1 00:00:00,660 --> 00:00:08,040 Nice to see so many people. Thank you for coming. I'm not sure I can answer some of the really difficult questions about genius, 2 00:00:08,040 --> 00:00:15,810 but at least I can raise questions and give you some idea of what other people have said about it and perhaps some of my own thoughts along the way. 3 00:00:16,980 --> 00:00:23,370 Let's begin with an Oxford connection, which is in the exhibition. 4 00:00:23,370 --> 00:00:31,230 It's rather a delightful caricature by Max Beerbohm of The Proctor, speaking to Dante in Oxford. 5 00:00:31,740 --> 00:00:36,570 And I think the caption is Proctor, your name and college. 6 00:00:37,860 --> 00:00:43,470 So it sort of hints at the difficulty of recognising who is and who isn't a genius. 7 00:00:45,810 --> 00:00:49,740 How do we define the idea? Well, it's really difficult. 8 00:00:50,010 --> 00:00:54,330 I think one has to be honest and say that there is no agreed definition. 9 00:00:54,690 --> 00:00:59,880 And I think we perhaps would be disappointed, to be honest, if there was a definition of what genius is. 10 00:01:01,680 --> 00:01:10,020 The scientists and psychologists and various obviously artistic people have looked into the question, but there isn't really a consensus. 11 00:01:11,010 --> 00:01:16,460 I think what I'll do is just remind you of. A few geniuses to begin with. 12 00:01:17,900 --> 00:01:21,830 Leonardo Obviously Shakespeare. 13 00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:28,910 This is the first folio in the Bodleian, which is in the exhibition Mozart. 14 00:01:31,250 --> 00:01:40,730 Newton. These are all, so to speak, canonical geniuses and people that there wouldn't be much dispute about inputting into this category of genius. 15 00:01:41,150 --> 00:01:46,220 Darwin. The young Darwin around the time he came up with his theory of natural selection. 16 00:01:47,140 --> 00:01:58,900 And Einstein from the last years of his life when he was sticking out his tongue at some journalists, I think now what do they really have in common? 17 00:02:00,340 --> 00:02:03,850 I'm going to give you. My definition. 18 00:02:03,850 --> 00:02:13,310 And by the way, I'm not going to say very much in this short talk about political geniuses and geniuses in fields outside the arts and sciences. 19 00:02:13,330 --> 00:02:19,960 I'm really going to stick to the more intellectual qualities of genius, because I think otherwise the talk will get completely diffused. 20 00:02:19,970 --> 00:02:30,790 But obviously we do speak about evil geniuses like Stalin and Hitler, and we speak about political geniuses like Churchill and Napoleon and so on. 21 00:02:31,180 --> 00:02:35,230 So it's a it's a complicated picture, but I want to limit is a bit. 22 00:02:35,240 --> 00:02:38,440 So arts and sciences is my focus today. 23 00:02:40,540 --> 00:02:50,350 I would say it's probably fair to say that genius is permanently change the way that humanity perceives the world. 24 00:02:51,370 --> 00:02:55,960 This is this is the really distinguishing characteristic. It has to be permanent. 25 00:02:57,130 --> 00:03:04,900 There are lots of people who have a temporary effect, but genius really changes things forever, so to speak, and that is recognised widely. 26 00:03:05,830 --> 00:03:15,819 But if you're pressed to be more precise, as I have been in writing about it, it gets quite difficult to to be to be definite. 27 00:03:15,820 --> 00:03:21,100 And I'll give you a a few more possible geniuses as Picasso. 28 00:03:22,990 --> 00:03:29,530 Opinions still probably differ about him. Most painters would probably recognise him as a genius. 29 00:03:29,530 --> 00:03:42,010 But Picasso himself said in the 1950s, When I am alone with myself, I cannot regard myself as an artist in the strict sense of the word. 30 00:03:42,310 --> 00:03:48,820 And then this bit is important. The great painters were Giotto, Rembrandt and Goya. 31 00:03:49,150 --> 00:03:55,180 So from his point of view, they were the geniuses. Virginia Woolf. 32 00:03:55,450 --> 00:04:00,520 I've written a bit about him in one of my books for Oxford University Press on Genius. 33 00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:08,620 She's often considered one by literary people, but her mainly Lee, her biographer, 34 00:04:09,250 --> 00:04:17,530 who was obviously here in Oxford, wrote in the biography of Wolfe in 2002, not very long ago. 35 00:04:18,340 --> 00:04:22,330 Woolf's reputation in this country has always been extremely mixed. 36 00:04:23,260 --> 00:04:28,030 So, again, controversial, not a fixed genius, so to speak. 37 00:04:28,750 --> 00:04:40,450 And finally, Stephen Hawking. My father was a physicist here in Oxford, and certainly Hawking is a greatly respected figure amongst physicists. 38 00:04:40,450 --> 00:04:45,729 The public thinks he's like Einstein, I suppose an out and out genius. 39 00:04:45,730 --> 00:04:50,620 But my experience talking to a physicist is that he's way widely respected, but he's not. 40 00:04:51,490 --> 00:05:00,760 He's not really considered another Einstein. So, again, his his status varies depending on who you're talking to. 41 00:05:02,140 --> 00:05:12,300 Now. It's a highly individual and unique characteristic genius, but it does have a compelling quality. 42 00:05:12,690 --> 00:05:15,750 I mean, Darwin, his ideas are still. 43 00:05:17,640 --> 00:05:22,350 Very refreshing for biologists around the world. People are working on them actively still. 44 00:05:22,740 --> 00:05:29,370 Same is true of Einstein and obviously in the arts, Mozart, Shakespeare and many others. 45 00:05:29,370 --> 00:05:35,310 Their works are still widely performed way outside their original cultures and countries. 46 00:05:37,050 --> 00:05:46,450 Contemporary of geniuses. I may come and go, but I think this idea of genius will not let go of us. 47 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:52,780 And I think the reason for that is it does transcend fashion, fame and reputation. 48 00:05:53,260 --> 00:05:56,499 And it is the opposite of, so to speak, a period piece. 49 00:05:56,500 --> 00:06:03,970 And we we need that to to define quality and in a wider sense, in a historical sense. 50 00:06:05,840 --> 00:06:10,010 The word actually comes from Roman antiquity. 51 00:06:10,010 --> 00:06:20,930 Originally it's described in in Latin to mean the the to a genius of a person, a place, an institution and so on. 52 00:06:21,680 --> 00:06:25,850 So it has a somewhat different meaning originally from how we now use it, 53 00:06:27,710 --> 00:06:33,830 and it really acquires its later meaning only in the Renaissance and even after that. 54 00:06:35,330 --> 00:06:45,290 This is Vesalius, the anatomist in his great work from 1543, which is in the exhibition as well. 55 00:06:45,290 --> 00:06:57,200 De Humani Corporis Fabrica. On the fabric of the human body and inscribed here in Latin is a motto that is quite famous. 56 00:06:58,770 --> 00:07:03,629 Genius lives on. All else is mortal. And this is 1543. 57 00:07:03,630 --> 00:07:10,170 This is about the time when we're starting to get the modern conception of genius coming in rather than the ancient Roman one, 58 00:07:10,170 --> 00:07:15,910 which is quite different. And the word, as you'll notice, is in Jennie-O. 59 00:07:16,650 --> 00:07:24,090 But if I can, while you can see it in Gentium is the word which is being used here, not the old Latin word genius. 60 00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:34,290 In the Enlightenment genius really becomes in the 18th century how we we conceive of it now, more or less. 61 00:07:34,830 --> 00:07:41,430 So. It's so to speak. Homer was not a genius before the 18th century. 62 00:07:41,430 --> 00:07:42,630 He was much revered. 63 00:07:43,170 --> 00:07:53,850 But in our modern sense of genius, we have to wait until the time of Dr. Johnson, really, and the 1750s and Addison and people like that. 64 00:07:53,850 --> 00:08:02,550 Before we start using genius in the modern sense as somebody who, through dedication, can achieve great things. 65 00:08:02,850 --> 00:08:10,380 It's not God given, in other words. And I think Johnson's definition, though it's quite long, is worth worth reading. 66 00:08:11,220 --> 00:08:17,640 That's from 1750, from the Rambler, his periodical, since a genius, whatever it be, 67 00:08:17,640 --> 00:08:23,580 is like fire in the flint and his expression, only to be produced by collision with a proper subject. 68 00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:29,190 It's the business of every man to try, whether his faculties may not happily cooperate with his desires. 69 00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:35,740 And since they whose proficiency he admires, knew that own force only by the event he needs, 70 00:08:35,750 --> 00:08:41,440 but engage in the same undertaking with equal spear as it may reasonably hope for equal success. 71 00:08:41,800 --> 00:08:52,360 In other words, according to Johnson, but not according to to the earlier definition, we can all potentially become geniuses. 72 00:08:54,150 --> 00:09:07,680 The scientific study begins in the 1860s, a century after Johnson with Francis Galton, who founded psychology and was the cousin of Darwin. 73 00:09:08,850 --> 00:09:14,100 And he's quite well known now for his work hereditary genius. 74 00:09:14,460 --> 00:09:20,070 It's gone out of usage, but it's historically an important volume. 75 00:09:21,270 --> 00:09:25,530 He actually called it an inquiry into its laws and consequences. 76 00:09:27,310 --> 00:09:32,440 This is what he looked like, by the way, posing as a criminal in the 1890s, just for the fun of it. 77 00:09:33,070 --> 00:09:41,830 This is Francis Galton, but I think it's quite strange because Galton did a great deal of research examining the backgrounds, 78 00:09:41,830 --> 00:09:50,050 the talents, the status of hundreds, if not thousands of individuals who are potentially geniuses. 79 00:09:50,560 --> 00:09:54,130 But he, in fact, hardly uses the word genius in the book. 80 00:09:55,300 --> 00:09:57,730 And there's no entry in the index. 81 00:09:57,760 --> 00:10:05,530 There was a lot on intelligence in the book, but there's very, very little on genius as such, even though he called it hereditary genius. 82 00:10:07,810 --> 00:10:11,350 And in fact, I discovered that in the second edition. 83 00:10:11,350 --> 00:10:21,070 He says in the preface, I wish I could have retitled the book Hereditary Ability, because genius, I was not using the term in a technical sense. 84 00:10:21,340 --> 00:10:25,180 And it's it's people have misunderstood me, he said. 85 00:10:26,110 --> 00:10:33,100 In fact, genius. There was not the slightest intention on my part to use this word in any technical sense. 86 00:10:33,460 --> 00:10:37,120 I really wanted to express it exceptionally high ability. 87 00:10:37,900 --> 00:10:42,400 And then he says, there's much that is indefinite in the application of the word genius. 88 00:10:43,530 --> 00:10:52,830 It is applied to many a youth by his contemporaries, but more rarely by biographers who do not always agree among themselves. 89 00:10:53,550 --> 00:11:01,680 I think that's quite nice. As a biographer of a few potential geniuses, I can see that he has a good point there. 90 00:11:02,250 --> 00:11:10,860 Biographers devote enough time to a subject to really consider it from all perspectives, but they don't always agree on the status of their subjects. 91 00:11:11,820 --> 00:11:18,680 And of course, it changes with time. Now distinguishing talent from genius. 92 00:11:19,340 --> 00:11:24,930 How do we do that? This is quite a tricky subject, too. 93 00:11:26,190 --> 00:11:32,100 I mean, should we we should we imagine that there is a continuum between talent and genius, 94 00:11:32,520 --> 00:11:36,520 i.e., you become more and more talented until you become a genius, so to speak? 95 00:11:36,540 --> 00:11:47,070 Or is there a discontinuity so that there are lots of talented people, but are small number of geniuses who are in a separate category altogether? 96 00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:51,960 There are times when the term is used like that, but. 97 00:11:53,500 --> 00:11:54,850 I'm suspicious of that. 98 00:11:55,060 --> 00:12:03,460 A physicist, for instance, do tend to think that Einstein is somebody very special as compared to Niels Bohr, his contemporary. 99 00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:10,040 But. I think that's probably hard to justify. 100 00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:22,280 And in music, Mozart is often regarded as somehow divine, whereas Haydn, who greatly admired Mozart, is one of several composers who admired. 101 00:12:22,610 --> 00:12:29,150 Is there a discontinuity in talent there? Well, it's useful to ask musicians what they think. 102 00:12:29,600 --> 00:12:36,260 And several surveys have been done, and the details don't particularly matter. 103 00:12:37,010 --> 00:12:46,260 But this is from 1933. Uh, I think it's for American orchestras. 104 00:12:46,550 --> 00:12:51,980 The musicians were asked to rank these composers, and they were given a list. 105 00:12:52,010 --> 00:13:01,490 They were not asked to pick their own. And two popular composers at the time, Victor Herbert and MacDowell, were chosen as as reference points. 106 00:13:02,570 --> 00:13:07,250 And you can see they didn't do terribly well in the in the rankings. 107 00:13:07,250 --> 00:13:22,250 They were given bottom rank by everyone. Now, uh, there are several other surveys as well, and they do tend to prove, I hope that's going to go away. 108 00:13:22,580 --> 00:13:28,890 How do I get rid of that? I'm sorry. I've probably tapped it by mistake. 109 00:13:29,220 --> 00:13:34,890 Thank you. Thank you very much. You just make sure I've got that right. 110 00:13:35,250 --> 00:13:41,690 The second survey was done. Later in 1969. 111 00:13:41,690 --> 00:13:43,340 So things have changed a bit by then. 112 00:13:44,090 --> 00:13:54,710 36 years have passed since the first one, but broadly speaking, you find Bach very high and Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn. 113 00:13:55,640 --> 00:13:59,060 And I think Handel now appears in the list at number six. 114 00:13:59,060 --> 00:14:05,840 And that's an interesting fact, because in 1933, they didn't even put him in the list of 19 composers. 115 00:14:05,840 --> 00:14:15,870 He wasn't even considered a possible genius. It shows you how fashion can change even in much later after some of his death. 116 00:14:15,890 --> 00:14:19,230 It's an interesting perspective on it. 117 00:14:20,150 --> 00:14:25,600 And then there's another survey of performance frequencies done in 1968. 118 00:14:25,940 --> 00:14:34,730 And this is how works how much works are actually performed with Mozart now coming at the top, Beethoven, Bach following him. 119 00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:40,520 And Handel still pretty high at, I think, position number seven. 120 00:14:41,510 --> 00:14:47,630 That's not an opinion that's based on on how many times the works are actually performed in a certain period. 121 00:14:48,920 --> 00:14:56,780 And I think this is quite revealing because it shows there isn't a discontinuity between genius and talent. 122 00:14:57,770 --> 00:15:08,300 The performance frequency simply falls steadily from Mozart's figure of 6.1 right down to 13 at 0.2. 123 00:15:08,330 --> 00:15:19,520 There is no break in in the rankings showing that the people above it are geniuses and the people below it are all just very talented. 124 00:15:22,780 --> 00:15:26,500 Now another distinguishing mark of genius. 125 00:15:28,920 --> 00:15:38,280 Apart from the ones I mentioned so far, is probably gradual preparation with sudden illumination, the idea of eureka moments. 126 00:15:41,750 --> 00:15:47,240 Perspiration with respiration, with inspiration. This is another way of putting it, 127 00:15:49,100 --> 00:16:00,110 and I think it's quite a nice comment that a Greek poet made on the subject probably hesiod before the gates of excellence, 128 00:16:00,110 --> 00:16:10,790 the high gods have placed sweat. That's more or less equivalent, I suppose, to Edison's comment, which is much more famous. 129 00:16:10,790 --> 00:16:19,850 Perhaps that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. 130 00:16:20,930 --> 00:16:32,300 And there is actually a version by George Bernard Shaw who changed the proportion after Edison to to, I think, 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. 131 00:16:32,570 --> 00:16:42,320 So already you see that people disagree about the precise proportions, but still the concept is fairly common that a lot of hard work is needed, 132 00:16:42,830 --> 00:16:48,710 combined with this rather more mysterious ingredient we call inspiration. 133 00:16:51,240 --> 00:16:56,160 That's Edison around the time he made the comment, actually in 1903. 134 00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:08,410 Now Darwin in old age had something quite revealing, I think, to say about perspiration and inspiration. 135 00:17:08,420 --> 00:17:20,420 He was not so pithy as Edison or as, um, he said, but he said in a letter to his son when he was quite old, um, 136 00:17:21,170 --> 00:17:28,220 he said to his son, I've been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things? 137 00:17:29,210 --> 00:17:34,620 And a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever. 138 00:17:35,120 --> 00:17:39,920 Much cleverer than the discoverer. Never originate anything. 139 00:17:40,940 --> 00:17:51,710 As far as I can conjecture, the art of discovery consists in her habitually searching for causes or meaning of everything which occurs. 140 00:17:53,000 --> 00:18:02,810 Habitually, I think is the key word there. This implies sharp observation and requires as much knowledge as possible of the subject investigated. 141 00:18:04,040 --> 00:18:12,589 So it's it's not it's not as pithy as Edison, but he is saying that you have to work constantly if you're going to become a genius. 142 00:18:12,590 --> 00:18:18,110 And and there was a comment by Newton that he was asked how he came up with his theory of gravity. 143 00:18:18,110 --> 00:18:24,590 And he did say something very similar, he said, by constantly thinking on it or on it. 144 00:18:25,850 --> 00:18:33,290 So again, the idea is common. And in the case of Einstein, he was working right up to his deathbed, 145 00:18:33,470 --> 00:18:42,260 even in his hospital and by the side of his bed after he died, his calculations were discovered right up to the end. 146 00:18:42,260 --> 00:18:45,410 He was working. Now, there's no doubt that. 147 00:18:47,130 --> 00:18:50,910 Everyone I've looked at fits this this model. 148 00:18:51,090 --> 00:18:56,399 They do all work continually and they're mainly prolific pretty well. 149 00:18:56,400 --> 00:19:02,370 All of them produce a lot. Just to give you a few figures. 150 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:17,380 Edison. Published or owned, uh, 1093 patents, which meant that he lodged an average of one patent every two weeks of his adult life. 151 00:19:18,850 --> 00:19:24,540 Bach. Das Bock on average composed. 152 00:19:26,940 --> 00:19:30,510 Excuse me. 20 pages of finished music per day. 153 00:19:32,730 --> 00:19:38,400 Which is sufficient to keep a copyist occupied for an entire lifetime just copying out the parts. 154 00:19:39,870 --> 00:19:48,180 Picasso had more than 20,000 works. Obviously some of them were quite minor, but it's an enormous figure. 155 00:19:48,550 --> 00:19:51,570 Uh, 240 publications by Einstein. 156 00:19:53,130 --> 00:19:58,440 And Freud, who I haven't mentioned much so far, produced 330 publications. 157 00:19:59,010 --> 00:20:08,050 These are these are very prolific figures. Inspiration, perspiration. 158 00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:17,530 Couple of musicians, Elliott Carter and Aaron Copeland contemporaries had had nice things to say. 159 00:20:17,530 --> 00:20:22,089 And I'll just tell you what what they are very short, Carter said. 160 00:20:22,090 --> 00:20:28,060 If there is inspiration. It's not something that comes at the beginning of the piece. 161 00:20:28,080 --> 00:20:35,840 It comes in the course of writing it. And I think everyone who's who's a writer recognises the truth of that. 162 00:20:36,560 --> 00:20:42,200 But Aaron Copeland said you can't pick the moment when you're going to have ideas, 163 00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:47,660 it picks you and then you might be completely absorbed in another piece of work. 164 00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:54,150 So it's quite a quite a difficult thing to quantify. Now. 165 00:20:56,510 --> 00:21:00,620 Theories of genius. Theories of creativity. There are a lot of them. 166 00:21:02,150 --> 00:21:07,090 I don't think having looked at most of them in some detail, I don't think they work very well. 167 00:21:07,100 --> 00:21:11,210 But they still have interesting pointers. The the. Well, some of them do. 168 00:21:11,810 --> 00:21:20,000 And I want to mention a couple. One is by a psychologist, an American, and the other is by an economist. 169 00:21:21,110 --> 00:21:27,140 And I suppose it doesn't matter what they're called, really, but they're both recent academics. 170 00:21:28,550 --> 00:21:32,180 And in the psychologists model. 171 00:21:34,360 --> 00:21:43,030 He doesn't look for what is creativity, he looks for where is creativity, and he defines it and by implication, 172 00:21:43,030 --> 00:21:50,110 genius, obviously, as so to speak, at the interface between the creator and. 173 00:21:50,990 --> 00:21:58,460 A group of critics or experts who have to assess that creator's work. 174 00:21:59,120 --> 00:22:05,059 So it's it's the interaction between the two that he he regards as the definition 175 00:22:05,060 --> 00:22:09,470 of creativity is not something inherent in the the person themselves. 176 00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:14,570 And he he says that. 177 00:22:15,580 --> 00:22:19,030 If you apply that idea to Vincent van Gaal. 178 00:22:20,210 --> 00:22:27,920 It's quite revealing because as we all know, Van Gogh died largely unappreciated. 179 00:22:28,580 --> 00:22:39,170 I don't think he had sold anything when he when he died of perhaps one work, but he was regarded as a as a very strange artist. 180 00:22:39,170 --> 00:22:42,380 And now, of course, it's quite, quite different. 181 00:22:43,280 --> 00:22:50,630 And this psychologist says in his theory in relation to Van Gaal, 182 00:22:51,140 --> 00:22:58,670 that Van Gaal's creativity came into being when a sufficient number of experts felt 183 00:22:58,670 --> 00:23:03,710 that his paintings had something important to contribute to the domain of art. 184 00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,980 Without such a response. Van Gaal. 185 00:23:09,370 --> 00:23:13,810 Would have remained what? He was a disturbed man who painted strange canvases. 186 00:23:15,930 --> 00:23:27,180 Now. I think this is an interesting model, partly because it does show or explain to some extent why opinions change about artists and scientists, 187 00:23:27,180 --> 00:23:33,630 and some become geniuses or regarded as geniuses with time, and others are not. 188 00:23:34,560 --> 00:23:47,060 But it does actually disturb us in another way, because we feel that we have inherent qualities which should not really need recognition by experts. 189 00:23:47,070 --> 00:23:51,270 But in practice, genius does require that expert assessment. 190 00:23:52,110 --> 00:23:56,819 It's not something which is magical and which belongs to to the Creator. 191 00:23:56,820 --> 00:24:06,750 And you have to have this this circle of cognoscenti who develop with time and become more interested or not, as the case may be. 192 00:24:08,340 --> 00:24:10,530 In defining that person as a genius. 193 00:24:10,970 --> 00:24:24,300 Now, the second theory by The Economist is in a way easier to follow because it's based on the price of works by artists. 194 00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:30,600 And he looks at the works of Picasso and the works of Suzanne, and he compares the two. 195 00:24:31,770 --> 00:24:39,060 And he wrote a book called Old Masters and Young Geniuses, which gives you a hint of of his theory. 196 00:24:40,980 --> 00:24:45,719 Now, this is the age price profile for Pablo Picasso. 197 00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:50,580 And as The Economist points out, his name is David Gallants. 198 00:24:50,580 --> 00:24:57,170 And perhaps I should say. The highest prices for Picasso's works are paid when he was young. 199 00:24:58,380 --> 00:25:09,090 And that's still true in his twenties. Like them, LaSalle d'Avignon was painted around the age of 26, and that's that's a peak in Picasso's. 200 00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:11,940 The prices of his works. 201 00:25:13,590 --> 00:25:26,879 Now, there's a great contrast with Suzanne, where the work actually gets more and more valuable with time and in his when he's around 67. 202 00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:33,150 That's that's I think the point at which Galveston compares him with Picasso and says that there 203 00:25:33,150 --> 00:25:40,440 is a tremendous contrast that Picasso's works are much more valuable at age 26 than Suzanne's. 204 00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:48,810 And the other way is true. The other way around is true for Suzanne when he gets older versus Picasso and 205 00:25:48,810 --> 00:25:54,240 Dallas and tries to define two kinds of artists on the basis of this difference, 206 00:25:54,810 --> 00:25:58,620 the conceptual artist and the experimental artist. 207 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:08,520 And in his opinion, Picasso is a conceptual artist, and Suzanne is an experimental artist. 208 00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:15,419 And the way he he distinguishes between the two is that conceptual artists like Picasso, 209 00:26:15,420 --> 00:26:21,780 who who succeed very young, are supposed to draw their ideas from their imagination. 210 00:26:21,780 --> 00:26:28,229 Whereas experimental artists work from nature and they plan their works carefully, 211 00:26:28,230 --> 00:26:37,230 the conceptual artists are using sketches, preparatory sketches, and then they work swiftly, and then they sign the works. 212 00:26:38,550 --> 00:26:42,540 And in many cases, his categories do work. 213 00:26:42,540 --> 00:26:48,140 Suzanne certainly didn't work in the way that Picasso did from his imagination. 214 00:26:48,150 --> 00:26:51,810 He worked from nature much more. He did not use preparatory sketches. 215 00:26:52,590 --> 00:26:57,390 He worked slowly, and he often did not sign his works. 216 00:27:00,150 --> 00:27:06,700 And according to this theory. The conceptual art is burned out, so to speak. 217 00:27:07,450 --> 00:27:13,390 Quite young. The source of inspiration dies and they start to repeat themselves. 218 00:27:13,750 --> 00:27:18,700 Whereas the experimentalists go on developing with age and get better and better. 219 00:27:20,290 --> 00:27:24,189 Now I think it's and it's a theory worth thinking about. 220 00:27:24,190 --> 00:27:27,100 The trouble is that Vanguard doesn't fit it very well. 221 00:27:28,450 --> 00:27:34,450 I mean, he he he isn't really a conceptual artist, which is what The Economist Gallants and claims, 222 00:27:34,450 --> 00:27:41,140 because he did actually work partly from his own imagined nation, but in later life, very much from nature. 223 00:27:41,410 --> 00:27:44,880 And he did use some preparatory sketches. 224 00:27:44,900 --> 00:27:48,430 So it's a complicated situation. He's really a bit of both. 225 00:27:48,730 --> 00:27:54,790 And that's very often the case with genius. You find both the the conceptual and the experimental. 226 00:27:57,700 --> 00:28:03,219 I think the only law that really works for genius and even this is certainly debateable, 227 00:28:03,220 --> 00:28:09,879 but I've dwelt upon it in a couple of my books is this law called the ten year Rule? 228 00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:19,450 And I just want to tell you about that at the end of this talk, because I think the evidence is more conclusive and is quite easy to follow. 229 00:28:21,370 --> 00:28:29,410 The ten year rule. It was actually first proposed by psychologists in the eighties. 230 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:33,700 Uh, a psychologist called John Hayes suggested that. 231 00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:48,130 You could define genius in terms of taking ten years of steady application in the field before you made your first breakthrough. 232 00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:54,000 And oh, ten years or more, but it's often about ten years. 233 00:28:54,000 --> 00:29:00,960 And he started looking at a whole range of artists and scientists and also many others to see whether that rule actually applied. 234 00:29:01,770 --> 00:29:06,960 And he found that it did. And many other psychologists then looked at the evidence and agreed with him. 235 00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:19,110 I mean, it certainly does broadly apply to athletes, concert pianists, chess players and and and sportsmen. 236 00:29:19,980 --> 00:29:23,910 And it's also found to apply to artists and scientists, as are now. 237 00:29:24,930 --> 00:29:26,670 I'll now explain a little more. 238 00:29:29,050 --> 00:29:44,980 Just to give you an idea of how broad ranging it is, I just included two extremely disparate works to show you how how I think it works for both. 239 00:29:46,420 --> 00:29:50,180 Well, architecture. St Paul's Cathedral. 240 00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:54,280 Christopher Wren's design of the Triple Dome. And. 241 00:29:56,560 --> 00:30:06,040 A film maker. Satyajit Ray, the Indian filmmaker who's who Oxford gave an honorary doctorate to in the seventies. 242 00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:13,540 And I've written a biography about him. His classic films, The Awful Trilogy and made in the 1950s. 243 00:30:13,540 --> 00:30:18,370 I think it works for both Ren and Ray and of course, many others. 244 00:30:19,350 --> 00:30:23,820 And I made a little chart here to try and get my point across. 245 00:30:24,570 --> 00:30:28,740 In case you're not familiar at all with this idea. 246 00:30:30,830 --> 00:30:44,810 Christopher Wren's first architectural commission was in Cambridge in 1663 and the great model of St Paul's Cathedral dates from ten years later. 247 00:30:46,730 --> 00:30:51,440 Faraday I've just chosen some exemplary figures here. 248 00:30:51,470 --> 00:30:58,500 Of course, there are many others I could have picked. The design of or the understanding of the electric motor in the Dynamo. 249 00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:05,760 Comes about ten years after his first starts getting her start studying physics. 250 00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:20,310 Darwin. The Theory of Natural Selection 1838 is about ten years, almost exactly ten years after Darwin starts working on biology in Cambridge. 251 00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:33,540 Einstein It's very precise. Special Relativity was published in 1905 and Einstein's first ideas on the subject come from a 252 00:31:33,540 --> 00:31:45,959 dream so daydream that he had a famous one in his teens in 1895 when he was still at school, 253 00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:53,730 more or less. And then I've included Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, because he may or may not be a genius. 254 00:31:53,730 --> 00:32:03,480 But I guess that's something we could we could easily debate, given the importance of the World Wide Web now. 255 00:32:03,490 --> 00:32:15,750 But his first Web based computer program is about ten years before the launch of the World Wide Web, when he was working at CERN as a physicist. 256 00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:27,180 Now in the arts, Shelley, his great creative explosion of 18 1920, that comes ten years later after he first starts publishing. 257 00:32:27,870 --> 00:32:36,060 Picasso later. Marcel d'Avignon is just ten years or 11 years after he first starts training as a painter in Barcelona. 258 00:32:37,030 --> 00:32:41,020 Hemingway, I think, is a fair example. 259 00:32:41,890 --> 00:32:47,799 In 1916, he was publishing his first work in school magazines, and then The Sun Also Rises. 260 00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:52,300 His first major novel occurs ten years later. 261 00:32:52,570 --> 00:32:56,410 Satyajit Ray I just mentioned the Apu trilogy. 262 00:32:56,650 --> 00:33:07,000 The first film, Pather Panchali was made just over ten years after he first started writing film scenarios in India and even the Beatles. 263 00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:12,910 I think it's quite an interesting pattern because Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is. 264 00:33:13,890 --> 00:33:18,629 Widely recognised as one of their most, if not their most important album. 265 00:33:18,630 --> 00:33:23,610 And that's ten years after Lennon and McCartney first stopped playing together. 266 00:33:25,070 --> 00:33:28,700 Now, you might think immediately. Well, what about Mozart? 267 00:33:30,050 --> 00:33:34,250 Surely he breaks this rule. Well. 268 00:33:35,550 --> 00:33:40,980 I think The New York Times musical critic once said it's a strange fact, but Mozart developed quite late, 269 00:33:41,610 --> 00:33:45,540 and the point he was trying to make is, although he was a child prodigy, 270 00:33:46,350 --> 00:33:53,879 according to people who who look at the the how you define the masterworks of Mozart 271 00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:57,690 by the number of recordings that are by different artists of particular work. 272 00:33:58,950 --> 00:34:09,840 Mozart's first masterwork, according to them, is his piano concerto of 1777 K to seven one, and that's quite late in his career. 273 00:34:09,870 --> 00:34:20,550 He was 21 by then, and he was 12 years into his his composing career, because his first works were about 1765 when he was very young. 274 00:34:21,300 --> 00:34:26,190 So, in fact, he he he doesn't break the ten year rule. It's he's it's about the same. 275 00:34:26,190 --> 00:34:38,580 It's 12 years, in his case, a little more. And I think having looked at scientists, only Newton really can claim to bust this this ten year rule. 276 00:34:38,910 --> 00:34:43,590 I mean, Dirac and Heisenberg may be there are one or two theoretical physicists, 277 00:34:44,160 --> 00:35:00,120 but Newton is quite exceptional because Newton's annus mirabilis in Cambridge occurred after only about five years study in 1665. 278 00:35:01,020 --> 00:35:05,160 So there really is no possibility of claiming that he obeys the rule. 279 00:35:05,610 --> 00:35:13,200 And probably the reason is that theoretical physics doesn't require the kind of years of grind that other sciences do. 280 00:35:13,620 --> 00:35:18,480 You don't. It's more, so to speak, conceptual than experimental. 281 00:35:18,510 --> 00:35:26,250 I mean, you have to have the ideas, but you don't have to depend on a great body of knowledge like geologists and chemists do. 282 00:35:27,060 --> 00:35:34,950 And therefore, you don't have to spend so much time. You have to be compensating for that by extraordinary brilliance and imagination. 283 00:35:34,950 --> 00:35:42,420 But the time is not required the the grind and the devotion that other geniuses have to put in. 284 00:35:43,580 --> 00:35:50,750 Now just to finish. I think that some people might think this is a bit depressing. 285 00:35:50,770 --> 00:35:56,500 Ten years. Do we really need that long? Must it be must it always take that long to become a genius? 286 00:35:57,070 --> 00:36:08,440 Well, yes, it is a bit discouraging in a way, but it's also quite encouraging that even the greatest figures like Leonardo and Mozart and Einstein, 287 00:36:09,100 --> 00:36:12,940 even they couldn't cut through this requirement. 288 00:36:14,380 --> 00:36:21,640 There is always this long, gradual gestation, even with with the most amazing figures in genius. 289 00:36:23,170 --> 00:36:33,250 And I like Darwin's comment on, on himself here, which you may know that he, he said in his autobiography that even his own father. 290 00:36:35,270 --> 00:36:44,210 And his schoolteachers, needless to say, thought that he was a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. 291 00:36:45,890 --> 00:36:51,530 So it took him a long time to to prove that that was not the case. 292 00:36:52,890 --> 00:36:57,390 So I think Dr. Johnson had a good point. But he didn't mention the ten year rule, of course. 293 00:36:57,390 --> 00:37:04,830 But he he he did say that you sufficient application the fire in the flint but 294 00:37:04,830 --> 00:37:09,630 you you could if you put in enough effort you probably could become a genius. 295 00:37:12,570 --> 00:37:21,460 But can you make a living as a genius? Well, that's the last thing I got to show you from the exhibition, actually. 296 00:37:21,610 --> 00:37:26,770 Philip Larkin's Oxford Career Service report. 297 00:37:27,910 --> 00:37:31,810 And the details don't really matter, except for one thing. 298 00:37:34,090 --> 00:37:37,900 This is 1943, when he was pretty young. Early twenties. 299 00:37:38,170 --> 00:37:47,290 And they were assessing his future career. And I think somewhere in here the careers advisor has written. 300 00:37:48,340 --> 00:37:51,640 Yes. Advised him to stick to librarianship. 301 00:37:53,710 --> 00:37:57,310 Now is debateable. Is lock in a genius? 302 00:37:57,340 --> 00:38:07,210 Well, the jury's out, I think, still. But he himself obviously had this day job and thought he'd better stick to it. 303 00:38:07,720 --> 00:38:13,420 And he said much later in life, and I'm quoting now from from the exhibition catalogue. 304 00:38:15,250 --> 00:38:22,809 In 1979, Larkin said, I could never have made a living from writing if I tried in the forties and fifties. 305 00:38:22,810 --> 00:38:25,870 I'd have been a heap of whitened bones long ago. 306 00:38:27,740 --> 00:38:32,510 So some geniuses can make a living out of being a genius. 307 00:38:32,510 --> 00:38:37,700 But depending on whether you think like it is or isn't, there are quite a few that that couldn't. 308 00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:43,670 And I'm afraid Mozart probably was, was, was an example of somebody who couldn't. 309 00:38:43,970 --> 00:38:47,230 Admitted he died very young. But he. 310 00:38:47,780 --> 00:38:52,160 There are many who who who who did not make much out of their brilliance. 311 00:38:53,430 --> 00:38:55,770 Well, I'm happy to take questions, but thank you very much.