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I'd suggest that Paul Erdos was a pretty irrefutable genius. Other brilliant mathematicians are in awe of Erdos. His proofs were frequently more elegant and more instructive than others, and so on.
I'd agree that frequently people are accorded the title genius simply because they are brilliant once, or recognise an idea whose 'time has come' - whatever, exactly, that means.
It may also be a distinguishing mark of a genius that s/he sees the obvious thing which other minds miss.
I don't think there is a quality, 'genius'. I do think there are individuals who are functionally gifted in one or many fields, and that it's a bit ludicrous to deny that they exist. It may be that anyone has the possibility, the capacity, to genius, but that most lack the will, the temperament, the opportunity - even the field in which they could excell: perhaps it does not yet exist, or doesn't exist any more.
In my field, and I suspect it applies in others, I tend to think that anyone could do it, but that not everyone can.
I am lousy at maths. I mean, truly lousy. Like, I can't add fifteen and twenty seven together and reliably get the same number three times in a row. And I didn't know beforehand that the answer was Douglas Adams' fave number, but it seems oddly appropriate. Yet there is a feeling in my head, like an unstretched muscle, that tells me that if I had the will, if I cared, if I had to, there's a bit of my mind which could be good at that stuff.
We all have capacities we don't use and can't deploy.
But Lyra, there's a counter-argument to your suggestion that the notion of genius holds us back: if a single person truly can change the world, then it's worth trying. If all we can do is make tiny incremental differences, and these will happen anyway when an idea's time has come, we may as well just sit back and enjoy the show. Perhaps genius - even the illusion of genius - is a spur that throws us forward.
Related thought: there's no such thing as a power vaccuum, just a sort of Lagrange Point, where power exerted in opposing directions is briefly neutral. In such a space, a political person may make a striking difference, and be called a genius (or a monster) and yet their only skill was in seizing the moment. That seizure will put them at the head of a nation or a movement...but not do the same with their agenda, which will swiftly be assailed by the re-aligning powers which were in check during the Lagrange Point moment.
Is there a broader application of this idea to genius in science and literature, I wonder?
It seems to me this is a question of Agency as much as Authorship, and also of free will, capacity and potential. In other words, this one is about what it is to be a human. |
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