The Slate's series on collaborations

The Slate has been running a fascinating series about collaborations.

From the intro:

What makes creative relationships work? How do two people—who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own—explode into innovation, discovery, and brilliance when working together? On one level, these are obvious questions. Collaboration yields so much of what is novel, useful, and beautiful, and it's natural to try to understand it. On another level, looking at achievement through relationships is a new, and even radical, idea. For hundreds of years, science and culture have focused on the self. We talk ofself-expression, self-realization. Popular culture celebrates the hero. Schools test intelligence and learning through solo exams. Biographies shape our view of history...

But a burgeoning field has shown that, from the very first days of life, relationships shape our experience, our character, even our biology...

It's not an accident that this new work is ascendant at a time when the Western world no longer identifies itself in opposition to collectivism, and where the Internet and social media have offered an obvious metaphor for webs of connections. "We're ready for a Copernican revolution in psychology," Cacioppo says. If it comes, the era of the self will yield to something that may be much more interesting.

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