What do you think?
Rate this book
Sudden Genius: The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs
The extraordinarily inventive Linus Pauling, twice winner of the Nobel Prize, was asked how he came to have so many good ideas. Pauling "Well, I have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones." Where do ideas come from? And why do the best ideas sometimes strike in a flash of "sudden
genius"? Andrew Robinson here offers a fascinating look at the genesis of creativity in science and art, following ten remarkable individuals who achieved brilliant breakthroughs in their fields. Robinson looks first at the scientific study of creativity, covering talent, genius, intelligence,
memory, dreams, the unconscious, and much more. He then tells the stories of ten amazing breakthroughs--five by scientists and five by artists--ranging from Curie's discovery of radium and Einstein's theory of special relativity to Mozart's composing of The Marriage of Figaro and Virginia Woolf's
writing of Mrs. Dalloway . Robinson concludes by highlighting what highly creative people have in common; whether breakthroughs in science and art follow patterns; and whether they always involve great leaps and "sudden genius."
genius"? Andrew Robinson here offers a fascinating look at the genesis of creativity in science and art, following ten remarkable individuals who achieved brilliant breakthroughs in their fields. Robinson looks first at the scientific study of creativity, covering talent, genius, intelligence,
memory, dreams, the unconscious, and much more. He then tells the stories of ten amazing breakthroughs--five by scientists and five by artists--ranging from Curie's discovery of radium and Einstein's theory of special relativity to Mozart's composing of The Marriage of Figaro and Virginia Woolf's
writing of Mrs. Dalloway . Robinson concludes by highlighting what highly creative people have in common; whether breakthroughs in science and art follow patterns; and whether they always involve great leaps and "sudden genius."
- GenresNonfiction
416 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2010
4 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Robinson
462 books76 followers(William) Andrew Coulthard Robinson is a British author and former newspaper editor.
Andrew Robinson was educated at the Dragon School, Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, University College, Oxford where he read Chemistry and finally the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is the son of Neville Robinson, an Oxford physicist.
Robinson first visited India in 1975 and has been a devotee of the country's culture ever since, in particular the Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore and the Bengali film director Satyajit Ray. He has authored many books and articles. Until 2006, he was the Literary Editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement<?em>. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
He is based in London and is now a full-time writer.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Andrew Robinson was educated at the Dragon School, Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, University College, Oxford where he read Chemistry and finally the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is the son of Neville Robinson, an Oxford physicist.
Robinson first visited India in 1975 and has been a devotee of the country's culture ever since, in particular the Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore and the Bengali film director Satyajit Ray. He has authored many books and articles. Until 2006, he was the Literary Editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement<?em>. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
He is based in London and is now a full-time writer.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 15, 2019
If the only agenda that this author had was to support the idea that genius requires a long development, then I would have appreciated and respected this book a lot more. There is a common, if misguided, belief that a great many developments came about because of sudden insights, without the understanding that these sudden insights were accompanied by a great deal of time and effort spent mastering various fields and developing sometimes very divergent thinking as a result of multiple serious interests. That point is demonstrated well in this book. Unfortunately, the author (as is quite common in most of his writing) has a strong anti-biblical bias when it comes to both the historical reliability of scripture as well as the moral injunctions of scripture, and he tends to view as geniuses those people who deliberately acted hostile to God's ways and often paid a heavy price in terms of mental illness and other forms of distress for their rebellion against God's way, making it seem as if to be a creative genius that one has to be involved in some sort of demon possession, with all of the horrors that entails. It hardly encourages any sane person to want to become a genius.
This book is a bit more than 300 pages and is divided into three parts. The first part of the book examines the ingredients of creativity (I), starting with a comparison of genius and talent (1), ten moving on to the reality that intelligence is not enough (2), the way that creativity often makes people strangers to themselves (3), a look at the relationship between geniuses and idiot savants (4), as well as the relationship between the lunatic, lover, and the poet (5). These chapters indicate a strong connection between genius and certain kinds of madness, making it a less than desirable phenomenon. After that the author writes ten case studies of geniuses in looking at breakthroughs in art and science (II), by discussing Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper (6), Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral (7), Mozart's Marriage Of Figaro (8), Campollion's deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs (9), Darwin's misguided views on evolution (10), Marie Curie's discovery of Radium (11), Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity (12), Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (13), Henri Cartier-Bresson's photography (14), and Satyajit Ray's film Pather Panchali (15), showing how these breakthroughs often required multiple domains of expertise and long periods of working at problems. Finally, the book closes with a look at patterns of genius (III) in examining family histories (16), the importance of having hostility to conventional education (17), the difference between creative science and artistic creativity (18), the question of whether a creative personality type exists (19), the transient nature of reputation, fame, and those who are viewed as geniuses (20), and the ten year rule of requiring domain mastery (21), followed by a look at the relationship between genius and general society in an epilogue, followed by references, a bibliography, and an index.
By and large this author thinks that geniuses will become increasingly rare in a world that requires a high degree of talent and the need to master specializations in order to provide anything worthwhile. By and large, the author also shows a certain degree of hostility to the ordinary masses that is only exceeded by his hostility to divine truth and standards of morality. By and large the author appears not to view usefulness as being important in defining creativity, for what is "useful" about the sort of aesthetic achievement he sees in Ray's films or Woolf's decadent and deeply flawed novels? There is also a strong bias in the author for what is viewed as the last or current world when it comes to scientific truths, which allows Darwin to be seen as a genius as well as Einstein but not Newton. This book has a lot of problems, and even though the author achieves his goal of demonstrating that creative breakthroughs take a lot of time and effort, the author's delving into demonology makes it a book that ought to actively discourage people from seeking to become geniuses of the sort that he would recognize.
This book is a bit more than 300 pages and is divided into three parts. The first part of the book examines the ingredients of creativity (I), starting with a comparison of genius and talent (1), ten moving on to the reality that intelligence is not enough (2), the way that creativity often makes people strangers to themselves (3), a look at the relationship between geniuses and idiot savants (4), as well as the relationship between the lunatic, lover, and the poet (5). These chapters indicate a strong connection between genius and certain kinds of madness, making it a less than desirable phenomenon. After that the author writes ten case studies of geniuses in looking at breakthroughs in art and science (II), by discussing Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper (6), Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral (7), Mozart's Marriage Of Figaro (8), Campollion's deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs (9), Darwin's misguided views on evolution (10), Marie Curie's discovery of Radium (11), Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity (12), Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (13), Henri Cartier-Bresson's photography (14), and Satyajit Ray's film Pather Panchali (15), showing how these breakthroughs often required multiple domains of expertise and long periods of working at problems. Finally, the book closes with a look at patterns of genius (III) in examining family histories (16), the importance of having hostility to conventional education (17), the difference between creative science and artistic creativity (18), the question of whether a creative personality type exists (19), the transient nature of reputation, fame, and those who are viewed as geniuses (20), and the ten year rule of requiring domain mastery (21), followed by a look at the relationship between genius and general society in an epilogue, followed by references, a bibliography, and an index.
By and large this author thinks that geniuses will become increasingly rare in a world that requires a high degree of talent and the need to master specializations in order to provide anything worthwhile. By and large, the author also shows a certain degree of hostility to the ordinary masses that is only exceeded by his hostility to divine truth and standards of morality. By and large the author appears not to view usefulness as being important in defining creativity, for what is "useful" about the sort of aesthetic achievement he sees in Ray's films or Woolf's decadent and deeply flawed novels? There is also a strong bias in the author for what is viewed as the last or current world when it comes to scientific truths, which allows Darwin to be seen as a genius as well as Einstein but not Newton. This book has a lot of problems, and even though the author achieves his goal of demonstrating that creative breakthroughs take a lot of time and effort, the author's delving into demonology makes it a book that ought to actively discourage people from seeking to become geniuses of the sort that he would recognize.
February 9, 2012
In Sudden Genius; the gradual path to creative breakthroughs, Robinson explores the lives of ten geniuses; five scientists and five artists, to see if he can find any common threads to how, why and what makes a genius.
He starts by spending some time explaining his definition of 'genius', which isn't easy. He settled on the ten in his book as they are all considered geniuses even if what a genius is is not clear.
"An individual is judged to be 'creative', psychometrically speaking, if he or she can consistently produce a spectrum of divergent responses to a request, of which a proportion are markedly different from the responses of other individuals. but not too different, otherwise they are not recognizable as answers to the request." (page 24)
He briefly looked at creativity tests, and I have linked to some in the past on this blog. His research showed that they were measuring something, but it wasn't precisely creativity. He wrote that subjects who took the test years apart typically scored the same but that a high score on the test did not make the subject particularly creative in real life. They are quite similar to IQ tests, which have the same characteristics.
Turns out, geniuses don't have much in common.
"If creativity researchers have proved anything about 'a' creative personality, it is that beneath a huge variety of external behaviors, often unconventional, all highly creative people preserve a steely, autonomous determination." (5% - Kindle provided page numbers for my other quotes but not this one.)
Geniuses were driven people, who worked long hours, entirely by choice.
Oh, and many geniuses suffered the death of a parent or other traumatic family experience in their youth:
"Various explanations have been proposed by psychologists. One suggestion is that creative achievement, delinquency, and suicide should all be viewed as dissatisfied responses to the society that took away the life of the parent. By criticizing or attacking existing social beliefs and practices, creative achievement enables an individual to develop in an independent, nonconformist way, rejecting society's rules and regulations." (Page 258)
This reminds me a researcher discussing why orangutan orphans began catching and eating fish, but wild ones did not. I cannot find a link and the researcher was only offering an opinion, but he felt that these orphaned orangutans were not held back or meddled with by adults as they grew up.
Although many scientific breakthroughs necessarily come from collaboration, creative breakthroughs generally do not:
"Thus collaboration and teamwork tend not to be a feature of the lives of the exceptionally creative - inconvenient though this fact may be for advocates of 'brainstorming' and 'group creativity' in commercial companies and other institutions." (Page 265)
And where does formal education fit in? Darwin hated school and Mozart was home-schooled.
"Can formal education ever instill this kind of exceptional creativity? Not on the evidence of past geniuses. In Professor Eysenck's parting shot at the academic system at the end of his study Genius, he writes, "The best service we can do to creativity is to let it bloom unhindered, to remove all impediments, and cherish it whenever we encounter it. We probably cannot train it, but we can prevent it from being suffocated by rules, regulations, and envious mediocrity." (Page 278)
The book offered few suggestions on how to turn my son into a genius, but at the same time it did let me know what would be a waste of time. And no, I am not killing myself for my son's benefit.
He starts by spending some time explaining his definition of 'genius', which isn't easy. He settled on the ten in his book as they are all considered geniuses even if what a genius is is not clear.
"An individual is judged to be 'creative', psychometrically speaking, if he or she can consistently produce a spectrum of divergent responses to a request, of which a proportion are markedly different from the responses of other individuals. but not too different, otherwise they are not recognizable as answers to the request." (page 24)
He briefly looked at creativity tests, and I have linked to some in the past on this blog. His research showed that they were measuring something, but it wasn't precisely creativity. He wrote that subjects who took the test years apart typically scored the same but that a high score on the test did not make the subject particularly creative in real life. They are quite similar to IQ tests, which have the same characteristics.
Turns out, geniuses don't have much in common.
"If creativity researchers have proved anything about 'a' creative personality, it is that beneath a huge variety of external behaviors, often unconventional, all highly creative people preserve a steely, autonomous determination." (5% - Kindle provided page numbers for my other quotes but not this one.)
Geniuses were driven people, who worked long hours, entirely by choice.
Oh, and many geniuses suffered the death of a parent or other traumatic family experience in their youth:
"Various explanations have been proposed by psychologists. One suggestion is that creative achievement, delinquency, and suicide should all be viewed as dissatisfied responses to the society that took away the life of the parent. By criticizing or attacking existing social beliefs and practices, creative achievement enables an individual to develop in an independent, nonconformist way, rejecting society's rules and regulations." (Page 258)
This reminds me a researcher discussing why orangutan orphans began catching and eating fish, but wild ones did not. I cannot find a link and the researcher was only offering an opinion, but he felt that these orphaned orangutans were not held back or meddled with by adults as they grew up.
Although many scientific breakthroughs necessarily come from collaboration, creative breakthroughs generally do not:
"Thus collaboration and teamwork tend not to be a feature of the lives of the exceptionally creative - inconvenient though this fact may be for advocates of 'brainstorming' and 'group creativity' in commercial companies and other institutions." (Page 265)
And where does formal education fit in? Darwin hated school and Mozart was home-schooled.
"Can formal education ever instill this kind of exceptional creativity? Not on the evidence of past geniuses. In Professor Eysenck's parting shot at the academic system at the end of his study Genius, he writes, "The best service we can do to creativity is to let it bloom unhindered, to remove all impediments, and cherish it whenever we encounter it. We probably cannot train it, but we can prevent it from being suffocated by rules, regulations, and envious mediocrity." (Page 278)
The book offered few suggestions on how to turn my son into a genius, but at the same time it did let me know what would be a waste of time. And no, I am not killing myself for my son's benefit.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews