Genius: inborn or mostly hard work?
Is exceptional achievement a matter of inborn talent, or an encouraging life situation, and laborious intention? Writer David Dobbs explores the nature-nurture argument in his article How to be a genius.
He writes, “As the American inventor Thomas Edison said, genius is 99 per cent perspiration – or, to be truer to the data, perhaps 1 per cent inspiration, 29 per cent good instruction and encouragement, and 70 per cent perspiration.
“Examine closely even the most extreme examples – Mozart, Newton, Einstein, Stravinsky – and you find more hard-won mastery than gift. Geniuses are made, not born.
“A sober look at any field shows that the top performers are rarely more gifted than the also-rans, but they almost invariably outwork them. This doesn’t mean that some people aren’t more athletic or smarter than others. The elite are elite partly because they have some genetic gifts – for learning and hand-eye coordination, for instance – but the very best rise because they take great pains to maximise that gift.”
Continued in How to be a genius.
Posted 02.16.08 under Achievement | 
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March 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Excellent points, and goes to the heart of what my website, Raising Da Vincis, attempts to explore. There are many with great talents, but few with the adequate upbringing (and yes, parenting) to develop them fully.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I take a couple of different messages from this article than the author seems to have intended. That “geniuses” achieve that status through hard work does not negate the fact that some people begin with a greater endowment than others. It does not support the “everyone is gifted” mantra.
Second, what it does suggest is greater tolerance for what is insultingly called “eccentricity” – an end to the “who do you think you are” response when the “potential genius” suggests an original idea.