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Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler is a noted contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica online. Read Britannica's biography of Arthur Koestler
BIOGRAPHY

Arthur Koestler was a British novelist, journalist, and critic who was best known for his novel Darkness at Noon (1940).

Koestler's other works include The Act of Creation (1964), about creativity in science and art; The Lotus and the Robot (1960), an examination of Eastern mysticism; and The Ghost in the Machine (1967), which discusses the effect of evolution on the structure of the human brain.

Primary Contributions (1)
George Carlin
Humor, communication in which the stimulus produces amusement. In all its many-splendored varieties, humor can be simply defined as a type of stimulation that tends to elicit the laughter reflex. Spontaneous laughter is a motor reflex produced by the coordinated contraction of 15 facial muscles in…
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Publications (5)
Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon (October 2006)
By Arthur Koestler
Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, Darkness At Noon, is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s.During Stalin's purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the party he has devoted his life to. Under mounting pressure to confess to crimes he did not commit, Rubashov relives a career that embodies the ironies...
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The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (Compass)
The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (Compass) (June 1990)
By Arthur Koestler
An extraordinary history of humanity's changing vision of the universe. In this masterly synthesis, Arthur Koestler cuts through the sterile distinction between 'sciences' and 'humanities' to bring to life the whole history of cosmology from the Babylonians to Newton. He shows how the tragic split between science and religion arose and how, in particular, the modern world-view replaced the medieval world-view in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. He also provides vivid and judicious...
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The Act of Creation
The Act of Creation (June 1990)
By Arthur Koestler

While the study of psychology has offered little in the way of explaining the creative process, Koestler examines the idea that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended--for example, in dreams and trancelike states. All who read The Act of Creation will find it a compelling and illuminating book.

The Ghost in the Machine
The Ghost in the Machine (October 1982)
By Arthur Koestler
In The Sleepwalkers and The Act of Creation Arthur Koestler provided pioneering studies of scientific discovery and artistic inspiration, the twin pinnacles of human achievement. The Ghost in the Machine looks at the dark side of the coin: our terrible urge to self-destruction... Could the human species be a gigantic evolutionary mistake? To answer that startling question Koestler examines how experts on evolution and psychology all too often write about people with an ‘antiquated slot-machine...
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Bricks To Babel * A Selection From 50 Years Of His Writings .
Bricks To Babel * A Selection From 50 Years Of His Writings . (1981)
By Arthur Koestler

A collection compiled from Koestler's lifetime writings follows his progress from seeking political solutions to solve mankind's problems to his attempting to find ultimate meaning in science and philosophy