Muses have fascinated for millennia yet seldom receive as much exposure as the artistic geniuses they inspire. Of any age, descent or gender, muses enchant simply by being themselves; this innate capacity to inspire has been commonplace for many years yet these catalysing forces are little understood.

New science places much emphasis on the role of the observer as the catalyst or creator of reality, and explains what is happening 'energetically' when two human beings relate to each other in the same space and time – or even when they're not in each others' presence. Challenging dualistic Cartesian philosophy and classical Newtonian physics by proposing an interconnected, quantum view of the world, new science can help us to better understand the magic of muses and it can even help us to channel inspiration more prominently into our everyday lives.

Offering an 'ecology' of inspiration, 'Muses' lends a fresh perspective to what happened when Lewis Carroll played with Alice Liddell; when Rainer Maria Rilke dreamt of Lou Andreas Salomé or when John Lennon wrote for his one and only Yoko Ono. Taking this new insight to the edges of the 21st century, the book finishes with a chapter on the future of inspiration.