Authors: Darrin M. McMahon
Divine Fury (69 page)
7
. The description of Ramanujan is that of C. P. Snow in his foreword to G. H. Hardy’s
A Mathematician’s Apology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 12, 33. See also Robert Kanigel,
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
(New York: Washington Square Press, 2011); Alfred L. Kroeber,
Configurations of Culture Growth
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1944); Barbara Will,
Gertrude Stein and the Problem of ‘Genius’
(Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2000); Lucy Delap,
The Feminist Avant-Garde: Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. 249–292; and Victoria Olwell,
The Genius of Democracy: Fictions of Gender and Citizenship in the United States, 1860–1945
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
8
. I owe the observation about American uses of genius to John Carson, who developed it in “Equality, Inequality, and Difference: Genius as a Problem and Possibility in American Political/Scientific Discourse,” an unpublished talk delivered at the Huntington Library on May 18, 2012. For an example of the broad use of genius in the United States in the nineteenth century, see Gustavus Sadler,
Troubling Minds: The Cultural Politics of Genius in the United States, 1840–1890
(Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2006); Charles Spearman,
The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement
(New York: Macmillan, 1927), 221.
9
. Marjorie Garber, “Our Genius Problem,”
The Atlantic
, December 2002; Joshua Cooper Rama and Debra Rosenberg, “The Puzzle of Genius,”
Newsweek
, June 28, 1993, 47;
Esquire
, “The Genius Issue,” November 1, 1999, 2; Andreas Sentker, “Genies die unser Leben verändert haben,”
Die Zeit
, no. 42, October 13, 2011, 37–39. On Jobs, see the cover of
Newsweek
, November 5, 2011, which reads “American Genius Steve Jobs. How He Drove Apple to Victory. How He Changed Our World”; Malcolm Gladwell, “The Tweaker: The Real Genius of Steve Jobs,”
New Yorker
, November 14, 2011.
10
. Ford is cited in Randall Stross,
The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Edison Invented the Modern World
(New York: Crown, 2007), 234.
11
. All these actual titles were available on
Amazon.com
at the time of this writing.
12
. Einstein’s letter is cited in Walter Isaacson,
Einstein: His Life and Universe
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 522.
13
. Kadya Molodovsky, “God of Mercy,” 1945. I am grateful to David A. Bell for calling this poem to my attention and for transliterating it from the original Yiddish. See also Mao Tse-Tung, “Talks with Responsible Comrades at Various Places During Provincial Tour, from the Middle of August to 12 September 1971,” in
Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung
, vol. 9 (Secunderabad, India: Kranti Publications, 1990), accessed on October 23, 2012, at
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_88.htm
.
14
. The Arthur D. Little research director is cited in Steven Shapin,
The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 183. On Bell Labs, see Jon Gertner,
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
(New York: Penguin, 2012).
15
. Keynes is cited in Freeman Dyson,
Disturbing the Universe
(New York: Basic Books, 1979), 8. Dyson, who was present at Keynes’s lecture, comments himself on the mythology of scientific geniuses as “magi” and “deliverers and destroyers” (9). On the postwar use of the word “genius” among scientists, see the nice account in James Gleick,
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
(New York: Vintage, 1992), 311–329 (esp. 322).
16
. In addition to the works by Barthes, Foucault, and others cited in my Introduction, see Jacques Derrida’s arresting
Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive
, trans. Beverly Bie Brahic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), which fittingly complicates the claims made in this paragraph.
17
. The current psychological interest in genius is best represented by the work of the highly prolific Dean Keith Simonton. A nice distillation and presentation of the work on collective intelligence is provided in James Surowiecki,
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
(New York: Bantam, 2004), and Steven Johnson,
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
(New York: Riverhead Books, 2010). See also the cover story, “The Genius Problem,” in
Time
, August 27, 2007, on the putative failure to properly educate our smartest kids.
18
. Garber makes this point nicely in “Our Genius Problem.”
19
. I am grateful to Anders Ericsson for sharing his thoughts with me on the psychological factors that help preserve a belief in genius.
20
. David Plotz,
The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank
(New York: Random House, 2005). On Allan Snyder, see Tanya Lewis, “Unlock Your Inner Rain Man by Electrically Zapping Your Brain,”
Wired
, July 20, 2012, and Snyder’s own website,
www.creativitycap.com
. David Bates is now engaged in a fascinating project, tentatively entitled
Human Insight from Descartes to Artificial Intelligence
, that traces the rationalist genealogy of the effort to understand human and artificial intelligence. See also R. Keith Sawyer,
Explaining Creativity: The Science of Innovation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), esp. chap. 6, “Computational Approaches,” and Nancy C. Andreasen,
The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius
(New York: Dana Press, 2005). For a particularly upbeat assessment of the future possibilities of artificial and human intelligence, see Ray Kurzwell,
How to Create a Mind
(New York: Viking, 2012).
21
. Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, ed. Eduardo Nolla, trans. James T. Schleifer, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), 2:722, 785, 1281, and 1:490.
22
. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” in
Essays and Lectures
, ed. Joel Port (New York: Library of America, 2009), 631.
23
. Ibid.
INDEX
Abrams, Henry,
229
Adalbert (French priest),
47–48
Adams, John,
106
Adler, Adolph Peter,
189
Alembert, Jean le Rond d’,
81
,
94
,
108
Aesthetics,
86
,
89
,
100
,
110
,
194
,
209
,
210
African bards,
1
Agrippa (general),
27
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius,
49–50
,
51
Alberti, Leon Battista,
59
Albertus Magnus,
42
Alexander the Great,
xvii
,
21
,
25–26
,
30
,
38
,
120
,
122
,
192
Alvarez, Luis,
181
Ambrose (bishop of Milan),
35
,
36
,
38
,
41
,
45
America,
20
,
71
,
105–106
,
171
,
174
,
181
,
193
,
224
,
233–234
,
240
American Revolution,
106
Ames, Fisher,
114
Angels,
5
,
10
,
13
,
16
,
29
,
34
,
42–49
,
51
,
53
,
56
,
57
,
59
,
63
,
68
,
91
,
112
,
140
guardian angels,
43
,
44–45
,
49
,
60
,
73
,
76
,
142
See also
Daimonion/daimon
;
Genius/genii
Antipater,
9
Anti-Semitism,
75
,
198
,
209
,
214–215
Apollo,
13
Arendt, Hannah,
231
Ariosto,
62
Aristotle,
16
,
17–18
,
25
,
54
,
57
,
58
,
59
,
82
,
86
,
100
,
122
Art/artists,
2
,
54
,
59
,
63
,
65
,
72
,
79
,
84
,
96
,
97
,
100
,
110
,
118
,
119
,
129
,
147
,
156
,
171
,
187
,
194
,
209
,
210
,
221
,
224–225
,
235
