HOW CAN MADNESS PROMOTE GENIUS?

 

Compensatory Adaptation

Just as the blind have a heightened sense of hearing and touch, and the deaf have increased sharpness of vision, certain types of mental disability may cause compensatory adaptation. The best candidate for this is dyslexia. If a dyslexic has difficulty with language, then he compensates by increasing his powers of visual perception.

 

Direct Effects of Mood Swings

Mild mania has some benefits. It is associated with quicker thinking, greater verbal fluency, play on words, increased self-confidence, and greater optimism. Severe mania, on the other hand, can be counterproductive and may result in loss of concentration and wild behaviors. Mild depression can act as a sort of editor to prune the excesses of mania. But severe depression can dampen all activities and thinking.

 

Knight’s Move Thinking

Certain mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are characterized by sudden jumps in one’s thinking. These leaps from one idea to another can be quite unexpected and illogical, and are referred to as Knight’s Move thinking. This way of thinking is important in creative thinking because it enables a person to make innovative leaps without being anchored to preconceived ideas or imprisoned by one’s sense of logic.

 

SHOULD MILD MENTAL ILLNESS BE TREATED?

 

John Nash is quoted by Sylvia Nasar as saying that he often refused to take medication for schizophrenia because it blunted his creative thinking. This sentiment is reflected by a number of artists and scientists suffering from mild bipolar disorder. The medical profession is therefore faced with a dilemma of deciding whether or not to treat mild mental afflictions knowing that medical treatment may smother creativity, while untreated, a percentage of patients with bipolar disorder might become worse, and commit suicide.

 

CAN GENIUS BE DEVELOPED?

 

This is the question that all educators would like answered. Biographies of many geniuses have shown that they were once child prodigies. Unfortunately most child prodigies that we hear about in the newspapers usually fade into oblivion and never achieve their early promise. The question is why some prodigies flower into geniuses, while others wither. Clues are given in biographies and autobiographies.

 

Parents

Parents play a pivotal role in the upbringing of their children. They are their child’s advocates, and they provide the milieu for their child’s development. A stable, loving environment seems to be a key factor. Nobel Prizewinner Norbert Weiner was a child prodigy, whose parents were academics themselves, and they recognized their son’s early talents. They introduced their son to other academics at Harvard University, some of whom were also Nobel Prizewinners. This is in contrast to another child prodigy contemporaneous with Norbert Weiner, Billy Sidis. At the age of 4, he taught himself Latin, and by 6 years old, he could read 8 languages, and 8 years old he had already written 4 books. He was admitted to Harvard University at the age of 11 years. However, from then onwards he petered out. The parents gave him the sort of accelerated learning that would not be out of place in a kiasu Singapore family. However, the parents were overprotective, and failed to allow him to develop his own independence. It was only by adolescence that he could clean or dress himself. Further more the parents tended to show off their son, and they allowed the press to gain access to him too readily, with the result that some of the articles written tended to ridicule his childish behavior. Furthermore the family was an unhappy one, with constant parental strife. They were unable to support their son emotionally. So despite having ample intellectual stimulation, he did not have an emotionally nurturing environment.

 

Teachers

Teachers can play an important role in a child’s development. They can provide the balanced in a prodigy’s distorted educational development. They can set challenging problems for their students to solve. Sylvia Nasar gives an interesting anecdote that when John Nash misheard his tutor and thought that his assignment was to solve some hitherto unsolved complex mathematical problems, he handed in the solutions to these problems the next day! Bertrand Russell and Stephen Hawking enjoyed solving mathematical problems, and both had read Euclid with great fervor, establishing their own proofs of these theorems. Great minds seem to like to tackle classic problems and to work out their solutions by themselves.

 

Mentors

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein both had uncles who acted as mentors and helped develop their nephew’s early mathematical abilities. Half the Nobel Prizewinners had other Nobel Prizewinners as mentors when they were young. It appears that highly creative people know how to foster creativity in others.

 

Clusters of Excellence

It has been noted that people of genius tend to be found in clusters. For example ancient Greece produced Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University produced 10 Nobel Prizewinners, and Bell Laboratories produced 11 Nobel Prizewinners. The fostering of centers of excellence is an important way of attracting and catalyzing talent, among whom may be found a few geniuses.

 

 Age of First Significant Creative Achievement

It is well known that there is an optimal age at which certain disciplines can shine. Olympic swimmers and prizewinning pianists reach their pinnacle in their teens. Below is a list of scientists and inventors, and the age at which they made their first discovery or publication:

 

CREATOR                              CREATION                                                           AGE (yr)

Louis Braille                 Invented a system of printing and writing for the blind          15

Blaise Pascal              Formulated Pascal’s Theorem                                               16

Galileo Galilei              Discovered the laws of pendulum motion at the age of         17

Law of falling bodies                                                                                                  25

Edwin Land                 Patented his first polarizing light filter                                    19

George Westinghouse First patent for a rotary steam engine                                   19

Invented air brakes                                                                                                    22

Mark Zuckerberg        Facebook                                                                                20

Guglielmo Marconi     Invented a system of radio telegraphy                                    21

Joshua Lederberg       Discovered bacterial conjugation                                           21

Thomas Edison           Invented automated relaying communications device           22

Carl Gauss                  Proved the theorem of complex coefficients                          22

John Nash                   Published his theory of non-cooperative games                    22

Brian Josephson         Predicted the Josephson effect                                              22

James Hillier               Developed the electron microscope                                       22

Isaac Newton              Calculus, principles of optics, elements of circular motion

inverse square law of gravity                                                                                     23

Louis Parker                Invented a low frequency receiver for radio waves               23

Srinivasa Ramanujan Published his first mathematical papers                                 24

Satyendra Bose          Published is first statistical mechanics papers                       24

Paul Dirac                   Quantum mechanics for motion of atomic particles               24

Richard Feynman       Published his theory of electromagnetic waves                     24

Walt Disney                 Drew his first animated cartoon                                             24

Max Perutz                 Crystallographic studies of glaciers                                        24

Applied Xray crystallography to study hemoglobin                                                    25

James Clerk Maxwell Published first paper on electromagnetic lines of force          25

Enrico Fermi               Postulated his statistical laws                                                 25

Earnest Rutherford     Discovered the alpha, beta and gamma radiation                  25

George Eastman        Made commercial dry photographic plates                             25

James Watson            Co-published his paper on DNA                                             25

Louis Pasteur              Discovered tartarate isomers                                                 26

Henri Poincare            Created automorphic functions                                              26

Albert Einstein             Published 3 ground-breaking articles                                    26

Niels Bohr                   Proposed his model of the Bohr atom                                    26

Werner Heisenberg     Derived his uncertainty principle                                            26

Nicola Tesla                Constructed his first induction motor                                      27

Linus Pauling               Laid down Pauling’s Rules                                                    27

Lee Tsung-Dao           Discovered the decay modes of kaon                                    29

 

A large proportion of the top scientists and inventors throughout history achieved success while quite young. If one extrapolates backwards, the years preceding the discovery or publication would be crucial. This means that the late teens and early twenties are critical periods for the flowering of highly inventive scientists. Hence the importance of protecting and nurturing this creative period of their lives.