Science and Genius

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

It seems a matter of common sense that the more cognitively challenging the task of discovery or reconception is, the less likely it is to be discovered more than once. Leaping over a rivulet is possible for many, over a river for few. This begs the question: just how many scientific advances entail the application of an extreme degree of cognitive power? What Newton did and what Einstein did, in reconceiving the laws of physics, seem to be defensible examples of extremity. So much of science, though, especially outside the highly abstract realms of physics and mathematics, resembles a process of incremental, random discoveries, happy accidents, the accumulation of data to ramify an extant paradigm.

The key difference between those advances susceptible to access by multiple minds and those reserved for high genius may be the relative degree of discovery content versus thought content--discovering and describing a new species of beetle is entirely distinguishable from postulating the theory of relativity. And this distinction may also partially explain why there is more clarity in the arts as to who is and who is not a genius. Even an artist like Flaubert, a founder of the "realist" school, which emphasized details discovered in the real world, only achieved his greatness by selecting and placing those details to maximize their symbolic and aesthetic power. Thus, the "discovery" element, the knowledge of relevant details, is only a minor aspect of his work--their aura and their consequence derive from the conceptual powers active through them. The other form of artistic discovery is the imitation of other artists--their forms, techniques, perspectives. But, like the greatest scientists, who "stand on the shoulders of giants" and must reconceive their conceptual inheritance to make major advances, great artists also must achieve reconceptions or reinventions to create major works. Revolutions in science, which shower eternal glory upon the revolutionaries, seem rarer than revolutions in the arts--though it would be a reckless leap to assume that supreme genius is more common in the arts. The materials upon which artists and scientists work and the conditions under which they work are too different for a meaningful comparison of relative degrees of genius.

I should add that I was provoked to this consideration by the PC implications of Gladwell's emphasis on the democratisation of discovery. There is nothing more PC than the assumption that all humans are equal. This is the unquestioned and unquestionable foundation stone of PC ideology. When one of the priests of PC happens upon any evidence to further press this notion upon the public consciousness, he is religiously bound and equipped to extrapolate it to the edge of nonsense. So does he slide into this premeditated nonsequitur:

 

No one is a partner to more multiples [multiple discoveries], he [sociologist Robert K. Merton] pointed out, than a genius, and he came to the conclusion that our romantic notion of the genius must be wrong. A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is someone who does what it takes many others to do. The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight.

  

First, I notice that it's no mean achievement for a genius to do single-handedly what would otherwise require the exertions of many other great scientists (Gladwell leaves the impression that the other discoverers are often just average scientists, but, except in the field of beetle-discovery, this is not true). Great scientists are not cheap commodities themselves. More important here is Gladwell's happy endorsement of Merton's nonsequitur: because some discoveries can be made by multiple individuals, all discoveries are available to multiple individuals--which means "the genius is not a unique source of insight," and is therefore scarcely a genius, but merely another rung higher on the continuum of talent. I do not recall that any other candidates were available to lead the Newtonian or Einsteinian revolutions--and those are merely the clearest cases I know of. Very likely examples could be found, especially in the conceptually intense fields of physics and mathematics. There is no equality here or anywhere else in the nature of humanity. There is a natural hierarchy, regardless of what type of artificial hierarchy the politico-social environment imposes.