Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity

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Oxford University Press, 1999 M07 8 - 320 páginas
How can we account for the sudden appearance of such dazzling artists and scientists as Mozart, Shakespeare, Darwin, or Einstein? How can we define such genius? What conditions or personality traits seem to produce exceptionally creative people? Is the association between genius and madness really just a myth? These and many other questions are brilliantly illuminated in The Origins of Genius. Dean Simonton convincingly argues that creativity can best be understood as a Darwinian process of variation and selection. The artist or scientist generates a wealth of ideas, and then subjects these ideas to aesthetic or scientific judgment, selecting only those that have the best chance to survive and reproduce. Indeed, the true test of genius is the ability to bequeath an impressive and influential body of work to future generations. Simonton draws on the latest research into creativity and explores such topics as the personality type of the genius, whether genius is genetic or produced by environment and education, the links between genius and mental illness (Darwin himself was emotionally and mentally unwell), the high incidence of childhood trauma, especially loss of a parent, amongst Nobel Prize winners, the importance of unconscious incubation in creative problem-solving, and much more. Simonton substantiates his theory by examining and quoting from the work of such eminent figures as Henri Poincare, W. H. Auden, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Niels Bohr, and many others. For anyone intrigued by the spectacular feats of the human mind, The Origins of Genius offers a revolutionary new way of understanding the very nature of creativity.

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Contenido

The Surprising Connections
1
How Does the Brain Create?
25
Is Genius Brilliantor Mad?
75
Are Geniuses Bornor Made?
109
By What Works Shall We Know Them?
145
The Right Place and the Right Time?
199
The Future of an Idea
243
Notes
249
References
261
Index
297
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Página 219 - HE that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune ; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men ; which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.
Página 90 - I happened to read for amusement ' Malthus on Population,' and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.
Página 153 - I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill ; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Página 39 - It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition - that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.
Página 142 - The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career...
Página 27 - This worthless present was designed you long before it was a play; when it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either chosen or rejected by the judgment; it was yours, my Lord, before I could call it mine.
Página 52 - The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
Página 173 - Your words have come true with a vengeance — that I should be forestalled. You said this, when I explained to you here very briefly my views of "Natural Selection" depending on the struggle for existence.
Página 118 - The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not.
Página 1 - Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

Acerca del autor (1999)

Dean Simonton is Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis. The recipient of the Francis Galton Prize, he is the author of Genius, Creativity, and Leadership, Scientific Genius, Why Presidents Succeed, and other books. He lives in Davis, California.

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