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.
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.