May 03, 2009
Genius: The Modern View
David Brooks in the New York Times:
Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension, who had an other-worldly access to transcendent truth, and who are best approached with reverential awe.
We, of course, live in a scientific age, and modern research pierces hocus-pocus. In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. His early compositions were nothing special. They were pastiches of other people’s work. Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.
What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 04:45 AM | Permalink
Comments
Well, I won't go to the Brooks column because I don't want to raise his link count, but judging just from the part you quoted, it's another Brooks fiasco.
Mozart was Mozart because no one else could have written the glorious stuff he wrote, not because he could focus for long periods and had an encouraging father. Plenty of other kids have the same qualifications and never become a Mozart. In other words, we still don't know why a genius is a genius.
Brooks, on the other hand, fancies himself a near-genius philosopher/psychologist, but in fact is only a mediocre conservative newspaper columnist. Why the NY Times hires these doozies I don't know; there are plenty of other American writers of much higher stature than the ones the Times gets.
Posted by: JonJ | May 3, 2009 3:02:03 PM
Well, this column was certainly foolish, though I don't agree that Brooks is always a fool. Still, it seems obvious that the ability to concentrate and the willingness to practice, while perhaps necessary components of genius, are by themselves hardly sufficient to produce a Mozart. There are plenty of focused, hardworking mediocrities.
Posted by: David Hammer | May 3, 2009 4:01:37 PM
I would guess, from this article, that Brooks is not a musician, nor has he ever lived with a genius.
Posted by: Richard Sweeton | May 3, 2009 8:47:56 PM
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