The idea of “genius” is believed to originate in Ancient Rome, where the word dictates the character of an individual. The word speaks to a unique quality that makes Hermione Granger different from her parents, and from potentially other Hermione Grangers in infinitely many parallel universes. In today’s society, the word “genius” is almost exclusively dedicated to people with brilliant minds manifested in incredible wealth or achievements, often in mathematics and sciences.
If you scroll down lists of geniuses on the Internet, such as “13 Most Intelligent People in The History of The World,” “30 Smartest People Alive Today,” and “Here Is A List Of The 27 Smartest People On The Planet,” you would soon realize that most of them are high-profile mathematicians, or pioneers in the sciences. Artists and philosophers are also included, but they occupy significantly fewer seats. And if you are to imagine a person with an ingenious mind, what would that person be like? Is that person a he or a she? Is that person a human computational miracle, or a sensitive observant creator? Is that person writing with a chalk or drawing with a brush?
When I was first asked the question, I pictured a reserved man who theorized about knots and particles. There is a lot to unpack here: gender, subject, and potentially racial background, but in this article, I will focus on the subject. In short, I chose a mathematician-physicist. It all seems natural to me to consider someone like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking as geniuses: they are so well recognized worldwide that they have become synonyms for the word “genius,” the first names to come to mind whenever people talk about extremely intelligent people.
What do Hawking and Einstein have in common? And why are they the first people we consider? These appear to be trivial questions but bear with me, please. What do Hawking and Einstein have in common? Obviously, their intelligence. However, what exactly is intelligence? Fortunately, we have some true geniuses to explain this to us. Hawking expressed that “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change” and advised the future generation to be curious. Einstein stressed that “imagination is more important than knowledge” and the importance of “not stop questioning.” Adaptability, imaginativeness, and curiosity, according to Hawking and Einstein, are qualities that make up a highly intelligent mind. It is easy to see that these are not particularly special qualities, certainly not as impressive as an Intelligence Quotient of 195. If the great minds before us have deemed intelligence as something so commonly in foundation, where does that leave us?
Let us go back to the second question: why are they the first people we consider? Following Hawking and Einstein’s definition of intelligence, we should find many alternatives to our firsts—Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare, individuals who adapted to different needs of their time, their audience and created arts that fascinated generations after generations. Why are they not the first people we think?
Maybe what we truly value is not intelligence, but achievement, when achievement should be a by-product of intelligence that has unfortunately been turned into a by-product of success. The superficial form of intelligence is marketable. We watch in awe people who can multiply four-digit numbers in thirty seconds, while dismissing someone who captures a couple of llama-looking clouds. As students, we envy the ones who can easily grasp the confusing lectures of math professors and receive and A+ at the end of the semester than those who go through multiple drafts for a term paper. We crave the skills brought by a smart brain, but not the intelligence that combine years of curiosity for the outside world. Is there truly a difference between a mathematician or a physicist and an artist? I do not believe so. They share the same form of intelligence that lead to their achievement. The question of who comes first in the genius list is, to some extent, a question wrongly asked, as the Buddha would say. A scientist comes first because the sense of achievement we bestow upon one is greater than that of an artist. A medical student possibly has a higher average wage than a film student does. Suppose our society suddenly finds arts to be more applicably successful than sciences, we might quickly switch the positions between Einstein and Shakespeare.
How we look at ingenuity reflects certain aspects of our cultural beliefs. There is honor in a society that values intelligence, but it becomes dangerous if what we truly value is the effortlessness provided by intelligence. Such worship is an illusion and creates clever fools and it is all just too regrettable to let it be.