They identify new ones. It does not take a genius to analyze dreams; it required Freud to ask in the first place what meaning dreams carry from our psyche. The explosion of creativity in the Renaissance was intimately tied to the recording and conveying of a vast knowledge in a parallel language; a language of drawings, graphs and diagrams — as, for instance, in the renowned diagrams of daVinci and Galileo.
Galileo revolutionized science by making his thought visible with diagrams, maps, and drawings while his contemporaries used conventional mathematical and verbal approaches. Once geniuses obtain a certain minimal verbal facility, they seem to develop a skill in visual and spatial abilities which give them the flexibility to display information in different ways.
When Einstein had thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject in as many different ways as possible, including diagrammatically. He had a very visual mind. He thought in terms of visual and spatial forms, rather than thinking along purely mathematical or verbal lines of reasoning. In fact, he believed that words and numbers, as they are written or spoken, did not play a significant role in his thinking process.
A distinguishing characteristic of genius is immense productivity. Thomas Edison held 1, patents, still the record. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months. Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when he was sick or exhausted. Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music.
Einstein is best known for his paper on relativity, but he published other papers. Elliot's numerous drafts of "The Waste Land" constitute a jumble of good and bad passages that eventually was turned into a masterpiece. In a study of 2, scientists throughout history, Dean Kean Simonton of the University of California, Davis found that the most respected produced not only great works, but also more "bad" ones.
Out of their massive quantity of work came quality. Geniuses produce. Dean Keith Simonton, in his book Scientific Genius suggests that geniuses are geniuses because they form more novel combinations than the merely talented. His theory has etymology behind it: cogito — "I think — originally connoted "shake together": intelligo the root of "intelligence" means to "select among.
Like the highly playful child with a pailful of Legos, a genius is constantly combining and recombining ideas, images and thoughts into different combinations in their conscious and subconscious minds. Einstein did not invent the concepts of energy, mass, or speed of light. Rather, by combining these concepts in a novel way, he was able to look at the same world as everyone else and see something different.
The laws of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based are the results of Gregor Mendel who combined mathematics and biology to create a new science. If one particular style of thought stands out about creative genius, it is the ability to make juxtapositions between dissimilar subjects. Call it a facility to connect the unconnected that enables them to see things to which others are blind.
Leonardo daVinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. This enabled him to make the connection that sound travels in waves. In , F. Kekule' intuited the shape of the ring-like benzene molecule by forcing a relationship with a dream of a snake biting its tail. Samuel Morse was stumped trying to figure out how to produce a telegraphic signal b enough to be received coast to coast.
One day he saw tied horses being exchanged at a relay station and forced a connection between relay stations for horses and b signals. The solution was to give the traveling signal periodic boosts of power. Nickla Tesla forced a connection between the setting sun and a motor that made the AC motor possible by having the motor's magnetic field rotate inside the motor just as the sun from our perspective rotates.
Physicist and philosopher David Bohm believed geniuses were able to think different thoughts because they could tolerate ambivalence between opposites or two incompatible subjects. Physicist Niels Bohr believed that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your thought and your mind moves to a new level. The suspension of thought allows an intelligence beyond thought to act and create a new form.
The swirling of opposites creates the conditions for a new point of view to bubble freely from your mind. Nor does it happen on the first try. Big hits emerge after many attempts. Lack of support can stunt prospects for potential geniuses; they never get the chance to be productive. Throughout history women have been denied formal education, deterred from advancing professionally, and under-recognized for their achievements. Half the women in the Terman study ended up as homemakers.
Using fMRI brain scans below , hearing specialist Charles Limb has found that jazz musicians and freestyle rappers suppress the self-monitoring part of their brains as they improvise. Limb plans to use electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure electrical activity in the brains of other creative individuals, including comedians; he tries it out on himself in his lab at UC San Francisco above.
Sometimes, by sheer good fortune, promise and opportunity collide. If there were ever an individual who personified the concept of genius in every aspect, from its ingredients to its far-reaching impact, it would be Leonardo da Vinci.
The breadth of his abilities—his artistic insights, his expertise in human anatomy, his prescient engineering—is unparalleled. He persisted no matter the challenge. Two years ago he published preliminary genetic analyses of a Neanderthal skeleton.
It is an ambitious plan, but team members are optimistically laying the groundwork. Art historians and geneticists, including specialists at the institute of genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, are experimenting with techniques to obtain DNA from fragile Renaissance-era paintings and paper. The quest to unravel the origins of genius may never reach an end point. Like the universe, its mysteries will continue to challenge us, even as we reach for the stars.
For some, that is as it should be. All rights reserved. This story appears in the May issue of National Geographic magazine. The Power of Letting Go Using fMRI brain scans below , hearing specialist Charles Limb has found that jazz musicians and freestyle rappers suppress the self-monitoring part of their brains as they improvise.
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Environment As the EU targets emissions cuts, this country has a coal problem. When confronted with problems, we fixate on something in our past that has worked before. Because of the soundness of the steps based on past experiences, we become arrogantly certain of the correctness of our conclusion. When Charles Darwin returned to England after his famous trip to the Galapagos Islands, he showed the finch specimens he found there to distinguished zoologist John Gould. Thinking the way he always thought, he assumed that, since God made one set of birds when he created the world, the specimens from different locations would be identical.
He missed the textbook case of evolution right in front of him. Geniuses think productively, not reproductively. Leonardo da Vinci believed that to gain knowledge about the form of problems, you begin by learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He felt the first way he looked at a problem was too biased toward his usual way of seeing things.
He would restructure his problem by looking at it from one perspective and move to another perspective and still another. With each move, his understanding would deepen and he would begin to understand the essence of the problem. By not settling with one perspective, geniuses do not merely solve existing problems, like inventing an environmentally-friendly fuel; t hey identify new ones. It does not take a genius to analyze dreams; it required Freud to ask in the first place what meaning dreams carry from our psyche.
It is the willingness to explore all approaches, even after they have found a promising one, that separates genius from the rest. Einstein was once asked what the difference was between him and the average person.
He said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in the haystack, the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all the possible needles. Earlier I mentioned Charles Darwin and his work on evolution.
I have become fascinated with scholastic attempts to apply Darwinian ideas to creativity and genius. Campbell was not the first to see the connection between Darwinian ideas on evolution and creativity.
Nature is extraordinarily productive. Genius is analogous to biological evolution in that it requires the unpredictable generation of a rich diversity of alternatives and conjectures. From this variety of alternatives and conjectures, the intellect retains the best ideas for further development and communication.
All geniuses produce immense quantities of ideas. Thomas Edison held 1, patents, still the record. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months.
Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when he was sick or exhausted. Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music. Einstein is best known for his paper on relativity, but he published other papers. Out of their massive quantity of work came quality. In nature, a gene pool that is totally lacking in variation would be totally unable to adapt to changing circumstances. A comparable process operates within us as individuals.
We all have a rich repertoire of ideas and concepts based on past experiences that enable us to survive and prosper.
But without any provision for the variation of ideas, our usual ideas become stagnate and lose their advantages and in the end, we are defeated in our competition with our rivals. How do creative geniuses generate so many alternatives and conjectures? Why are so many of their ideas so rich and varied? Growing cadres of scholars are offering evidence that one can characterize the way geniuses think. Following are thumbnail descriptions of strategies that are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art and industry throughout history.
These strategies demonstrate how geniuses get novel and original ideas by incorporating chance or randomness into their creative process in order to destabilize their usual way of thinking and reorganize their thoughts in new ways.
Geniuses Make Novel Combinations. Dean Keith Simonton, in his book Scientific Genius suggests that geniuses are geniuses because they form more novel combinations than the merely talented. Like the highly playful child with a pailful of Legos, a genius is constantly combining and recombining ideas, images and thoughts into different combinations in their conscious and subconscious minds.
Einstein did not invent the concepts of energy, mass, or speed of light.
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