The Genius Checklist, Dean Keith Simonton
The Genius Checklist, Dean Keith Simonton
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The Genius Checklist
Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius

Author: Dean Keith Simonton

Narrator: Daniel Henning

Unabridged: 8 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/02/2018


Synopsis

What it takes to be a genius: nine essential and contradictory ingredients.What does it take to be a genius? A high score on an IQ test? Brilliant physicist Richard Feynman's IQ was too low for membership in Mensa. Suffering from varying degrees of mental illness? Creativity is often considered a marker of mental health. Be a child prodigy like Mozart, or a later bloomer like Beethoven? Die tragically young, like Keats, or live to a ripe old age like Goethe? In The Genius Checklist, Dean Keith Simonton examines the key factors in creative genius and finds that they are more than a little contradictory. Simonton, who has studied creativity and genius for more than four decades, draws on both scientific research and stories from the lives of famous creative geniuses that range from Isaac Newton to Vincent van Gogh to Virginia Woolf. He explains the origin of IQ tests and the art of estimating the IQ of long-dead historical figures (John Stuart Mill: 200; Charles Darwin: 160). He compares IQ scores with achieved eminence as measures of genius, and he draws a distinction between artistic and scientific genius. He rules out birth order as a determining factor (in the James family alone, three geniuses at three different birth-order positions: William James, firs-tborn; Henry James, second born; Alice James, born fifth and last); considers Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule; and describes how the "lone" genius gets enmeshed in social networks.Genius, Simonton explains, operates in ways so subtle that they seem contradictory. Genius is born and made, the domain of child prodigies and their elders. Simonton's checklist gives us a new, integrative way to understand geniuses?and perhaps even to nurture your own genius!

Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian on October 07, 2018

There's something uncomfortable about the cover of this book. It's hard to read something that says 'Nine paradoxical tips on how YOU! can become a creative genius,' and not expect a self-help book, however scientifically based. However, this is not such a book, and you'd think a psychologist like D......more

Goodreads review by Cameron on September 29, 2020

The Genius Checklist by Dean Keith Simonton is an MIT college prep title that gives nine stereotypical traits that many a well-known genius has had and debunks them without dismissing them. Some examples of these stereotypical traits and their debunking include genius’s having high IQ’s. Simonton de......more

Goodreads review by Chris on September 21, 2020

A lot of content, well written and very well referenced, the nine 'tips' correspond to each chapter. Outlines there are different ways of being a genius, although traditionally taking the IQ test scoring 140 or more is one way of being a genius. With perseverance and passion dedicated to one particu......more

Goodreads review by Davide on October 14, 2018

A well thought and written book on the subject no doubt. There is all that is needed to be captured with the awareness that almost all what he says is based on solid science and not just on his mere opinion. Irony, logic, anedoct, very well interconnected chapters and minimum necessary quantity and......more

Goodreads review by Vivek on September 30, 2022

I am interested in the genius phenomenon- child prodigies, savants, polymaths, late bloomers and all such people who create revolutions in the field, they work on, by their talents and mental capabilities. My interest is to understand these people- whether it is influenced by genetics, birth order,......more