Which genius is harder to attain?

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

I'd say scientific genius. Whether you're a literary genius depends on the tastes and opinions of others, and when you can write masterpieces using a difficult rhyme scheme like Spenser, I believe that scientific geniuses have contributed more to society.

[Col. Crackpot]

you forget musical genius. Attaining the ability to weave countless notes and rhythms into a tapestry of sound has the prerequisite of both a creative and analytical mind.

[Darth Wong]

A literary genius knows the rules before he starts. A scientist must figure out the rules from tiny clues the universe has left for him to find.

A man who is very, very good at a game whose rules have been painstakingly explained to him cannot be compared to a man who must decipher the secrets of the universe without an instruction manual.

[Master of Ossus]

I'd say scientific genius. Whether you're a literary genius depends on the tastes and opinions of others, and when you can write masterpieces using a difficult rhyme scheme like Spenser, I believe that scientific geniuses have contributed more to society.

This thread's not about which has contributed more, it's about which one is more difficult to attain.

[Master of Ossus]

A literary genius knows the rules before he starts. A scientist must figure out the rules from tiny clues the universe has left for him to find.

I must respectfully disagree, there. Literary geniuses, almost to a person, redefine the manner in which stories are told and ideas are transmitted. They go out on their own limbs and are revered as much for their courage as for their creativity. To use another example, Jonathan Swift was the first person ever to write a major work of fiction as if it were real. His Gulliver's Travels was so misunderstood by England at the time that one Cardinal's reaction was: "I don't believe a word of it." When you take that much of a chance, you are not having rules paintakingly explained to you. You are rejecting the existing rules for ones that you create, and which will then be evaluated.

[Master of Ossus]

I'm not saying that I'm a literary genius, but attaining excellence in literature is far easier than doing so in science.

Oh, I don't know about that. I would say that attaining excellence in writing is more sure-fire than excellence in science. A truly excellent writer can be virtually guaranteed to write a successful work, and the writers who are a rank above that will almost certainly have one work taught in schools fifty years after they die. On the other hand, scientists must constantly gamble on what particular fields and sub-fields in which to work, and many superb scientists doubtless go unnoticed.

Frankly, Spenser's accomplishments don't strike me as anything more than doing the same thing 10,000 times. The extraordinary thing was the amount of work he put into it. That might matter in literature, but plenty of scientists have put lots of work into theories only to have them completely contradict observation.

Do you see how a scientist, however, may be criticized for doing the scientific method 10,000 times? The obvious example would be Thomas Edison, but since all scientists run countless experiments during their careers, it could be applied to almost anyone. The difference between Spenser and the contemporary poets of his time was that Spenser was somehow able to naturally come up with rhymes in his specific scheme by drawing upon a 200,000 word vocabulary and an incredible vision. While convoluted, all of his stanzas are completely grammatically correct, and do not uses elipses or similar methods to abbreviate phrases. That is an incredible command of the English language that has never once been duplicated or approached, despite numerous attempts.

Edit: I just thought of something else in Spenser's defense as a literary genius. In regards to the claim that he did the "same thing 10,000 times," he also wrote the sonnet sequence Amoretti, invented pastoral poetry, and wrote an assortment of more than 20,000 shorter poems (very few of which survive).

[Darth Wong]

A literary genius knows the rules before he starts. A scientist must figure out the rules from tiny clues the universe has left for him to find.

I must respectfully disagree, there. Literary geniuses, almost to a person, redefine the manner in which stories are told and ideas are transmitted.

How so? They take a language whose rules are very well known, they do something good with it, and people emulate that. This is hardly the same thing as solving the mysteries of the universe.

They go out on their own limbs and are revered as much for their courage as for their creativity. To use another example, Jonathan Swift was the first person ever to write a major work of fiction as if it were real. His Gulliver's Travels was so misunderstood by England at the time that one Cardinal's reaction was: "I don't believe a word of it." When you take that much of a chance, you are not having rules paintakingly explained to you. You are rejecting the existing rules for ones that you create, and which will then be evaluated.

No, the rules were painstakingly explained to him, as in the rules of the English language. He did not have to invent an entirely new language; it is the difference between cleverly thinking of a new application for a scientific principle and conceiving of that scientific principle.

Truly visionary men of science conceived of things which defied all common sense and intuitive grasp of the universe. The notion that time is relative goes against every fibre of our being; it is inconceivable on so many levels, and even decades after Eintein's death, people still have trouble grasping it. This is not the same as taking a language whose rules are very well-defined and playing some new tricks with it.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Truly visionary men of science conceived of things which defied all common sense and intuitive grasp of the universe. The notion that time is relative goes against every fibre of our being; it is inconceivable on so many levels, and even decades after Eintein's death, people still have trouble grasping it. This is not the same as taking a language whose rules are very well-defined and playing some new tricks with it.

I agree, however if your talking about language let us appreciate the unknown genius who took the first big step and assoicated sounds with distinct concepts. We probably would have died out as a species if it wasn't for this ancient genius who invented the basis of language and the conerstone of our superiority.

[SWPIGWANG]

I can say that science is glorified curve fitting, and who he finds the equation to fit the curve, gets granted the name geniuses in the same token.

The fact is that if the bar is set equally high, the probably of being one is equally low.

[Yogi]

Literary Genius is harder in a walk.

In Liteary Genius, one has to take into account the complexaties of the human mind from a psycholgical, sociological, and cultural standpoint, neither of which have any rules OR formula that one can follow. Moreover, those rules and conditions are in a constant state of flux, so what worked before with previous literary genius might not work now. In Science you have concrete rules that define reality, the rules of the universe don't change, the result of a previous expeirment can be duplicated. In Literature, the sucess or failure of a work is not known until AFTER it has been published, while in Science all the data should already have been collecred. In Literature, the sucess or failure of your work lies totally with other people, while in Science your work speaks for itself.

Both Science and Literature seeks to create masterworks. However, in Science the world is unchanging, and one has a large amount of concrete mathmatical formulae to work from, while Literature has no concrete way of doing things and exists in a world in which the rules and conditions change from one DAY to the next.

They take a language whose rules are very well known, they do something good with it, and people emulate that. This is hardly the same thing as solving the mysteries of the universe.

Scientists have a mast amount of knowledge that they also have to work with (the rules of math, previous experiments etc.) Science has the rules of math and logic, while Literature has language. It's what one DOES with this that's important.