Article: Are We Running Out Of Scientific Geniuses?

[kiran]

In the latest issue of Nature, Dean Keith Simonton argues that modern science is just building on what's already known, rather than upending what we think we know.
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 02.01.2013 at 9:59 am 20 Comments

The Greatest Modern Genius
The Greatest Modern Genius Einstein in 1931. Wikimedia Commons

Is the world clear out of geniuses? Will we ever have another Copernicus, another Darwin, another Einstein to shatter the foundations of our beliefs? Perhaps not, says a man who ought to know.

Dean Keith Simonton, professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis, has dedicated the better part of his career to studying geniuses--people who possess what he calls the highest level of scientific creativity. He thinks they may very well have ceased to exist. It may be that they have been rendered impossible, simply because of the way science works anymore.

Other psychologists and even geneticists have argued that modern society is short on astoundingly intelligent members. Pick your reason, from genetic mutations to lack of education access to politics. But Simonton is talking about more than just smarts. A true genius, that rare member of society, is a real paradigm-shatterer, a Renaissance human who can completely alter the way we understand the world. Geniuses are people who come up with “surprising ideas that are not a mere extension of what is already known,” Simonton said in an email interview with PopSci. “There are personality and cognitive traits associated with the ability to do that, but that's another issue.”

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... es-extinct

 

[j.]

Gilbert Ling might be among the geniuses, but he doesn't have a wikipedia entry.

 

[Dean]

I often get accused of being overly paranoid. Fair enough. But what I do know is that not only could the world use more geniuses, we could also use a much more paranoid populace.

My opinion is that extremely gifted people, capable of shifting the paradygm for humanity, end up being co-opted, discredited or otherwise neutralized by TPTB/the system/the man (whatever). I also think that some get their gift or their ability to do something with it stolen by a riduculously poor and undermining education system, LCD mainstream culture and the brainwashing that goes along with it, destructive nutritional advice and BigAg's involvement in that, and a medical establishment that pretty much operates (outside of trauma care) as an entity of BigPHarma.