Let's learn How to think like a Genius
How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the thinking style that produced "Mona Lisa," as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Einsteins, Edisons, daVincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos, Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them?
Genius is not about high scores on the ISATs, mastering fourteen languages at the age of seven, having an extraordinarily high I.Q., or even about being smart.
So......how do geniuses think?
Geniuses think productively, not reproductively. When confronted with a problem, they ask "How many different ways can I look at a problem?" , "How can I rethink the way I see it?", and "How many different ways can I solve it?" instead of "What have I been taught by someone else on how to solve this?" Geniuses tend to come up with many different responses, some of which are unconventional and possibly unique.
Genius is not about high scores or high I.Q.
Let's look at the 8 characterisics of a genius............
1. GENIUSES LOOK AT PROBLEMS IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS.
Genius often comes from finding a new perspective that no one else has taken. Leonardo da Vinci believed that to gain knowledge about the form of problems, you begin by learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He felt the first way he looked at a problem was too boring so he changed his usual way of seeing things. He would restructure his problem by looking at it from one perspective and move to another perspective and still another. With each move, his understanding would deepen and he would begin to understand the essence of the problem. Einstein's theory of relativity is, in essence, a description of the interaction between different perspectives. Freud's analytical methods were designed to find details that did not fit with traditional perspectives in order to find a completely new point of view.
2. GENIUSES MAKE THEIR THOUGHTS VISIBLE
The explosion of creativity in the Renaissance was intimately tied to the recording and conveying of a vast knowledge in a parallel language; a language of drawings, graphs and diagrams — as, for instance, in the renowned diagrams of daVinci and Galileo. Galileo revolutionized science by making his thought visible with diagrams, maps, and drawings while his contemporaries used conventional mathematical and verbal approaches.
Geniuses seem to develop a skill in visual and spatial abilities which give them the flexibility to display information in different ways. When Einstein had thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject in as many different ways as possible, including diagrammatically. He had a very visual mind. He thought in terms of visual and spatial forms, rather than thinking along purely mathematical or verbal lines of reasoning. In fact, he believed that words and numbers, as they are written or spoken, did not play a significant role in his thinking process.
3. GENIUSES FORCE RELATIONSHIPS
If one particular style of thought stands out about creative genius, it is the ability to make juxtapositions between dissimilar subjects.
4. GENIUSES THINK IN OPPOSITES
Geniuses are able to think different thoughts because they can tolerate
the differences between opposites or two incompatible subjects.
5. GENIUSES THINK METAPHORICALLY
Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, believing that the individual
who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of
existence and link them together was a person of special gifts. If unlike things
are really alike in some ways, perhaps, they are so in others.
6. GENIUSES PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR CHANCE
Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. As simple as this statement may seem, it is the first principle of creative
accident. We may ask ourselves why we have failed to do what we intended, and
this is the reasonable, expected thing to do. But the creative accident provokes
a different question: What have we done? Answering that question in a novel,
unexpected way is the essential creative act. It is not luck, but creative
insight of the highest order.
7. GENIUSES MAKE NOVEL COMBINATIONS
A genius is constantly combining and recombining ideas, images and thoughts into
different combinations in their conscious and subconscious minds. Einstein did not invent the concepts of energy, mass, or speed of light. Rather,
by combining these concepts in a novel way, he was able to look at the same
world as everyone else and see something different.
8. GENIUSES PRODUCE
A distinguishing characteristic of genius is immense productivity.
Now... let's experiment and try to think like a genius....
We'll try to think like an artist....
Analyzing artwork involves identifying or discribing relationships between things in an artwork. In abstract art these things are not always objects. They are design elements (line, shape, color, texture, ect.). We use a special vocabulary to describe a piece of artwork. This vocabulary uses the design elements and principles to analyze and explain art. Artists sometimes also describe their artwork by using examples based on the art elements and principles.
Let's look at the painting below.....
Look for these items when you look at the painting...
"Harmony Tranquille" painted in 1924 by Wassily Kandinsky
What simularities can you find in the design elements of the shapes, lines,
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Which elements seem to dominant?_______________________
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