the restless, rebellious beings who first questioned the limits placed on thoughts and dreams, supplemented nature with their own creations, and came to be known ... as artists. 

0. Something from Nothing
1. Meetings with the Maker
2. In the Beginnings
3. Out of the Chasm
4. Cubing the Egg
5. In Verbo
6. The Supreme Artisan
7. Another God
8. The Great Work
9. Our Own Unmaking
10. Author of Himself
11. To Create More Worlds
12. Uncreating Words
13. Nature Caught in the Act
14. Jehovah, Jupiter, Fu and Brahma
15. Sky Stories
16. Protoplasts
17. The God of Steam
18. Go Forth and Multiply
19. Pangenesis
20. New Eve, Old Adam
21. Begetter and Bearer
22. Deicide
23. Out of the Canyon
24. The First Artists
25. Prime Movers
26. Creatures of Prometheus
27. God's Finger, Man's Hand
28. Let There Be Sound
29. Children of Chaos
30. Psychogenesis
31. Creating the Creation
32. World-Building
33. The Bright Destroyer.