Cognitive celebrity
Albert Einstein was a genius, but he wasn’t the only one – why has his name come to mean something superhuman?
"Thanks to the diversity of human experience and human talents, we know that genius isn’t a monolithic quality that appears in identical form everywhere we find it. Einstein’s genius was different from Curie’s, and scientific genius is different from musical genius. Celebrity, on the other hand, tends to follow more predictable patterns. Once a person becomes famous, they tend to stay that way. Had he lived in another era, Einstein might have been a decent physicist, but he wouldn’t have been the Einstein we know. But because he lived in a special sliver of time, after the lights of fame had begun to shine bright, and before science came to be seen as a team sport, he has become our genius."
No comments:
Post a Comment