In comparing genius to a pearl Lombroso sutmarised his beliefthat the cause of genius was a constitutional defect, a defect that commonly showed itselfas insanity in the genius or his family.' This "insanity" theory was supported by several later studies,24 but other studies supported an alternative theory (the "stud" theory) that genius represented the highest capacities ofthe race-a culminati...

There is no doubt about the magnitude of Charles Darwin’s contributions to science. There has, however, been a long-running debate about how brilliant he was. His kind of intelligence was clearly different from that of the great physicists who are deemed geniuses. Here, the nature of Darwin’s intelligence is examined in the light of Darwin’s actual style of working. Surprisingly, the world of l...

questions. He claims to offer more convincing explanations of extraordinary achievements than the usual fall-back option of attributing whatever it is that we may term "genius" to some mysterious, magical, undefined "special innate gift". Howe thus adds his contribution to the nature versus nurture debate. Can people be born geniuses? The simple answer, in Howe's account, is no. The whole work ...

Although genius has been defined in the dictionary as requiring an IQ above 140, this definition depends on an arbitrary methodological decision made by Lewis Terman for his longitudinal study of more than 1500 intellectually gifted children, a study that occupies four of the five volumes of Genetic Studies of Genius. Yet, only the second volume, by Catharine Cox, studied bona fide geniuses, by...

gravity's rainbow is among the “most widely celebrated, unread novels” of american literature and already “a piece of minor folklore.” pynchon's genius manifests itself in his uniquely wide range of subject matter and literary techniques of presentation, narration, and interpretation. gravity's rainbow is a novel based on various sets of parallels, oppositions and double structures. these paral...

the fivefold elements of elegy which has come from classical arabic criticism has special place in hoboubi,s poem.hoboubi, like his other contemporaries, insisted on using these elements and applied their rules and regulations on the basis of the former critics,s ideas in his poem well and nicely. he believed that the elements of the ancient poem are valuable heritage in literature which is rem...