[MUSIC] Where does this notion of genius come from? Is it a fixed idea or does it change over time? It changes as I have suggested in our previous meeting. To demonstrate the changing face of genius across Western history, we should start at the beginning. Our term genius, it turns out is an ancient word and the origins of the concept go back to classical Greece and Rome. The ancient Greeks had several words for the idea of genius, among them "daimon," demon or spirit and "mania," a kind of creative fury that would overtake and consume an individual, especially a poet, a poetic fury if you will. We get our English word genius from the Latin noun "genius" meaning a guardian spirit, a guardian spirit with a special characteristic or innate ability, that comes forth at one's birth and it hovered around and sometimes took control of an individual. In classical Greece and Rome, everyone had a genius. A guardian spirit who oddly did not belong to them. From the Latin word genius use arose the French "genie" and from it in turn came our English Genie. Think of that genie waiting to emerge from the magic lantern of Walt Disney's Aladdin films. Think also of the candles on your birthday cake when you make a wish. Those candles and that birthday wish are a continuation of an ancient custom. They are part of a votive offering that you make to your guardian genius, asking that spirit to do great things for you in the coming year. Can you name a genius of the Middle Ages? Dante, Chaucer, Joan of Arc might come to mind, but the list is short. Did the lights go out in the Dark Ages? No, the concept of genius-- exceptional accomplishment--was simply taken over and repurposed by the Church. In ancient classical times, one made a wish to one's genius. In the Middle Ages, one prayed to a spiritual force, to God, or often to a patron saint for salvation or for help finding one's way home for example, or even help finding such thing as a as a lost comb. The saints, not a genie, now worked miracles on earth because God empowered them to do so. God animated his earthly emissaries by means of a divine spirit or divine afflatus, divine wind. Here we see the communication between God above and the human below. The divine spirit being brought by the Holy Spirit, symbolized here by a dove or in the case of the medieval nun and visionary, Hildegard of Bingen on the right, symbolized by the wavy winds, a divine message coming down from above. God delivers a divine insight from heaven to earth. The great creations of the Middle Ages were thought to be the end result of such divine inspiration. The greatest of all of these are the Gothic cathedrals and they are stunning as in the case of my favorite, the cathedral of Chartres in France, south of Paris. Who is the genius here? In most cases we don't know who designed these cathedrals. We don't know the name of the architect and certainly not that of the master stone carver or the person who did the stained glass. The glaziers who made that beautiful, beautiful stained glass that typify Chartres. The vast majority of the treasures of the Middle Ages were done by Master Anonymous. All the works of genius that you see here on the screen were works of anonymous geniuses inspired, they believed, by God. Time marches on. With the Renaissance and the rebirth of classical values, the great creators on earth, the anonymous geniuses disappeared during the Renaissance. Genius regained a face and a name. Can you name the three on the screen here? Take a moment. Yes, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Shakespeare because they were thought to be communicators of divine ideas. They were sometimes called "il Divino", "il Divino Leonardo" and "il Divino Michelangelo," for example. Their hands could shape in distinctive ways the ideas that the mind of God might conceive. As we enter the late 17th and go into the 18th century in Western history, we enter into what's called the Enlightenment. The Age of Reason, a period during which science began to replace superstition and national governments began to assume the civic authority once held by the Church at this point in history. God and genius part company. God withdrew, leaving the individual as the lone possessor of genius. Genius is now wholly immanent. It comes with birth inside the individual. And there it remains. As the poet John Milton defined genius in 1649, quote: "Genius is a natural ability or capacity quality of mind, the special endowments which fit a man for his peculiar work," end quote. No mention of God or genies or saints. Take a look at this next image. Where are we? Those black taxicabs may give it away. London, Westminster Abbey, a medieval building, the foundations of which go back to the 10th century. But during the 17th century, during the Enlightenment, the saints began to share space with and were eventually overrun by secular worldly figures. Among the first secular non-royal worthy figures to be buried there was Isaac Newton, as you can see with his somewhat "over the top" tomb near the entrance to the choir at the red arrow. Other geniuses welcomed in included the scientist Charles Darwin and the composer George Frederic Handel-- another grandiose monument. Over in poet's corner were John Milton, Charles Dickens, Tennyson and Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning is commemorated there too, as are the Bronte sisters. Mary Ann Evans and Jane Austen. The most recent genius to be buried in Westminster Abbey, of course, physicist Stephen Hawking in 2018. The point is that over time what had been a catholic monastery and royal mausoleum was transformed into something akin to a genius Hall of Fame. And the same thing was going on and would continue to go on in Rome at the Pantheon, where the composer Corelli and the painter Raphael were buried. And the same thing is true in France at the Pantheon there on the Left Bank where, after the revolution, saints were replaced by secular gods-- geniuses such as Voltaire and then later Marie Curie. Most recently in 2021, it was announced that the remains of Josephine Baker would be interred there. So today we have halls of fame, some like Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon in Paris are for geniuses. And of course there are halls of fame for sports. As we see here for American football, basketball and baseball, for rock and roll, for golf, for investment entrepreneurs, for private equity lawyers. But the point here is this: honoring human accomplishment, exceptional human accomplishment, in some kind of mausoleum or Valhalla or Hall of Fame took shape in the West, during the Enlightenment, especially during the 18th century. With the Romanic period in the West, the 19th century, the face of genius changed once again, becoming what we think of genius today. To make the point about the changing face of genius, and the attire of the genius, consider these neat proper portraits of geniuses, Newton, Voltaire, Mozart and Goethe from the 18th century. And now the more disheveled look from later, in the Romantic period, the 19th century, of Beethoven, Van Gogh, Tesla and Einstein. Indeed, the poster boy for genius in the 19th century was above all Ludwig van Beethoven and he was recognized as suc. Picture a lone, eccentric misfit, capable of sudden brilliant ideas, but who suffers for their art. Beethoven was miserable for a lot of reasons and he made all those around him miserable as he created in the midst of chaos, all the while composing extraordinary symphonies and concertos. But Beethoven set the tone for the genius, becoming the archetype that other geniuses consciously or not came to emulate, the eccentric genius. And of course, about this time we get the dark side of genius with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And at the turn of the 20th century, the brilliantly deranged Phantom of the opera of Gaston Leroux. Particularly toward the end of the 19th century, genius and insanity begin to become closely linked. And Hollywood and Broadway today continue to embrace and exploit this romantic image of the insanely brilliant genius-- perhaps the evil genius. Today, when we see a light bulb go on, lights up over a character's head in the cartoon, it serves as a visual symbol that that character has had a bright idea. In truth, as we have seen that act of genius is a creation of the modern incandescent light bulb involved many people, but it ultimately emerged from here. The first research lab in the United States, Thomas Edison's "invention factory" at Menlo Park, New Jersey. The research building is the long one in the center of the picture and they're about two dozen lab technicians work. From this group of about two dozen in 1880, Edison would grow his company to over 10,000 by 1930. Today, Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry and medicine, each is usually awarded not to one genius, but to three and that's the maximum that can be awarded in each discipline in each year. The research team seems to have replaced the solitary genius. The solitary Einstein, can you name the genius at Pfizer or at Moderna? Those corporations that so quickly produced a covid 19 vaccine? Many people, many, many people, many teams were involved. Here's a picture taken by me in a research lab at ASML in Wilton Connecticut a couple of years ago. ASML employs 28,000 people. These are the people who make the machines that make the computer chips that we need for everyday use. What you see here is only a small small part of a very large scientific team. But the most obvious change in the face of genius in recent times in the West is what it looks like. Let's consider the faces of those paragons of genius from the 18th to the early 20th centuries and we'll combine them into one image. What about today? What has changed? Well, what has changed is not only the recognition of forgotten women geniuses, but also the accomplishment and immediate recognition of the transformative acts by women geniuses. This will be the subject of our next session. Similarly, going back to that "all white boys' club" of earlier centuries. What has happened? Well, again, the face of genius has changed to include these figures, geniuses that we will be discussing in our course as we proceed. Finally, finally, what have we learned from this quick review of the changing face of genius throughout history? Perhaps that our notion of genius changes over time because we humans, although we always seem to want the genius, we change our minds as to what it is. The genius is a guardian spirit, a God, a saint, an individual human, are a team of humans, one race or all races. Genius seems to be whatever the moment in history requires. But wait a minute. Surely some purists will object to this transitory, populist interpretation of genius. Genius is whatever people want to make it? Is this a popularity contest? What happened to absolute truth and beauty? Isn't Einstein's General Theory of Relativity true and absolute? Are not certain immutable scientific laws, true and absolute? Surely yes, but I'm told that there have been at least four explanations for gravity during the last 2500 years, each convincing in its particular moment in time. As several philosophers have said in different ways regarding absolutes: The only absolute in life, the only thing that is fixed and eternal, eternal and fixed ironically is change. And for genius, this appears to be true and absolute, at least for the moment!
