Genius Not to be confused with Genus. For other uses, see Genius (disambiguation). A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of an unprecedented leap of insight. This may refer to a particular aspect of an individual, or the individual in his or her entirety; to a scholar in many subjects (e.g. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Leonardo da Vinci or Marie Curie)[1] or a scholar in a single subject (e.g., Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin). There is no scientifically precise definition of genius, and the question of whether the notion itself has any real meaning has long been a subject of debate. Etymology Main article: Genius (mythology) In ancient Rome, the genius (plural in Latin genii) was the guiding spirit or tutelary deity of a person, family (gens), or place (genius loci).[2] The noun is related to the Latin verb gigno, genui, genitus, to bring into being, create, produce. Because the achievements of exceptional individuals seemed to indicate the presence of a particularly powerful genius, by the time of Augustus the word began to acquire its secondary meaning of inspiration, talent.[3] Historical development Galton The assessment of intelligence was initiated by Francis Galton and James McKeen Cattell. They had advocated the analysis of reaction time and sensory acuity as measures of neurophysiological efficiency and the analysis of sensory acuity as a measure of intelligence.[4] Galton is regarded as the founder of psychometry (as well as other fields of assessment, such as fingerprinting). He studied the work of Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin showed that traits must be inherited before evolution can occur. Reasoning that eminence is caused by genetic traits, Galton did a study of their heritability, publishing it in 1869 as Hereditary Genius. His method was to count and assess the eminent relatives of eminent men. He found that the number of eminent relatives is greater with closer degree of kinship, indicating to him that a genetic trait is present in an eminent line of descent that is not present in other lines.[citation needed] This work is considered the first example of historiometry, an analytical study of historical human progress. The work is controversial and has been criticised for several reasons. Criticisms include that Galtons study of Hereditary Genius fails to account for the impact of social status and the associated availability of resources in the form of economic inheritance, meaning that inherited eminence or genius can be manipulated or controlled by wealthy families and dominated by self-supporting patriarchal structures. Other criticisms are founded in observed flaws of early genetics studies, which ethicists warned promoted concepts of genetic elitism that ultimately could threaten genetic diversity when adopted by movements promoting genetic purity. Albert Einstein, a 20th-century symbol of scientific genius. Galtons theories were elaborated from the work of two early 19th-century pioneers in statistics: Carl Friedrich Gauss and Adolphe Quetelet. Gauss discovered the normal distribution (bell-shaped curve): Given a large number of measurements of the same variable under the same conditions, they vary at random from a most frequent value, the average, to two least frequent values at maximum differences greater and less than the most frequent value. Quetelet discovered that the bell-shaped curve applied to social statistics gathered by the French government in the course of its normal processes on large numbers of people passing through the courts and the military. His initial work in criminology led him to observe the greater the number of individuals observed the more do peculiarities become effaced... This ideal from which the peculiarities were effaced became the average man.[5] Himself a child prodigy, Galton was inspired by Quetelet to define the average man as an entire normal scheme; that is, if one combines the normal curves of every measurable human characteristic, one will in theory perceive a syndrome straddled by the average man and flanked by persons that are different. In contrast to Quetelet, Galtons average man was not statistical, but was theoretical only. There was no measure of general averageness, only a large number of very specific averages. Setting out to discover a general measure of the average, Galton looked at educational statistics and found bell-curves in test results of all sorts; initially in mathematics grades for the final honors examination and in entrance examination scores for Sandhurst. Galton now departed from Gauss in a way that became crucially significant to the history of the 20th century AD. The bell- shaped curve was not random, he concluded. The differences between the average and the upper end were due to a non-random factor, natural ability, which he defined as those qualities of intellect and disposition, which urge and qualify men to perform acts that lead to reputation ... a nature which, when left to itself, will, urged by an inherent stimulus,
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:27:58 +0000
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