Are We Running Out Of Scientific Geniuses?
The Greatest Modern Genius Einstein in 1931. Wikimedia CommonsIn the latest issue of Nature, Dean Keith Simonton argues that modern science is just building on what's already known, rather than upending what we think we know. Is the world clear out of geniuses? Will we ever have another Copernicus, another Darwin, another Einstein to shatter the foundations of our beliefs? Perhaps not, says a man who ought to know. Dean Keith Simonton, professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis, has dedicated the better part of his career to studying geniuses--people who possess what he calls the highest level of scientific creativity. He thinks they may very well have ceased to exist. It may be that they have been rendered impossible, simply because of the way science works anymore. Other psychologists and even geneticists have argued that modern society is short on astoundingly intelligent members. Pick your reason, from genetic mutations to...