World Geniuses Discussion

This discussion was moved here from the WorldGeniuses page where it originated.

Some of those very early innovators ("first stone tool maker", "first person to plant seeds" may not belong, because the innovations may actually have arisen gradually without anyone fully understanding what was being invented. Does picking up a rock to crack a nut count as being a "stone tool maker"? Noticing that a piece of rock with a narrower edge is better for breaking wood with than one with a broader edge? Noticing that if a piece of rock accidentally gets chipped then its sharp edge can be useful? And so on.

Perhaps some discoveries originated with rituals that happened to have good results; we might view the process of innovation as one of natural selection of rituals, rather than as something people do.

On the other hand, serendipity has always played a part in innovation, right up to the present. And, of course, we don't know that the first stone tool maker didn't in fact look at a rock and suddenly realise lots of amazing things that could be done with it. All our conjectures about evolving rituals, lucky discoveries, and so on, are nothing more than conjectures.

It's interesting to look at what sorts of people are regarded as geniuses by the WikiMind. Early in the life of this page, physicists and engineers dominated. That's less true now. Surprisingly, there aren't a lot of entries for innovators in computing. (Maybe they're all over on SoftwareGeniuses.)

There also seems to be a predominance of men. Many explanations are possible...

WHAT IS A GENIUS?

Two of the smartest people I know, whose intelligence could be numbered in the genius ranks, are among the great "underacheivers" of the world. Last time I saw either of them, one was a clerk at a store, the other was on his 100th job or so. Why? See discussions and links from AttentionDeficitDisorder , although, whether or not either friend has this I do not know. Why would a genius end up not even going to college? Because schools never know what to do with people like this. --C.P.

Singling out one individual who is deemed to be responsible for the origination of an entire idea can be seriously mistaken. Ideas are often the result of collaboration, competition or collective need, and the complexity of this cultural synergy is lost when we resort to the over-simplification of implied polarities like genius/failure.

Innovation is perhaps as much a product of a time as it is of remarkable individuals who understand how to grasp the opportunity of the time - or not. Exceptional minds exist, but are not always credited unless their thoughts and innovations become integrated into their contemporary culture, and this often occurs only in retrospect. How about:

all those who originated similar ideas to a famously historical one, or who built similar inventions that may have 'failed' but which nevertheless pushed the thinking forward, but whose names no-one remembers?
Those innovations that were very much the result of the efforts of a number of people at the time, but where one person is credited because they marketed the idea as a 'product', or already had the social standing to make a proir claim to origination?
Those inventions that appeared before the current civilisation, were lost, then reclaimed or repurposed later by a subsequent civilisation as original (accurate calendars (Maya), binary notation (Chinese), moveable type (Korea));

To take three examples:

The difference engine

CharlesBabbages idea for a calculation machine or 'difference engine' was never actually built by him, but mathematician AugustaAdaByron (added to the list of WorldGeniuses) was fascinated by its possibilities and came up with the idea for what could be claimed to be the original computer programme:

: 'In July of 1843, Ada wrote to Babbage requesting his assistance: "I want to put in something about Bernoulli's Numbers ... as an example of how an implicit function may be worked out by the engine, without having been worked out by human head and hand." The result was widely accepted as the first computer program. Although it was never put to the test during her lifetime, when used in today's computers Ada's Bernoulli calculation program for specialised calculus operations achieves the correct values.
: '[...] Ada did indeed understand the Analytical Engine's basic function - an empty box. It didn't actually do anything itself, but merely executed whatever 'program' was applied by its operator. A radical concept in the 19th century.'

Swedish printer Pehr Georg Scheutz eventually built a version of Babbage's machine, under his advice, and Babbage

: 'sat back and watched as the Scheutz Difference Engine took out a gold medal at the Exhibition of Paris and, a few years later, was commissioned for the Registrar-General's Department of the same government that had abandoned his original research.'

Ada's contribution was perhaps more crucial than Babbage's, after all, various calculating devices had already been constructed. She remains:

: 'one of the few female pioneers of the "computer age" and, as yet, the only woman to be honoured with a programming language bearing her name - ADA, a Pascal-based language developed in a US Department of Defence sponsored project in the 1970's.' and her 'development of a set of commands to repeat instructions in a "loop" or "sub-routine" becoming the basis for programming of computers that would have fulfilled even her wildest dreams.'
: Quotations from: http://www.kerryr.net/pioneers/index.html

Binary numbers

GottfriedWilhelmLeibniz took the Chinese I Ching and not only repurposed the system of the 64 permutations of six rows of broken or unbroken lines, but was inspired by some of the philosophy behind it:

: 'GottfriedWilhelmLeibniz was introduced to the I Ching by the Jesuit, Father Bouvet, who, like Leibniz, was interested in numerology, and immediately saw in it not simply a manual for divination, but a key to all symbolic systems, and indeed the foundation of a universal science. It is well known that Leibniz conceived the possibility of a binary number system, a system which is now the basis of most computer operations; what is not so commonly realised is that this was for him not a purely mathematical scheme, but part of a more ambitious project for the construction of a universal calculus, and that such a language could help to bring about reconciliation, not only between the warring religious factions of Europe, but also between the nations of Asia and Europe.'
: J. J. Clarke: 'Oriental Enlightenment - the Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought'

stress in jet engines

Somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century (bit light on the research for this one) Mary Waller discovered that sand sprinkled on a flat metal plate, vibrated firstly by a violin bow and later by a nugget of dry ice, displayed symmetrical patterns that - it turned out - showed up the stress lines. This discovery was later utilised in solutions to jet engine problems.