What Makes a Genius?
Le génie n’est que l’enfance retrouvée à volonté.
--Charles Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne (The Painter of Modern Life), 1863
Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recaptured at will.
--Charles Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne (The Painter of Modern Life), 1863
Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recaptured at will.
Some minds are so exceptional they change the world.
By Claudia Kalb
National Geographic, May 2017
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/05/genius-genetics-intelligence-neuroscience-creativity-einstein/
National Geographic, May 2017
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/05/genius-genetics-intelligence-neuroscience-creativity-einstein/
Throughout history rare individuals have stood out for their meteoric contributions to a field. Lady Murasaki for her literary inventiveness. Michelangelo for his masterful touch. Marie Curie for her scientific acuity. “The genius,” wrote German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “lights on his age like a comet into the paths of the planets.”
Consider Einstein’s impact on physics. With no tools at his disposal other than the force of his own thoughts, he predicted in his general theory of relativity that massive accelerating objects—like black holes orbiting each other—would create ripples in the fabric of space-time. It took one hundred years, enormous computational power, and massively sophisticated technology to definitively prove him right, with the physical detection of such gravitational waves two years ago.
Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the very laws of the universe. But our understanding of how a mind like his works remains stubbornly earthbound. What set his brainpower, his thought processes, apart from those of his merely brilliant peers? What makes a genius?
Consider Einstein’s impact on physics. With no tools at his disposal other than the force of his own thoughts, he predicted in his general theory of relativity that massive accelerating objects—like black holes orbiting each other—would create ripples in the fabric of space-time. It took one hundred years, enormous computational power, and massively sophisticated technology to definitively prove him right, with the physical detection of such gravitational waves two years ago.
Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the very laws of the universe. But our understanding of how a mind like his works remains stubbornly earthbound. What set his brainpower, his thought processes, apart from those of his merely brilliant peers? What makes a genius?
Genius is too elusive, too subjective, too wedded to the verdict of history to be easily identified. And it requires the ultimate expression of too many traits to be simplified into the highest point on one human scale. Instead we can try to understand it by unraveling the complex and tangled qualities—intelligence, creativity, and perseverance, to name a few—that entwine to create a person capable of changing the world.
Unexpected flashes of insight still require some thought. After seeing an apple fall perpendicularly to the ground in 1666, Isaac Newton reasoned that, in a friend’s telling, “there must be a drawing power in matter.” The tree that sparked his law of gravity remains rooted next to his childhood home at Woolsthorpe Manor, England.--Photograph by Paolo Woods
Prodigious productivity is a defining characteristic of genius. Charcoal sketches cover the walls of a once concealed room beneath the Medici Chapel in Florence, where Michelangelo hid for three months in 1530 after defying his patrons.--Photograph by Paolo Woods
The truest measure of genius is whether a person’s work resonates through the ages. At the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, Michelangelo’s “David” towers over admiring visitors more than 500 years after the artist carved the 17-foot-tall statue from a single block of marble discarded by other sculptors.--Photograph by Paolo Woods
How Picasso’s Journey From Prodigy to Icon Revealed a Genius
By Claudia Kalb
National Geographic May 2018
National Geographic May 2018
Incidental Comics illustrations by Grant Snider
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, artistic name Nadar, 1865 (friend of Baudelaire's)
Music in the Tuileries, 1862, Édouard Manet (friend of Baudelaire's)