# Genius - what does that really mean?



## steelyglint (Jun 27, 2015)

The 'expected' occurrence of 'genius' is currently on the order of one in a million. This 'genius' will have some talent that will push out the boundaries of whatever the 'genius' talent applies itself to. Usually a particular and narrow subject: music, mathematics, literature, etc.
  However, this seems to be a little bit too close to the 'Idiot Savant' idea of psychology where, as in the movie 'Rain Man', the entirety of the genius-level operation is pointed in a single direction, such as 'lightning calculation' and wild facility with mathematics.
  Einstein is considered the great genius of our time. Yet his 'genius' appeared to be restricted to mathematics, cosmology and 'thought-experiments' (and he wasn't really much good with the maths). A similar label is used for such as Michaelangelo, whose 'genius' appears to have been almost entirely artistic.
  These examples should really be, rather than 'genius', considered as 'brilliant' with occasional flashes of genius.
  True genius must be that intelligence that can turn its hand to anything. That would be the 'synthesist': genius-level operation no matter the subject, and capable of bringing together all disciplines involved in the task at hand to produce the desired outcome.
  The 'one in a million' thing would offer the world the hope that 7,000 geniuses could fulfill. Sadly, though there are 7 billion of us looking for the advances that 7,000 genius-level intelligences could provide, we're fooling ourselves. There is currently no 'true' genius extant on our planet.
  When a 'true' genius arises it will be a time of excesses. If that 'true' genius has a bent for personal aggrandizement the excesses will be counted in corpses. But if that supernal mind can find an acceptable level of existence, without need for enrichment or conquest, the race should see a 'golden age' of intellectual advancement and a quantum leap in the betterment of humanity.

So.

Are we awaiting the arrival of a masterpiece of genetic combination, an evolutionary quantum leap, or a retread of the main character of the second volume of a dark horror fantasy novel, this time very pissed off at us for being human, and armed with a sword for some unspeakable (and patently rather silly) reason (considering we have pistols, rifles, shotguns, assault weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, smart bombs, laser-guided bombs, surface-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface missiles, inter-continental ballistic missiles, etc., etc., ad nauseum)?

That guy better realize we don't need bits of tree, fat iron nails and Roman soldiers any more, when we can turn him into a short-term coat of paint with a couple of .50 cal bullets. Of course, being omnipotent and omniscient, his dad knows all about us, and wouldn't dare show his two-faced, uncaring, unsympathetic, disease-spreading (he 'created' them), war-mongering (he 'created' us), hypocritical, unforgiving and unwanted self to the suspect and intrinsically-untrustworthy mercies of humans.

If any organized religion currently extant on our planet has the right of it, the 'true message' as it were, their 'godhead' is far too concerned with what we would describe as 'numinous' to bother giving them any kind of message to pass on. We live on the surface of a very minor grain of sand on the biggest beach the most intellectual human who ever existed could almost imagine. 

Even omniscience must skim the insignificant. Bacteria on a sand grain? Even I have better things to do, and I'm just a self-aware god on Earth.

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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 27, 2015)

I think genius is just a label. There isn't really any such thing. Often people that come up with new stuff are brilliant, but 100 years earlier and the background might not have existed and 100 years later and someone else would have done it. Certain things capture the imagination and the person that has achieved them via a mix of talent, inspiration, training and hard work is then labelled a genius.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 27, 2015)

A person who is exceptional and has an understanding the of world and how things work on a level or levels beyond the average person. Of being able to see patterns and connections and correlations which most cannot see. That's my take on it.


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## steelyglint (Jun 27, 2015)

That would seem to fit with the 'one in a million' idea.

But if that's right it means those 7,000 or so geniuses are actually out there. I can only imagine they're all shy or agoraphobic and share an allergy to communication. Maybe they've got writer's block. Not many quantum leaps in any field of late. The Higgs particle doesn't count - the brainwork was done years ago, and the rest was just the result of a liberal application of cash; vast particle accelerators rarely come cheap.

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## jastius (Jun 28, 2015)

wow, steely glint that was quite a plea for the appearance of a supergenius. but are you being quite fair in your estimations of their motives and abilities..?

steelyglint, you seem to be confusing genius with both meglamaniacs and beings with godlike powers. and then again with virtuosos in their respective fields. the rennaisance man.

you want to know what a genius is?
watch good will hunting. they got it just about spot on, as did that eighties movie, real genius.. (while big bang theory is a joke).

geniuses are puzzle solvers. pattern finders. they have a capacity for the retention and utilization of facts and memories and ideas triple or quadrupled that of the average person.

and don't kid yourself, some are here. some people when you talk to them, their ideas just fly. some who can take you along on their wings of thought are natural teachers. others can only try to infuse us with the rare atmosphere of their lofty thoughts.

by the way, your estimation of their genetic evolutionary appearance is off base. you have it backwards. geniuses were always here. haven't you seen that little part about the sons of heaven and the daughters of man in the bible? it wasn't about giants perse.

it was about the coming of true intelligence to man.

notice that little fracas back in the forties? that guy had the idea he could reinvent his race as geniuses, but it doesn't work that way. its a mixture of genetic inheritance and training. ability and ideas.

and who says they aren't trying to change the world?

the world is run by corporations headed by greedy people with their own agendas ..
they are extremely uninterested in anything that would impinge upon their cozy residuals.

you would be shocked and appalled at the sheer number of ideas that are guttering to naught at patent offices all over the world. to give you an idea, patent numbers are in the hundred of millions.

so your arguement that the human animal is losing his ability to be inventive is moot.

as for making the world a better place, millions of people, geniuses or not, have been striving towards that goal for time eternal.
it is a fully realizable goal, very much in creation as we speak.
that shiny chrome polished year two thousand that was promised in 1950 was and is fully realizable. we have the technology. but these patent owners much like authors are reviled while their rights are extant, and cherished when they fall into public domaine.

why aren't they here saving you,  running in with a cape and a big s on their chest..?
where are your errant geniuses? bad them. but realize they do have problems.

try to remember they are born rebels with lofty ideals and naturally foment discord. it is their job to see beyond social convention and society and work towards the greater good. but the powers that be for the most part neither apprieciate that nor offer financial restitution.. outside of some academic genius zoos, they aren't revered. most without the business sense the rest of the world insulates itself with end in direly pitiful circumstances..   starving in gutters, being burned for witches. having their heads stuffed down toilets, or the equivilent. and overall because of these behaviours towards them,  isolating themselves from the plague of stupidity that engulfs our planet. the poor puppies.

they too are people. poor puppies for the most part, that have been maligned all their lives especially by those close to them, by those who swear to care for them in one breath and curse them and berate them with the next. until they have been rendered almost infunctional.

so lets say you've been a good boy and get your three wishes.  what do you want of your geniuses? what is the problem you have that they aren't solving?

speak now,  steely glint. tell your conundrum to the world. if you ask it, maybe a genius will answer.


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## JoanDrake (Jul 18, 2015)

steelyglint said:


> The 'expected' occurrence of 'genius' is currently on the order of one in a million. This 'genius' will have some talent that will push out the boundaries of whatever the 'genius' talent applies itself to. Usually a particular and narrow subject: music, mathematics, literature, etc.
> However, this seems to be a little bit too close to the 'Idiot Savant' idea of psychology where, as in the movie 'Rain Man', the entirety of the genius-level operation is pointed in a single direction, such as 'lightning calculation' and wild facility with mathematics.
> Einstein is considered the great genius of our time. Yet his 'genius' appeared to be restricted to mathematics, cosmology and 'thought-experiments' (and he wasn't really much good with the maths). A similar label is used for such as Michaelangelo, whose 'genius' appears to have been almost entirely artistic.
> These examples should really be, rather than 'genius', considered as 'brilliant' with occasional flashes of genius.
> ...



By that true polymath definition, though, are there ANY geniuses? Can you give us an example?

There is a very interesting short story on how genius advances humanity. _Legwork_,  by Eric Frank Russell


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## steelyglint (Jul 18, 2015)

As far as I'm aware, the last 'true' genius was Erasmus. He was the last person believed to know everything there was to know (in his time). He wasn't stuck in the tunnel-vision of being brilliant in one field and decidedly average in all others. He was the 'polymath' you mentioned, able to point his intellect in any direction and apply the same potency.

Though there are many clever people around the world, none possess the wherewithal to stand alongside Erasmus. We'd have heard about them, if only from the results of their cogitations.



jastius said:


> steelyglint, you seem to be confusing genius with both meglamaniacs and beings with godlike powers. and then again with virtuosos in their respective fields. the rennaisance man.



Don't see any confusion. A 'genius' (the 'synthesist' type, or polymath) with a minor dose of hunger for power could easily become the one with the high-score of victims, but that wouldn't make him/her a megalomaniac. Similarly, the version with no interest in personal gain would only have his 'genius' - which may or may not look like 'god-like powers' to the rest of us. The 'virtuosos in their respective fields' are simply the brilliant ones with the rare flashes of what might be termed 'genius'.



jastius said:


> by the way, your estimation of their genetic evolutionary appearance is off base. you have it backwards. geniuses were always here. haven't you seen that little part about the sons of heaven and the daughters of man in the bible? it wasn't about giants per se.



My sympathies if you are of a religious bent, but I put no store in that dark horror fantasy novel as a guide to anything other than poorly-written fiction. I might as well seek enlightenment from a Guy N. Smith novel.



jastius said:


> the world is run by corporations headed by greedy people with their own agendas ..
> they are extremely uninterested in anything that would impinge upon their cozy residuals.



Most of the 'heads' of multi-national corporations and governments are high-functioning psychopaths. They don't all  haunt darkened city streets looking for victims. Many can divert those kinds of drives into the business or government sectors, which offer them far more in the way of potential victims, and a greater variety of means to torture them with.



jastius said:


> so your arguement that the human animal is losing his ability to be inventive is moot.



I do not recall making any such argument, moot or not. Inventiveness is present in everyone. If it wasn't we'd be less than human.



jastius said:


> why aren't they here saving you,  running in with a cape and a big s on their chest..?
> where are your errant geniuses? bad them. but realize they do have problems.



Aye, they do at that. Their main one being they don't currently exist, which, as you may be able to imagine, is a bit of a bummer. There is no timetable to genetics, like there is for the local bus. They'll be along when the circumstances fall into place. 'Think of it as evolution in action'.*



jastius said:


> try to remember they are born rebels with lofty ideals and naturally foment discord. it is their job to see beyond social convention and society and work towards the greater good. but the powers that be for the most part neither apprieciate that nor offer financial restitution.. outside of some academic genius zoos, they aren't revered. most without the business sense the rest of the world insulates itself with end in direly pitiful circumstances..   starving in gutters, being burned for witches. having their heads stuffed down toilets, or the equivilent. and overall because of these behaviours towards them,  isolating themselves from the plague of stupidity that engulfs our planet. the poor puppies.



You speak here of the clever folks with occasional flashes. The polymath/synthesist (the one that may one day arrive) would have no such problems. Those occasional flashes in this type are more of a constant, unwavering beam. And they can point it in whatever direction, shine it on whatever field of endeavor, they wish to.

*Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 18, 2015)

steelyglint said:


> Inventiveness is present in everyone.


Yes.
And exactly what does an I.Q. test measure or Psychometric Testing test?  Solving particular problems with a time constraint.
A) Is there much correlation between either test and "genius"?
B) We all have met or read about people that DON'T solve something in 15 minutes, but over a period of days / weeks / months / years.
C) Laziness or boredom as the "mother" of invention? How many amazing things have been solved or invented; not because the guy/gal was great at Mathematics, really Academic, had top Grades or Massive I.Q. rating; but because of an obsession with the problem. Maybe Einstein found being a Patent Clerk really boring.

There might be "geniuses". There are people that are amazing, the "polymath", but often just above average in an amazing number of fields rather than super brilliant. But the breadth of knowledge makes them able to come up with stuff a totally expert specialist can't. Unfortunately today most Corporate HR depts are suspicious of anyone with expertise in more than one field. Except maybe someone that is a Lawyer + Engineer. They will be put to work as glorified clerks creating pointless patents that the USPTO should turn down (and won't) from quite ordinary non-research Product Development of specialist Engineers.

We don't need massive computing power to create an A.I. If we knew how to do it and the computers were not "powerful" enough it would just be slow.

There is a difference between slow and incapable. But IQ tests & Psychometric Testing is biased toward speed and familiarity with type of test. In the real world in most jobs speed is unimportant. Anything were speed is important has to be practised so you react automatically, not based on creativity / intelligence as such (cycling, driving a car, ski-ing, duel etc)


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## steelyglint (Jul 18, 2015)

Not entirely sure what you're trying to get at. An IQ test measures IQ. A psychometric test measures psychometrics. There is certainly a 'connection' between the IQ test and higher-functioning intelligence - though I could not vouch for its veracity.

The original IQ test was developed to be used with persons no older than 10. What significance it has in those older than that is debatable. Possibly it has none. Of the three tests I have undertaken, two resulted in a score of 154, the other was 153. What that means I have no idea. Perhaps absolutely nothing. Or maybe I am either 12 points above 'genius' (one type places that level at 142) or 8 points below it (another version places it at 162). If the latter, then I put as much store in those results as I do in organised religion - absolute zero.

Yes, sometimes it takes a day or three to wallpaper a room. It can also take varying amounts of time to 'solve' anything. I doubt any level of intelligence has time restrictions, and inspiration can spring from the unlikliest of sources. None of this is surprising or new. Still unsure of the direction of whatever argument you're making.

If there was even one 'genius' of the polymath variety extant the entire world would be aware of it. What are called 'genius' today, and exist today, are the brilliant minds that have those rare and irregular flashes of enlightenment, as with Albert and his mass/energy insight. A true polymath/synthesist would be capable of similar feats of cosmological prestidigitation, but could then also turn his/her blinding talent to any other subject they pleased and produce similarly astonishing outcomes. Poor old Albert wouldn't have got very far pointing his talents at something outside of his intellectual comfort zone on the order of brain architecture or financial systems analysis. The polymath/synthesist would see such a change of direction as simply a different set of variables and nomenclature describing them, and go on to astound the world in those areas, too.

You seem to be introducing some kind of time restrictions or expectations. Light-speed or snail's pace, I don't see the connection. The polymath/synthesist could encounter a problem in one second and formulate a solution in the next. Or he/she may need a decade or two to mull it over. That inexactitude does not diminish the talent. It would appear to have no effect on it whatsoever.

Such a creature may find its birth while I'm typing this. Or it may not show up for a millennia or two. Neither possibility is guaranteed or expected. Evolution doesn't carry a stopwatch.

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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 18, 2015)

steelyglint said:


> You seem to be introducing some kind of time restrictions


Quite the reverse. I don't see that time has much to do with it. Hence I'm sceptical that IQ or Psychometric tests measure anything to do with Genius or Intelligence. I think those tests are over-rated. It was crazy that the quality of school an 11 year old went to in N.I. was based on the "I.Q." test. (In case anyone wonders, I don't have a chip on my shoulder, I've never been rejected from anything by such tests).

It's hard to define Genius as we don't even have any decent definition of Intelligence or creativity. I think it may exist, but very much rarer than people or media imagine. Genius doesn't just have a single great invention or discovery, that's often either almost luck or obsessional perseverance, the real geniuses of the past seem to have no shortage of ideas, creativity, discoveries etc. Perhaps at times a shortage of assistants, money, resources, equipment or lifetime to realise their ambitions. 

I find every aspect of this subject fascinating.


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## Parson (Jul 18, 2015)

*Steelyglint: *I'm confused about what you mean by genius. If you mean someone with extreme ability to learn something and apply it, then I would suspect that your 1 in a million ratio is easily met today. If you mean someone who can make an intuitive leap; I doubt such a person is a genius because these seem almost always to be pure serendipity and can be made by anyone. If you are thinking of someone like Erasmus, 


steelyglint said:


> He was the last person believed to know everything there was to know (in his time). He wasn't stuck in the tunnel-vision of being brilliant in one field and decidedly average in all others. He was the 'polymath' you mentioned, able to point his intellect in any direction and apply the same potency.


 I doubt that this description was true or even possible in his day. And it surely isn't possible today.


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## J Riff (Jul 18, 2015)

There IS such a thing, but it generally isn't fun. A genius can do the jobs of many people. It would be easier to surround said genius, claim his work, and spread out the profits. That's probably what has happened to many of 'em. I'm just sayin', yo?


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## steelyglint (Jul 18, 2015)

Erasmus was considered, in  his own lifetime, to be the man who knew everything there was to know. It was probably a matter of 'everything of some importance', rather than every bit of information anywhere on the planet. He is seen today as the last person this was said of with some possibility of it being true.

It was the widespread abuse of the word 'genius' that inspired the OP. Even today the BBC Iplayer boasts a programme on BBC4 entitled 'The Genius of David Bowie'. I could accept that, if he had mankind-enhancing success in a number of widely-varying fields of endeavor under his belt. But he doesn't. He can play a few musical instruments, sing reasonably well, and appears to have mastery of stage-fright. At best that makes him clever. At worst he could be described as a failed Idiot Savant. All of his talent lies in the field of music - for all I know every time he adds 18 to 18 he gets 34. Even with decent mathematical ability the one thing he definitely isn't is a genius.

The same goes for A. Einstein Esq. All of his talent lay in the area of physics/cosmology. Ask him who the foreign minister of Patiala State in India was in 1943 and you'd likely have got a rather blank look for your troubles.

The 'true' genius can only be the polymath/synthesist: operating on the stratospheric level that gave Einstein his Relativity flashbulb, Michaelangelo his artistic ability, even Bowie's facility with Moog or lyric, but remaining at that level of excellence no matter the subject under discussion, and not restricted and channelled into a single area of intellectual study.

Just looking at the list of 'similar threads' below this box I'm typing in serves to illustrate the point. Isaac Newton - very clever, but not a genius. Nikola Tesla - very clever, but not a genius. Mein Gott! The word is even used to describe footballers! Ridiculous. Every such misuse devalues the term, and those to whom it would factually apply.

I am woefully unqualified to designate anyone as such. But if I were pushed I might be able to offer one possibility, and I'm certainly not sure of him. Though he is probably the closest to true genius that our poor planet has seen in a thousand years or more. Was he high-functioning? Impossible to know for certain, but confirmation would come as no surprise. Was he multi-talented? Apparently. Could he apply equal stratospheric intellect to every one of his talents? A tentative 'yes' based on the surviving evidence. My money would be placed, with thrills of trepidation, on Leonardo. His 'product' couldn't really be said to have advanced mankind much, but the time he existed in was hardly conducive to such advancement. Had he been born in the 1950s I might well be posting this from Alpha Centauri. And as he's even further removed from our technological peak, Archimedes gets a mention in dispatches and is definitely put forward for a gong.

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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 18, 2015)

steelyglint said:


> Isaac Newton - very clever, but not a genius. Nikola Tesla - very clever, but not a genius.


I'm not sure I would write them off. Tesla's competitor, Edison, certainly wasn't a Genius and didn't even invent a fraction of what is credited to him.

Einstein studied one field and came up with a few good theories that the time was right for. Tesla in many ways was more remarkable. Both in different ways relied on Maxwell's work.

Wheatstone was interesting being several kinds of engineer and musician (he devised the Wheatstone Bridge, a small hexagonal accordion/squeezebox and a Telegraph system amongst other things).
Babbage expert at Economics (he wrote a famous book on it), mathematics (Einstein wasn't so good at regular maths), Machine Tool design as well as the calculating machines that Ada Lovelace wrote a program for.

Newton was brilliant at physics and mathematics, but Chemistry wise he was maybe the last serious Alchemist!

Edit:
I don't think Leonardo was much more Genius than Babbage, Tesla, Wheatstone, maybe Newton, Maxwell, Blumlien, Zyworken and some others. He did actually make some practical designs, some engineering that worked. He was primarily a brilliant artist, though unreliable. Some of his artistic techniques / experiments degraded so quickly and badly and he was unreliable too that he "lost" a lot of art jobs to other artists.  Undoubtedly genius, but I think over stated due to his art.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 19, 2015)

steelyglint said:


> Erasmus was considered, in  his own lifetime, to be the man who knew everything there was to know. It was probably a matter of 'everything of some importance', rather than every bit of information anywhere on the planet. He is seen today as the last person this was said of with some possibility of it being true.
> .



How does knowing everything there was to know qualify one as a genius? In a very crude manner, it just means he'd read a lot of books, and there were a lot fewer then, so someone could effectively read all of them - or at least all the 'important' ones. Which to be frank, is usually the point that people tend to make when they say someone 'knew everything there was to know'. They are saying that at that particular point in time, one person could pick up all knowledge from the small library of information humanity had at the time - however since then it has grown exponentially and it is impossible to do the same. Just knowing something is not good enough, at least for me, you have to advance a subject and add or create. 

So yes he was very highly regarded, wrote a great deal on some subjects and was sought after - but there was no doubt a great deal of hyperbole and flattery that was given to him by his colleagues, just because he was very good (And which you are regurgitating, it seems to me IMHO. ) - which is quite similar to the same way that someone can call Bowie a genius today*.  I however don't see his influence in many important fields - where is his advances in mathematics or natural sciences for example? 

Personally I think the definition of genius you gave at the start is so over the top as be useless. I don't think there ever has been any person who comes remotely close to it and doubt there will be one in the future either. We are finite creatures in a infinite universe, even our greatest will always have limitations. 

As ever IMHO


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*Although I do agree - there has been a massive inflation in applying the term genius to anyone these days. I think that is just our tendency to be really nice to people that mean a lot to us .


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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 19, 2015)

Was Buckminister Fuller one of the most recent Genii?


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## steelyglint (Jul 19, 2015)

Venusian Broon said:


> How does knowing everything there was to know qualify one as a genius?



I don't recall saying that it did. He is simply the last person to have been held as such. He was the 'go to' guy for virtually every other intellect in the world at the time. He was basically the 'superstar' of his time, famed across the known world. Sort of like Einstein became in the 1920s, only more so. There was no mention of him advancing mankind in every subject imaginable. But he impressed the intellectual cognoscenti of the period with everything he did do. Sounds much more like the unwavering beam of the polymath than the rare flash of the merely very clever to me.

Still, the old saw nevertheless fits: opinions are like the anus - everyone has one.

A t-shirt 'slogan' I saw the other day might have fitted, too - If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

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## steelyglint (Jul 19, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Was Buckminister Fuller one of the most recent Genii?



I'd sort of doubt it. 'Geniuses' is the plural of 'genius'. 'Genii' is the plural of what was known in the Arab world as a 'djinn'.

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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 19, 2015)

Well, Genius. I was trying too hard to inject a little humour.

I've read at least one book by Erasmus. (translated) He strikes me as philosophical and reading other stuff he appears to have been politically astute. I can't see though why he should be regarded as a genius or polymath. A poster boy for the Humanists, he warned Luther about getting exploited by the German Princes (he was right) and eventually the Catholic Church banned his books (Due to Counter Reformation backlash).  So he was popular among certain faction and this was increased by the bans (all of his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by Pope Paul IV, and some of his works continued to be banned or viewed with caution in the later Index of Pope Pius IV).

So I'd maybe rate Newton, Galileo, perhaps Leonardo de Vinci, Tesla, Blumlien, Fuller, Babbage etc but not Erasmus. He was just a popular philosopher. The only "contribution" he made was to advance Christian Humanism.


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## steelyglint (Jul 19, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Well, Genius. I was trying too hard to inject a little humour.



Apparently so was I. Maybe we both should stick to the 'Bad Jokes' thread.

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## steelyglint (Jul 24, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> So I'd maybe rate Newton, Galileo, perhaps Leonardo de Vinci, Tesla, Blumlien, Fuller, Babbage etc but not Erasmus. He was just a popular philosopher. The only "contribution" he made was to advance Christian Humanism.



Newton, Galileo, Tesla, etc. were all 'spotlight' guys; their illumination of a subject was just that - one subject. It may have been a wide subject, but it was a single field of study. Going only from what I've read of Erasmus, which wasn't exactly exhaustive, it is more than possible that he wasn't all that he was made out to be - as Venusian Broon said, it may just have been people saying nice things because they liked him.

I chose Leonardo da Vinci as the one I would hazard cash money on because he was at least a 'lighthouse' type in that, as you mentioned, he dipped into a number of different fields. There is enough distance between architecture, engineering and painting - Milan Cathedral, Mona Lisa and a helicopter and parachute are evidence of a multi-talented inventiveness, and both the building and the painting are viewed by experts in those fields as 'masterpieces of genius'. I'm sure, had the fuel, materials and the materials science been available, the 15th century could well have been astounded by a flying contraption over Florence. Haven't even mentioned his anatomical studies, another subject unrelated to the others. From him backwards in time its a good 1,739 years to the next candidate, Archimedes. He was a bit restricted by his time, but still managed to point his beam successfully, products of his mind still being in use today, in several distinct directions.

Imagine what a Leonardo or Archimedes could do having, and being familiar with, the ultra-high tech tools and materials available today. Not to mention the science behind it, and the step-by-step record of how the current peaks of knowledge were arrived at. Lots of letters and SF dreams would be next to arrive - AI, FTL, Fusion, Arcology, Terraforming, Nanotech, Magic Bullet, etc. Who knows, maybe a proper system of planet-management, everybody with a roof and dinner; fewer weapons, and all of the biggest ones in orbit pointing out - if we ever stop killing each other there might be something that's been watching us, like a 'World of Sport' series, and decides to take up where we left off.

Then, maybe we don't need those blokes. After all, us ordinary humans usually win when Hollywood tells the tale. But we do need Jeff Goldblum to work out which lead has the right plug to fit a port in an alien mothership.

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