Re:Ask cperciva: Are great mathematicians born or made?
by whacked_new on Thursday June 26, 2008 @09:32AM
(#228567)
You are aware that Einstein's brain had some very unusual features, right? I don't pay much attention to this, but I remember it is unusual enough that it is safe to say most people's brains don't have those features.
Relativity was not a well-defined problem when Einstein came up with it. You can analyze this intelligence in however many ways, but it is highly possible that "quantum leaps" in scientific advancement come from unusual thinkers -- unusual in a way that you can't just train very hard in and attain.
What interests me, and what I'm worried that focus on this sort of gross statistic deprives us from thinking about, is the non-regular. I'm interested in the philosophical, the revolutionary, the artistic. I'm interested in what made Einstein Einstein. I don't think it's "g."
Slightly more abstractly/hypothetically: The way I kind of see intelligence is that we can function within contexts (e.g. functioning within the "Math context" would be doing math problems) and "g" corresponds to our ability to manipulate symbols generally, so that we are generally good at working within contexts. This is a really abstract way of saying g corresponds to our ability to solve problems. However, I don't think g says anything about long-term problem solving (involving abstraction, self-reflection), novel content creation (involving cross-context thinking), etc.
Does this make sense?