January 26th, 2011 / 7:20 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Ken Baumann—
The second to last paragraph in a provocative post by Jonah Lehrer: “I think this research helps explain why the era of the lone genius is coming to an end. If our current lists of global thinkers seem paltry, it’s because the best thinkers no longer exist by themselves, toiling away in a vacuum. Instead, they require the constant feedback and knowledge of others. We live in a world of such complexity that our problems increasingly exceed the possibilities of the individual mind. Collaboration is no longer an option.” Hop over, read the whole thing. What do you think?
eh
The lone genius is and has been so statistically rare as to be almost mythological. It is a character of selective history. Go read Where Good Ideas Come From (full disclosure, I work for the publisher). It was the best book that I read last year. Wondrous examination of the causes and conditions under which discovery, innovation, and progress happen.
You mean to tell me that you get the chance to legitimately use the phrase ‘penultimate paragraph’ and you say ‘second to last’…for shame.
Absolutely – “toiling away in a vacuum” is true of none of the “geniuses” the article and, especially, its quotation mention.
I’d question William’s almost: for a linguistic animal and a technologically adept animal, toiling in a “vacuum” of practical and intellectual inheritance and collaboration isn’t possible, is it? – I mean, beyond the first primate to sharpen a stick, and similar such ‘firsts’.
It’s an interesting perspective, that
But what “problems” are referred to here?? – “problems” addressed in a conclusive way in 1861, 1939, or ever?
Was a problem identified by Plato or Confucius as a ‘problem’ solved in the mid-19th or -20th centuries??
Some of today’s technological problems – for example: how to harvest living algae to get burnable fuel – will probably have the same group-produced solutions with individual names attached to them that vaccination and heavier-than-air flight have today.
So, too, for problems that might barely be understood to be ‘problems’, like an empirically verifiable description of a non-carbon-based biotic chemistry.
Theoretical problems, like ‘how do the four physical “forces” relate to each other in a single equation?’, will get provisionally answered the way evolution and relativity ‘answered’ questions: one or a few people getting (and deserving, somewhat) credit for the theorizing of many, of a community (or, at least, that section of the larger society devoted to that kind of problem).
I also think that “historical distance” is vital to understanding why Rachman’s conclusion of genius-paucity oughtn’t to be taken too seriously. Perhaps an 1861 list would have included Bismarck far ‘above’ Marx, and perhaps a list of the 19th c. composed in 500 years will include Clausewitz above either.
“Global thinkers” is a fun parlor game, though.
It’s an interesting perspective, that
But what “problems” are referred to here?? – “problems” addressed in a conclusive way in 1861, 1939, or ever?
Was a problem identified by Plato or Confucius as a ‘problem’ solved in the mid-19th or -20th centuries??
Some of today’s technological problems – for example: how to harvest living algae to get burnable fuel – will probably have the same group-produced solutions with individual names attached to them that vaccination and heavier-than-air flight have today.
So, too, for problems that might barely be understood to be ‘problems’, like an empirically verifiable description of a non-carbon-based biotic chemistry.
Theoretical problems, like ‘how do the four physical “forces” relate to each other in a single equation?’, will get provisionally answered the way evolution and relativity ‘answered’ questions: one or a few people getting (and deserving, somewhat) credit for the theorizing of many, of a community (or, at least, that section of the larger society devoted to that kind of problem).
I also think that “historical distance” is vital to understanding why Rachman’s conclusion of genius-paucity oughtn’t to be taken too seriously. Perhaps an 1861 list would have included Bismarck far ‘above’ Marx, and perhaps a list of the 19th c. composed in 500 years will include Clausewitz above either.
“Global thinkers” is a fun parlor game, though.
I think it doesn’t necessarily apply to artistic genius, though the most modern of art forms, the cinema, has proved it for a long time. Which is what I find so silly about the Nabokov quote posted elsewhere–in the cinema, if you are surrounded by mediocrity, you have only yourself to blame.
oh absolutely. there are outliers to innovation, but they are the exception that proves the rule. you are far more likely to create something, and be successful with it, if you know what has come before and engage with what is around you now.
– sarah p, frmr ak guv