There are many traits that men and women of genius share. Throughout history, the question of what is intelligence and how it relates to creativity has been heavily debated. In this article I intend to give an overview of those debates, as well as give my own personal thoughts on genius traits and the nature of genius.
Intelligence/Genius: How Is It Defined?
At this time, cognitive neuroscience has not come come up with a definitive way to describe intelligence. The word intelligence was used in the 19th century to describe some unspecified mental property.
It was in the 18th century that IQ testing begin. It was done with the idea of separating gifted people from the so called feeble minded. While the word "intelligent" almost always is a positive term, the word "genius" can have both negative or positive meanings depending on the context.
Traits All Geniuses Share:
Vision: All geniuses seem to be able visualize things in their minds that other people cannot. This does not mean that they can see the future, but that they can visualize an idea, invention, or theory. They can often in their mind work an idea to fruition. Vision is their main driving force, their energy.
Dedication: Geniuses are often dedicated to their work. For men like Einstein and Tesla, it was their lives. They lived it, they ate it, they breathed it. It consumed their daily thoughts and affairs. Geniuses possess an intense dedication to their work that often borderlines on obsession.
Problem Solving: Lets face it, one thing that we can all identify with is the fact that no matter who you are, you have problems of some sort. Geniuses are renown for their ability to solve problems. Developing new theories or mathematical laws requires the ability to overcome complex problems. Having accelerated mental capacity is often not enough. All geniuses who have made a name for themselves and who have changed the world work extremely hard.
Hard Work: No matter how intelligent you are, you can never hope to achieve anything worthwhile in life without hard work. Genius without hard work is like a house without a roof. All of the men and women profiled on this website have something in common. They all worked extremely hard.
Courage: Geniuses are people who often think differently from the crowd. They often present theories and ideas which may be contrary to the accepted way of thinking. To do this takes great courage, as they may be ridiculed.
Perseverance: Because geniuses have often been ridiculed because of their ideas, it takes great perseverance for them to continue their work. Nikola Tesla's teacher ridiculed him, and the Wright Brothers were told they would never get a plane off the ground. It took great perseverance for these men to continue in the face of opposition.
Genius: Born Or Made?
This is a issue that has been heavily debated in academic circles. What do we here at SupernaturalMinds.com believe?
We believe that geniuses are made and born. Many people assume that genius is genetic when in our opinion this is not always the case. For example, it is a well known fact that the vast majority of students living in east Asia excel in mathematics. Does this mean that east Asians are genetically mathematical geniuses? No, it just means that east Asian societies put a higher emphasis on mathematics than other societies. Genius can be nurtured.
Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese in particular put a high emphasis on mathematics early in life. I had a Chinese college math instructor who told the class one day that her daughters were all at the Calculus 3 math level, and that they were only in highschool. I did not take this to mean that they were born geniuses, but that their mother had reared and trained them in mathematics from an early age. And with that level of mathematics her daughters could revolutionize mathematics just as well as any famous mathematician before them.
Despite this there are clearly individuals who are born with natural gifts. An example of this would be a prodigy, or child genius. Could someone rigorously trained in mathematics from an early age challenge a person born with mathematical gifts? Here at SupernaturalMinds.com, we believe the answer to that question is yes.
