II. How Brilliant Must You Be In Order To Be Creative?
When Time magazine designated Albert Einstein in 1999 as The Person Of The Century, nobody really protested that decision.
Albert Einstein was chosen as the person of the century, on the grounds that he was the preeminent scientist in a century dominated by science. The editors of Time believed the 20th century “will be remembered foremost for its science and technology”, and Einstein “serves as a symbol of all the scientists”
In fact, the word “Einstein” is universally accepted as a synonym for the word “genius”. You could switch genius for Einstein in a sentence and nobody would mark you down.
It is surprising then that Albert Einstein is not considered to be the smartest person ever. During his lifetime, it was well known that several other scientists and researchers possessed an IQ (intelligence quotient) that was much higher than his.
In terms of raw brain power, it is accepted that certain people, like John von Neumann for example where much more intelligent than Albert Einstein. John von Neumann had a reputation as a “frighteningly fast problem solver”.
John von Neumann would often resolve difficult problems in an amazing short time, problems which took experts many hours, months, or even years to solve.
Neumann’s mind was simply quicker and more powerful than anybody of his era, yet, nobody considers him greater than Albert Einstein. Neumann published over 150 papers in his life: about 60 in pure mathematics, 60 in applied mathematics, 20 in physics, and the remainder on special mathematical subjects or non- mathematical ones which affirms that he was a very productive thinker.
Why then is Neumann not as prominent as Einstein?
Eugene Wigner, a Nobel-prize winning physicist who was friends with both Einstein and von Neumann is quoted to have said:
“I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as John von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed.
But Einstein’s understanding was deeper even than von Neumann’s. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann’s. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of von Neumann’s brilliance, he never produced anything as original.”
The truth is that Albert Einstein did not discover his world- changing formula: E=mc2 by working towards it from existing logic and reason. He did not think it up.
He intuited it from “the universe” and then worked backwards from the answer. The initial idea simply came to him.
It could be considered comical then that when Albert Einstein died (and without seeking necessary consent from his family), the pathologist performing an autopsy stole Einstein’s brain and preserved it, hoping that cytoarchitectonics, the study of brain cells under a microscope, would reveal useful information as to why Einstein was so brilliant. Was his brain different from the brain of others?
Well, nobody needs Einstein’s brain to be creative. Your brain is more than enough to conceive creative ideas. Your creativity is not linked to your IQ score.
You do not need to be a mad genius before you can unleash your inventions. Creativity and inventiveness is not a function of your brilliance, but a fruit of your intuitiveness.
You can be more brilliant and exhibit a higher form of creativity than somebody with a higher IQ than you.
Creativity is about intuition and not brilliance. Intuition – the non- rational, non-logical, the subconscious, the spiritual.
Creativity is not really a function of how brilliant are you? Rather, it is a function of how spiritual are you?
I do not wish to be misunderstood; logic and reason have a role to play in creativity and invention, but the initial idea does not depend on anything logical. The kind of ideas that spur creativity and invention often happens outside the realms of logic and reason.
The role of logic, reason, thinking and calculation comes to play after the seed of the original idea has been sown and not before. It is after one has received an idea that one must engage reason, logic and thoughts to process the idea, refine it and execute it.
The next clarification would be the role of knowledge. Even though creativity is a spiritual affair, it does not negate the role of knowledge. Knowledge provides a kind of fuel for the subconscious mind to work with; the more the knowledge available for you to work with, the better.
Acquisition of data, information and knowledge is no guarantee that we are getting closer to new insights that are really needed for inventions. However, it is important to be armed with as much knowledge as possible.
When you try to explore your creativity without having sufficient knowledge, the expressions of your creativity will be mediocre. I am fond of saying if you lack the intellectual framework needed to work out your creative ideas in the physical realm, it is useless because you end up building “a lizard”, even though the picture inside your spirit is “an alligator!”
Calculated thinking, and logic is meant to take you from one end to the other, but creativity is something that could lead you anywhere. John von Neumann possessed a powerful ACTIVE mind, but the mind only comes into play after the initial idea has been seeded.
Your powers of thinking are only relevant in working through problems that are already defined, things your mind can already see and comprehend. Creative and inventive ideas are not birthed by the ACTIVE mind, they are birthed from the spirit.
If logic, reason and thought are the only things we need for creative and inventive ideas, then we should expect that computers would possess the ability to generate ideas. It would be hard to find a human being (dead or alive) that can match the speed of a computer.
What we discover is that computers merely process whatever data is available, and nothing more. When mankind finally develops real artificial intelligence platforms, we will see clearly the distinctions between man and machine, especially with respect to new ideas and possibilities.
Inventive ideas are not a function of brilliance aka how fast your mind can work. Your IQ number is mostly irrelevant. Creativity is mostly a product of intuition more than anything else; can you intuit ideas from the universe? Rephrased as: can you pick up ideas from the mind of God?
Creativity is unleashed when one learns how to tap into Divine Intelligence, armed with the necessary pre-requisite knowledge. There is a way the Spirit of God can employ the mind as a tool to manifest Divine Intelligence.
This is the true nature of our task: Learning how to tap into God – the Source of Creativity and Invention. The person that seeks a manifestation of their creativity at the highest levels must also be ready to pay attention to the spiritual, which is where the ideas will come from. Idea generation is not a conscious process, brilliance has nothing to do with it.