Genius James Gleick

February 26th, 2009

While reading Genius James Gleick - The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, there was a very interesting discussion about genius and the search for why.

An early theory was that the size of the brain was what determined if one was a genius.

That theory was put to rest fairly quickly. The size of the brain did not determine genius.

Other physical attributes were examined such as density of surrounding blood vessels, the percentage of glial cells, and the degree of neuronal branching...decades passed.

There was not going to be a neat and clean physical explanation of why

Although, the term of genius gets thrown out a lot to describe peoples intellect.

However, people are hard pressed to specifically name any.

It was easier just a few generation ago to identify people as such: Einstein, Edison, Picasso, Mozart.

Sure, the world now comprises over 5 billion people.

More people are better educated.

Statistically speaking, there must be more geniuses today than before.

Evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, "Giants have not ceded to mere mortals, rather, the boundaries... have been restricted and the edges smoothed."

What Gould was referring to was baseball and the 400 hitter.

People wanted to know why the .400 hitter had disappeared.

What Gould also found was that the .100 hitter had also disappeared.

Basically, without going into the details is that the gap between the best and worst player in professional baseball had narrowed.

It is not real hard to understand why with better training, better nutrition and better coaching.

Genius All Around

Genius James Gleick talked about how Mozart had his community in place that was almost as if they were waiting for him.

By this, I mean Mozart did not have to choose his audience or his style.

The question is, are there no more Mozarts?

It appears they are around, but they are fighting each other for smaller and smaller scraps.

Their stature becoming smaller and smaller.

Scientists still ask the what if questions. What if Edison had not invented the electric light-how much longer would it have taken? What if Heisenberg had not invented the S matrix? What if Fleming had not discovered penicillin? Or(the king of such questions) what if Einstein had not invented general relativity?

"I always find questions like that... odd," Feynman wrote to a correspondent who posed one. Science tends to be created as it as needed.

"We are not that much smarter than each other," he said.

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Genius James Gleick