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Albert Einstein’s greatest achievement, the general theory of relativity, was announced by him exactly a century ago, in a series of four papers read to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in November 1915, during the turmoil of the First World War. For many years, hardly any physicist—let alone any other type of scientist—could understand it.

The post Einstein’s mysterious genius appeared first on OUPblog.

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Please forgive me while I stand on my soap box for a bit today.

I never wear shoes like this but maybe I should :0)

It's that time of year again. Your kids have either already started back to school or they will be there shortly. Does your child's school still have an art program? More and more schools across the nation are eliminating arts and music programs. If they replace them with anything at all it is sometimes with pseudo art instruction performed by an unqualified classroom teacher.

That statement is not meant to disparage classroom teachers, it is just that they are not trained arts specialists.  The major justification for ending arts programs is almost always budget. School districts are constantly complaining that they don't have a enough money for basic programs, so first on the chopping block is usually what administrators and parents see as the most extraneous and unnecessary programs- art and music.


Here are some of the common myths and justifications for deeming art as unnecessary and thereby eliminating it.

Every child is not a talented artist
Every child is not going to be an artist
Training children in the arts has no application to real world (job) success
Art is meant to help children "express themselves"

Here is what arts education really gives to your kids:

The number one most valuable thing that art education provides to your child:

It teaches them to THINK critically and innovate. It teaches them to TAKE RISKS and to see the BIG PICTURE.



Making art is not just about making pretty things or providing some slapdash approach to "self expression" devoid of rules and structure. There are rules in art- Elements and Principals of Design- which provides a framework for making good art and once understood, provides a vehicle for creating good art while breaking those rules and learning to innovate.

Art history provides a cultural framework and point of reference for history and innovation throughout time. Children without skill in creating art are still given an understanding of the cultural heritage of art, get exposed to great thinkers and artistic creators (ex. Picasso, Matisse) who broke from the mold of realistic art making to devise a new way of SEEING and creating.

Art is not always about the end product. The value of art education is more in the processes of creating art and learning about it than in the outcome of making a pretty picture.


Most other disciplines only work on finding right or wrong answers. There is no room for thinking out of the box or for creating a new paradigm. Children who are only being educated in these limiting disciplines will grow to only seek the correct (predetermined) answer, never being able to consider another option and will accept as irrefutable that which is spoon fed to him as fact.

We need to keep raising generations of Picasso's, Da Vinci's, Van Gogh's, Louise Nevelsons and even more Andy Warhol's, whose art was not just pictures of Campbell Soup cans, but a shrewd commentary on our massed produced society as a whole, a concept seen through an artists ability to view "the big picture."

Louise Nevelson

Louise Nevelson- Royal Tide IV-Assemblage

The world needs both kinds of thinkers, both right brain and left. Here is a perfect example:

Steve Wozniak, a left brain tech head computer guy who, left on his own would probably have had his own small company or gone to work for IBM or Microsoft or Oracle or any other computer giant out there at the time.

Steve Jobs, a hippy dippy, right brain college drop out with an understanding of business,training in art and a devoted sense and love for beauty and good design.

It is the combination of these two very different types of talents that brought us all of the elegant and beautiful Apple computer products which many of us enjoy and other companies try to emulate.

The marriage of these two divergent genius brains resulted in something of a lightening strike which created (in my opinion) one of the greatest tech companies ever.

Steve Jobs (standing) and Steve Wozniak (at keyboard)

Is your kid going to be the next Steve Jobs or Picasso or Frida Kahlo? Maybe not. If given the benefit of a meaningful art education, what they can be is a well rounded human being who can think outside of the box, challenge the status quo, consider various answers to the same problem, create something from nothing, use the tools at hand in new ways and make cross cultural and historical connections.

Oh, and they may come home with a nice painting sometimes, too.

Frida and Me- © Karen O'Lone-Hahn

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While there may be some truth to the old adage that in Hollywood, no one knows anything, people in Hollywood do know a few things, namely that the animated feature "Foodfight!" is an epic work of genius and the film's director Larry Kasanoff is a hot commodity.

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By Arturo Hernandez

That any person could become an expert in something if they simply spend about 3 hours per day for ten years learning it is an appealing concept. This idea, first championed by Ericsson and brought to prominence by Gladwell, has now taken root in the popular media. It attempts to discuss these differences in terms of the environment. The idea is that practice with the purpose of constantly gathering feedback and improving can lead any person to become an expert. If becoming an expert requires 10,000 hours, does a prodigy need 20,000.

Lets consider, Michael Jackson, as an example of a prodigy. He grew up in a musical family in Gary, Indiana just outside Chicago. His father Joe played in an R&B band. All of his siblings played music in one way or another. Unlike his siblings and father, Jackson did not really play any instruments. However, he would compose songs in his head using his voice. One morning he came in and had written a song which eventually became ‘Beat It’. In the studio, he would sing each of the different parts including the various instruments. Then the producers and artists in the studio would work on putting the song together, following his arrangements.

Work in cognitive neuroscience has begun to shed light on the brain systems involved in creativity as being linked to psychometric IQ. Work by Neubauer and Fink suggests that these two different types of abilities, psychometric IQ and expertise, involve differential activity in the frontal and parietal lobes. They also appear for different types of tasks. In one study, taxi drivers were split into a high and low group depending on their performance on a paper and pencil IQ test. The results showed that both groups did equally well on familiar routes. The differences appeared between groups when they were compared on unfamiliar routes. In this condition, those with high IQs outperformed those with low IQ. So expertise can develop but the flexibility to handle new situations and improvise requires more than just practice.

Reports of Michael Jackson’s IQ are unreliable. However, he is purported to have had over 10,000 books in his reading collection and to have been an avid reader. His interviews reveal a person who was very eloquent and well spoken. And clearly he was able to integrate various different types of strands of music into interesting novel blends. If we were to lay this out across time, we have perhaps the roots of early genius. It is a person who has an unusual amount of exposure in a domain that starts at an early age. This would lead to the ability to play music very well.

Jackson came from a family filled with many successful musicians. Many were successful as recording artists. Perhaps Michael started earlier than his siblings. One conclusion we can draw from this natural experiment is that creative genius requires more than 10,000 hours. In the case of Michael Jackson, he read profusely and had very rich life experiences. He tried to meld these experiences into a blended musical genre that is uniquely his and yet distinctly resonant with known musical styles.

The kind of creativity is not restricted to prodigies like Michael Jackson. Language, our ultimate achievement as a human race, is something that no other animal species on this planet shares with us. The seeds of language exist all over the animal kingdom. There are birds that can use syntax to create elaborate songs. Chinchillas can recognize basic human speech. Higher primates can develop extensive vocabularies and use relatively sophisticated language. But only one species was able to take all of these various pieces and combine them into a much richer whole. Every human is born with the potential to develop much larger frontal lobes which interconnect with attention, motor, and sensory areas of the brain. It is in these enlarged cortical areas that we can see the roots of creative genius. So while 10,000 hours will create efficiency within restricted areas of the brain, only the use of more general purpose brain areas serve to develop true creativity.

Arturo Hernandez is currently Professor of Psychology and Director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience graduate program at the University of Houston. He is the author of The Bilingual Brain. His major research interest is in the neural underpinnings of bilingual language processing and second language acquisition in children and adults. He has used a variety of neuroimaging methods as well as behavioral techniques to investigate these phenomena which have been published in a number of peer reviewed journal articles. His research is currently funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. You can follow him on Twitter @DrAEHernandez. Read his previous blog posts.

The post Michael Jackson, 10,000 hours, and the roots of creative genius appeared first on OUPblog.

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A philosopher of the kitchen table once said of Babbage’s calculating machine, “What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; which turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them!”

But of what do we attribute to human genius, and our constitutional compact to glorify ourselves? And of our assigning an expedient neutrality to the other inhabitants of our terrestrial globe?

One might point to language as the difference.

Yet the verbs, nouns and adjectives, which we might refer to as our wit and character, are only signifiers of a peculiar intervenience in our innermost history, subject to the same natural laws as the tulip bulb that breaks forth from the ground and becomes a crescendo of wondrous colors.

If we become deaf to the difference between the rational and irrational utterances issued from ourselves, and blind to the genius of the tulip (its look, sound, smell, taste and feel), it will also be impossible for us to tell the difference between man and our Frankenstein monster.

Let us not forget the origins of the noun: which is related to the Latin verb gigno, genui, genitus, "to bring into being, create, produce."

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I’m the last person to cozy up with a self-help book, but last week a friend recommended Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace, by Gordon MacKenzie. I finished it in one sitting (not because it’s short, but because it’s great).

MacKenzie was Hallmark’s “self-stylized holy man with the title of Creative Paradox” and the founder of their Humor Workshop. In the book he shares lively anecdotes from his long career there, and finds lessons for us creative types afraid of having the spark of genius squelched by stolid corporate bureaucracies (aka hairballs).

If you have a job in the creative branch of an enormous corporation (like Hallmark, or Disney, or EA), you need to read this, and better yet, buy it for your corporate superiors this holiday season.

Here’s a 1997 Fast Company interview with MacKenzie, which will give you a taste of his style and philosophy.

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Where do geniuses come from? What makes a genius? Are all geniuses interesting people? Who’s more amazing, Shakespeare, Darwin or Einstein?

There are many questions about genius, and in his newest book, Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs, Andrew Robinson answers all these and more.

About Sudden Genius

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Q&A with Andrew Robinson

Click here to view the embedded video.

Andrew Robinson was Literary Editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement from 1994-2006. His latest book is Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs. He has written many other books including biographies of Albert Einstein, the film director Satyajit Ray, the writer Rabindranath Tagore, and the archaeologist Michael Ventris. He is also the author of Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction, and Genius: A Very Short Introduction (forthcoming Spring 2011). You can read his previous OUPblog posts here (2009) and here (2010).

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By Andrew Robinson

In the early 21st century, talent appears to be on the increase, genius on the decrease. More scientists, writers, composers, and artists than ever before earn a living from their creative output. During the 20th century, performance standards and records continually improved in all fields—from music and singing to chess and sports. But where is the Darwin or the Einstein, the Mozart or the Beethoven, the Chekhov or the Shaw, the Cézanne or the Picasso or the Cartier-Bresson of today? In the cinema, the youngest of the arts, there is a growing feeling that the giants—directors such as Charles Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Jean Renoir, and Orson Welles—have departed the scene, leaving behind the merely talented. Even in popular music, genius of the quality of Louis Armstrong, The Beatles, or Jimi Hendrix, seems to be a thing of the past. Of course, it may be that the geniuses of our time have yet to be recognized—a process that can take many decades after the death of a genius—but sadly this seems unlikely, at least to me.

In saying this, I know I am in danger of falling into a mindset mentioned by the great 19th-century South American explorer and polymath Alexander von Humboldt, ‘the Albert Einstein of his day’ (writes a recent biographer), in volume two of his five-volume survey Cosmos. ‘Weak minds complacently believe that in their own age humanity has reached the culminating point of intellectual progress,’ wrote Humboldt in the middle of the century, ‘forgetting that by the internal connection existing among all the natural phenomena, in proportion as we advance, the field to be traversed acquires additional extension, and that it is bounded by a horizon which incessantly recedes before the eyes of the inquirer.’ Humboldt was right. But his explorer’s image surely also implies that as knowledge continues to advance, an individual will have the time to investigate a smaller and smaller proportion of the horizon with each passing generation, because the field will continually expand. So, if ‘genius’ requires breadth of knowledge, a synoptic vision—as it seems to—then it would appear to become harder to achieve as knowledge advances.

The ever-increasing professionalization and specialisation of education and domains, especially in the sciences, is undeniable. The breadth of experience that feeds genius is harder to achieve today than in the 19th century, if not downright impossible. Had Darwin been required to do a PhD in the biology of barnacles, and then joined a university life sciences department, it is difficult to imagine his having the varied experiences and exposure to different disciplines that led to his discovery of natural selection. If the teenaged Van Gogh had gone straight to an art academy in Paris, instead of spending years working for an art dealer, trying to become a pastor, and self-tutoring himself in art while dwelling among poor Dutch peasants, would we have his late efflorescence of great painting?

A second reason for the diminution of genius appears to be the ever-increasing commercialisation of the arts, manifested in the cult of celebrity. True originality takes time—at least ten years, as I show in my book Sudden Genius?—to come to fruition; and the results may well take further time to find their audience and market. Few beginning artists, or scientists, will be fortunate enough to enjoy financial support, like Darwin and Van Gogh, over such an extended period. It is much less challenging, and more remunerative, to make a career by producing imitative, sensational, or repetitious work, like Andy Warhol, or any number of professional scientists who, as Einstein remarked, ‘take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes when the drilling is easy.’

Thirdly, if less obviously, our expectations of modern genius have become more sophisticated and discriminating since the time of the 19th-century Romantic movement

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If you've been reading our INK blog lately, then you'll know that our theme for October has been using our books in the classroom. I was planning to write about using biographies, focusing on one of my own books, Helen's Eyes, perhaps, or Genius. But a couple of days ago Gretchen Woelfle wrote on this topic, so I thought I'd tackle something else, if I could come up with a new idea. Suddenly I had a craving for chocolate (not unusual), which made me think of Halloween, which reminded me of this past Monday. And then I knew what to write about.

On Monday mornings I teach level 4 ESL (English as a second language) to a class of 20 adults for a wonderful program called "New Neighbors" in Alexandria, Virginia. Most of the students come from Spanish-speaking countries, but Ethiopia, India, and Sudan are also represented in the class. I'm a first-time teacher, and I'm a volunteer, not a professional. Before every class I have to teach myself the subject of the day. This Monday's topic: the present perfect tense. Piece of cake, right? Hah! Thank goodness for the teacher's guide.

Anyway, toward the end of class on Monday, I pulled out a children's book to share with the students. "This book," I told them, "was written by a friend of mine. It's about Halloween, which is coming up on Saturday." As we paged through the book, students peppered me with questions. "What is the pumpkin with light inside it called?" "How do you make a jack-o'-lantern?" A photograph of a dog in a funny costume sparked lots of laughter and comments, including "I have made a rooster costume for my daughter." A picture of a brightly decorated home brought "I have bought pumpkin lights to hang up." (Note the use in both sentences of the present perfect tense!)

It was our best class so far, thanks in great part to this wonderful nonfiction children's book, Celebrate Halloween by Deborah Heiligman. It's part of her Holidays Around the World series. (Full disclosure: Not only is Deborah a friend of mine, I was her editor for several of these terrific books, including this one.) Aimed primarily at younger kids, these books can work with audiences of all ages (as I learned on Monday), thanks to their simple yet satisfying text, fabulous photographs, and extensive back matter.

I can't promise that the Holidays Around the World series will teach your students the present perfect tense, but I can confidently predict that students—whether they hail from India or Indiana—will enjoy these books and learn a lot from them. And remember, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas are just around the corner. Check out our new INK THINK TANK database to find books about these holidays!

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I’ve known since I was a kid that I liked music.  But it was only recently that I realized I am truly a music dork.  You, too, might be a music dork if:

1. You know how to play more than five instruments.
2. You take every music theory quiz around, hoping to prove that you are the smartest of all your musical friends.
3. You knew you would marry your date when he pointed out the composer (John Williams) of the movie score (The Lost World) at the same time as you.
4. You loved going to church just so that you could harmonize, and your absolute favourite church songs had the alto (or whatever you sing) lead.
5. You know all the intervals by song, your favourite being the minor seventh, “There’s a Place for us” from West Side Story.
6. You own this shirt: http://www.zazzle.ca/music_dork_shirt-235093160855329110
7. When you refer to deceased musical geniuses, you say that they are decomposing.
8. You spent a good portion of your childhood harmonizing with your Nintendo.
9. You are now extremely proud of your son for his ability to harmonize with his Wii.
10. You’re mentally (and proudly) making your own list to add to mine.

Image via Wikipedia

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I’ve known since I was a kid that I liked music.  But it was only recently that I realized I am truly a music dork.  You, too, might be a music dork if:

1. You know how to play more than five instruments.
2. You take every music theory quiz around, hoping to prove that you are the smartest of all your musical friends.
3. You knew you would marry your date when he pointed out the composer (John Williams) of the movie score (The Lost World) at the same time as you.
4. You loved going to church just so that you could harmonize, and your absolute favourite church songs had the alto (or whatever you sing) lead.
5. You know all the intervals by song, your favourite being the minor seventh, “There’s a Place for us” from West Side Story.
6. You own this shirt: http://www.zazzle.ca/music_dork_shirt-235093160855329110
7. When you refer to deceased musical geniuses, you say that they are decomposing.
8. You spent a good portion of your childhood harmonizing with your Nintendo.
9. You are now extremely proud of your son for his ability to harmonize with his Wii.
10. You’re mentally (and proudly) making your own list to add to mine.

Image via Wikipedia

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Someone sent me this great post by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Lots to think about here. Technorati Tags: Genius, Publishing, Writers, Writing

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