Can Creative Genius Be Scientifically Studied? A Review of “Origins of Genius” by Dean Keith Simonton

It’s common to think of the genius of men like Shakespeare, Darwin, and Einstein as something impossible to understand or study, kind of like a miracle. But psychologists consider all facets of human behavior to be fair game for research, no matter how strange or unusual. The geniuses who wrote Hamlet, who painted the Sistine Chapel, and who discovered the theory of relativity are extreme examples of personality traits like creativity, intelligence, and literary/artistic/scientific ability that all people posses to some extent. Dean Keith Simonton is a psychologist who specializes in studying creativity and genius. In his book Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity, Simonton applies Darwin’s theory of evolution to the study of creative achievement.

Simonton begins by defining “genius”. A genius isn’t someone with a high IQ, although most people we consider geniuses were very intelligent. A genius is someone who accomplishes something that sets him apart from everyone else, i.e. someone who has achieved eminence. Beethoven is a musical genius because of his symphonies, piano concertos, and other works that continue to be performed almost two centuries after his death. If Beethoven hadn’t composed any music, he wouldn’t be considered a genius, no matter how much intelligence or ability he possessed. “The phrase unrecognized genius becomes an oxymoron” (p. 5).

A “creative genius” is someone who invents or discovers an original, adaptive idea or product. Originality is required because mere imitation isn’t creative. Adaptiveness is required because if the new mousetrap doesn’t work, it isn’t any better than what we have now. If the new theory doesn’t fit the facts, or has internal contradictions, it won’t help advance science. If no one wants to listen to the new symphony, then no matter how original it is, it won’t be considered a great musical composition.

Given these definitions, Simonton goes on to present the research, theories, and biographical information that have advanced our understanding of creative genius. He begins by examining the thought processes of geniuses. To understand how Darwinism can be applied to this thought process, Simonton mentions Donald Campbell’s theory. This theory states that creative thinking involves 3 conditions:

1. There exists some process that generates ideational variations, similar to genetic recombinations and mutations.
2. These variations are subjected to a selection mechanism, similar to natural selection, but more cognitive or cultural in nature.
3. There is some retention procedure that preserves and reproduces creative ideas, similar to genetic retention.

In simpler language, creative people come up with their ideas blindly (i.e. without knowing beforehand whether or not they will be successful or adaptive). They select the most promising ideas, and publish or otherwise share them with other people. The audience they share with further selects the creators’ ideas, rejecting some of them and accepting others. The ones that win out in the end, and become the acknowledged masterpieces, are a small fraction of the total number of ideas and products generated by the creators.

The more ideas, the greater chance that one or more of them will become a masterpiece. The most successful geniuses are also the most prolific. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Newton and others created (or discovered) many things that are now forgotten. The few things for which they are remembered are only a fraction of their total output.

How do creative people think? Like other people, they use imagery, intuition, and insight, along with analytical thinking. The main difference between creative and ordinary people is that creative people utilize remote association and divergent thinking. Remote association is making connections between separate ideas. A historical example of remote association is Einstein’s connecting relative space and time with the constancy of the speed of light. Before Einstein, scientists had considered these separate subjects.

Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with original ideas, solutions, and responses to questions. It is distinguished from convergent thinking, which is the coming up with the expected solution or response, e.g. the correct answer on a standardized test. Some fields require more divergent thinking than others. For example, artists, composers, and creative writers usually think more divergently than scientists.

Creative people also have different personalities than most other people. They have broad interests, they’re open to novel and ambiguous stimuli, they have trouble focusing on any one thing, they are flexible cognitively and behaviorally, they are more likely to be introverted, and are nonconformists. While not all creative geniuses fit this personality profile exactly, most exhibit at least some of these traits.

Creative people are also more likely to have psychiatric problems than the average person. There are many examples of depressed, bipolar, alcoholic, suicidal, and psychotic creative geniuses. Famous names with severe disorders include Vincent Van Gogh, Robert Schumann, Ernest Hemingway, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Charles Darwin. It’s important to understand, however, that most creative geniuses don’t exhibit high levels of psychopathology, or they would never have been able to create anything. Their symptoms tend to be midway between normal and abnormal.

Not surprisingly, geniuses usually grow up in enriched family environments. Their parents tend to have higher-than-average levels of formal education, with at least one parent working at an intellectual profession. Their parents value learning and supply their children with an ample supply of books, magazines, games. Visits to museums, exhibits, galleries, libraries and other places that stimulate intellectual development are common.

What’s unusual about geniuses’ childhood experiences is that they frequently face adversity. Geniuses often have physical or sensory disabilities, or chronic childhood illnesses. Sometimes their parents become bankrupt or impoverished. Many geniuses have experienced the death of one or both parents at an early age. These adverse experiences may set the young future genius on a developmental path different from most of his peers.

While geniuses are all highly intelligent, many of them lack advanced degrees or do poorly in school. Artistic creators generally have less schooling than scientific creators. Formal schooling suppresses creativity in favor of memorization and conformity. So it makes sense that many geniuses would dislike school. Since education and training is required for acquiring the necessary expertise in one’s profession, creators who drop out of school always are autodidacts. Many geniuses have one or more mentors who help compensate for the lack of formal education.

Like all complex human behaviors, creative achievement is a product of both nature and nurture. On the nurture side, as I mentioned above, creative people tend to grow up in enriched home environments, and also experience more traumatic childhood experiences than usual. But many people grow up in enriched environments and have adverse childhood experiences. Only a tiny fraction become geniuses. So there must be a unique genetic predisposition that interacts with these experiences to produce a genius. The technical term for this is “emergenesis”, or a combination of multiple genetic components, each of which must be inherited for the trait to appear. An emergenic trait is shared but identical twins, but doesn’t run in families. Evidence that creative genius is emergenic comes from family studies of geniuses. Many of the greatest geniuses in history, including Newton, Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo, have no relatives of distinction.

Unlike intelligence, which is normally distributed in the population (i.e. having a bell-shaped curve), creative achievement is highly skewed. There are two mathematical laws describing this skewed distribution. The Price law states that if k represents the number of active creators in a field, then √k of these creators contribute about half of the products in the field. For example, assuming that there are 100 total architects, then 10 out of 100 architects are responsible for half of all building designs. The Lotka law states that the number of creators who contribute n products is inversely proportional to n squared. For example, the number of creators who contribute 10 products is c/100, where c is a constant. The number of creators who contribute 20 products (twice the number) is c/400, only 1/4 of who contribute 10 products. If you go up to 50 products (five times the original number), then the number is c/2500, or 1/25 of who contribute 10 products.

These laws hold whether one is considering all works created, or just works that have stood the test of time. For example, all of the works that make up the standard repertoire of classical music (i.e. works that are still performed today) were composed by about 250 composers. The square root of this number is about 16, which is the number of composers accounting for half of all the pieces performed today. Mozart alone composed 6.1% of the standard repertoire, which is slightly greater than the sum total of the bottom 150 composers!

The level of creative achievement varies across a creator’s career. At the beginning of his career, his output gradually increases. At some point he reaches a peak, after which his output declines. This trajectory is based on career age rather than chronological age. Late bloomers will have a later peak. Some disciplines, such as mathematics and poetry, have a much earlier peak than other disciplines, such as geology and philosophy.

One of the most interesting and difficult-to-explain aspects of creative genius is that achievement isn’t constant over place and time. Genius tends to cluster in some places at certain times. When these places experience a burst of creative achievement, they are said to have experienced a “golden age”. Eventually, and for reasons not fully understood, these golden ages decline to silver ages, and finally to dark ages. Examples of golden ages of achievement include Ancient Greece, the European Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, and similar (but less golden) ages in China, Japan, and other places.

It’s easy to understand how the presence of genius in one’s time can help spur additional genius. This can occur by means of immediate predecessors and contemporaries. “[T]he number of eminent creators in one generation is a positive function of the number in the preceding generation who are active in the same or affiliated domains” (p. 206). These eminent predecessors serve both as role models and mentors. Charles Darwin had Alexander Monro and Adam Sedgwick as his teachers, and was influenced by Hutton, Lamarck, Sprengel, Malthus, Lyell, and others. Beethoven studied under Haydn, and was influenced by Mozart.

Eminent scientists and artists are more likely to occur during eras in which they can form relationships with contemporaries in their fields. These contemporaries don’t have to be at the same level that the geniuses are. “No matter what the domain of achievement, genius of the highest quality tends to be contemporaneous with genius of a lesser rank, and even with the more obscure also-rans and nonentities” (p. 208). Geniuses need audiences, professional contacts, and social networks to help motivate them to create. The idea of the lone-wolf genius, like Howard Roark in the novel The Fountainhead, doesn’t correspond to historical fact. While there were likely potential geniuses during the European Dark Ages, the barren cultural milieu prevented them from achieving anything.

Geniuses tend to live during eras of high intellectual receptiveness, ethnic diversity, and political openness. Some level of basic political freedom and economic prosperity is required for creative flourishing. It must be noted, however, that most creative achievement occurred under regimes which by today’s standards would be considered autocratic and unfree. Remember that Socrates, who lived during the Athenian creative golden age, was executed for his beliefs. Galileo, who lived during the European scientific revolution, was persecuted by the Catholic Church.

The division of labor is an important sociological factor that contributed to the emergence of creative genius. If every person in a society is engaged in physical labor such as hunting, gathering, homemaking, or farming, no one will have any time to create. With increased population comes specialization and division of labor, including jobs for creative people such as painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, and engineers. The European scientific revolution gave birth to another profession that gave men opportunity for creative achievement. Population size is a necessary, but not sufficient factor for the emergence of creative genius, as there were many large societies (e.g. Europe during the dark ages) that had very little creative achievement, and smaller societies (e.g. classical Athens) that had a great deal of achievement.

Origins of Genius is strong in its understanding and analysis of individual genius. Simonton does an excellent job explaining creative thought processes, in presenting what personality characteristics distinguish geniuses from everyone else, in explaining how developmentally and genetically they are different, and in describing the mathematical laws that show the skewed output of creative achievement.

The book’s main weaknesses have to do with group phenomena, including clustering of genius, and gender differences in genius. While Simonton can explain why having creative achievers in one’s own and preceding generations can help spur geniuses to accomplishment, he can’t explain what starts and ends this process. Since genius occurs in golden ages that come and go, something must occur to start the process of creative achievement, and something must end it. Simonton has little to offer to explain this.

Another problem is that Simonton completely ignores the cultural and creative dark ages we are currently living in. As I explain in an earlier blog post, dullness has become triumphant in our times. In the arts, modernism has completely destroyed all the great European traditions, and we have a reign of mediocrity. This isn’t just my personal opinion. I can prove this by asking who are the great contemporary artists, writers, and composers. Various people will provide different responses, but none of the names mentioned will have the recognition that the great artists of the past have. As Simonton mentions in his book, an unrecognized genius is an oxymoron. A genius who is unrecognized in his own time will most likely remain unrecognized in future generations.

In the sciences, there is some low-level creative group achievement, but no individual geniuses on the level of Newton, Darwin, or Einstein. As proof, I’ll offer the same name recognition test that I did for artists. While every year a handful of scientists win Nobel Prizes, they are always people no one (outside their fields) has heard of. These people, while accomplished, are not geniuses.

One of the problems with both the arts and sciences is that both have become so highly professionalized and esoteric that people can gain distinction in a field, but be unknown outside the field. This is partly due to the disintegration and balkanization of our culture, which has various causes, including modernism (in the arts) and technology (e.g. the Internet). But it is partly due to declining accomplishment. If someone accomplished something at the level of Einstein, Michelangelo, or Beethoven, most educated people would have heard of him. This is as true today as it would have been true centuries ago.

One historical fact that Simonton tries unsuccessfully to explain on environmental grounds is the almost complete lack of female creative geniuses. “In Western civilization, for example, women make up only around 3% of the most illustrious figures of history. And many of these females [e.g. monarchs] entered the records in part by birthright or marriage. (p. 215)” Almost all geniuses in history have been male. Some fields, such as mathematics, physics, and music composition, are completely dominated by men. The one field where women have a minor presence is literature.

Simonton rejects biological explanations such as lower IQ, less variable IQ, and biologically-based personality differences. He provides more conventional environmental explanations such as child-rearing practices, the costs of marriage and family to female achievement, sex discrimination, and philosophical/cultural hostility to female employment and achievement. He claims that female achievement in literature is due solely to the fact that creative writing requires little start-up cost or overhead. But he ignores that publication (including book marketing) does require overhead. Many women had access to musical instruments in their home. Why didn’t they use these instruments to compose music, as men did? Why is the female lack of creative achievement universal across societies, including cultures that had little interaction with each other (e.g. Eastern and Western societies before the modern era). Why, in contemporary America and Europe, when all these environmental hindrances to female creative achievement have been removed, do we still see so little female achievement?

In conclusion, Origins of Genius is an excellent summary of scientific knowledge about creative genius at the beginning of the new millennium. It provides a wealth of detailed facts and analyses that illuminate our understanding of this strange and wondrous phenomenon. Its main weakness is a lack of understanding of what environmental factors bring about creative golden ages and dark ages. This weakness makes it unhelpful in trying to engender new works of genius, i.e. helping bring about a new golden age of creativity.

Are Scientists Objective and Rational? A Review of “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn

We think of science as a rational, empirical alternative to religion and spirituality. The scientific method is a common denominator for all the different fields in science. Science is the basis for technology, which has improved the standard of living for billions of people. In the developed world, we pride ourselves on public policy being guided by science rather than superstition or tradition.

While science is objective and rational, what about scientists? Are scientists a bunch of supermen not subject to desires, wishes, and prejudices that non-scientists experience? Or are they human beings, with the same frailties and failings that other humans have? Thomas S. Kuhn takes up this question in his almost 50-year-old classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The question is still relevant today, as science impacts the daily lives of more people in the world than it ever has before.

The question I ask in the title to this review can be rephrased as: Is scientific advancement always linear and progressing at a constant rate, or is it characterized by long fallow periods interrupted by occasional revolutions? The media and textbooks favor the former interpretation. Almost every day, the media reports on some new study or experiment that adds to our scientific knowledge. Science textbooks give students the sense that past historical controversies are irrelevant, and they should focus on solving problems. Past controversies and changes in beliefs are usually only studied by science historians.

Kuhn sees the linear model of scientific advancement as flawed. It doesn’t reflect the reality of science history. Science history, like art, political/economic, technology, and religious history, is characterized by occasional bursts of radical change (i.e. revolutions) surrounded by long periods of stability. Unlike these other fields, however, which all past civilizations possessed in some form, science is much newer and for over four centuries monopolized by Europeans.

Kuhn gives a detailed account of how scientific revolutions happen. To understand revolutions, you need to first understand “normal science,” which is what Kuhn describes as everyday science. Normal science is what most scientists do most of the time. It consists of puzzle solving, of determination of significant fact, of matching facts with theory, and articulation of theory. Examples include determining structural formulas, specific gravities, the speed of light, and arriving at quantitative laws. Normal science is guided by “paradigms,” constellations of beliefs, values, and techniques that are shared by members of a scientific community. A paradigm accepted by all members of a scientific discipline is a prerequisite for normal scientific work. Fundamental disagreements are characteristics of early stages of scientific development, which go away with the adoption of a shared paradigm. An example is the field of optics before and after Isaac Newton. Before Newton, “though the field’s practitioners were scientists, the net result of their activity was something less than science” (p. 13). Because there was no shared paradigm, everyone writing on optics had to articulate the foundations of his viewpoint. After Newton, scientists accepted his theory of light, and normal scientific optical work began.

A contemporary example of a pre-scientific field is clinical psychology. Psychodynamic therapies differ on fundamentals with cognitive, behavioral, family, sociological, and biological therapies. There is no shared paradigm uniting those who practice these different styles of therapies. As a result, clinical psychology has not made the progress characteristic of mature scientific disciplines like biology, chemistry, or physics.

Newton’s particle theory of light was eventually replaced with newer theories. The first theory to replace it was the wave theory, which derived from the optical writings of Young and Fresnel in the early nineteenth century. This was then replaced in the twentieth century with the contemporary theory of light as photons, with some characteristics of waves and some of particles. This theory derived from the work of Planck, Einstein and others. Each of these changes in theory was an example of a scientific revolution, a topic to which Kuhn devotes most of his book.

Scientific revolutions begin with “anomalies”, experimental results that violate a paradigm-induced expectation. Anomalies usually come about as a result of normal scientific work. One famous example is the late-nineteenth century crisis in physics that led to Einstein’s relativity theory. The wave theory of light, which became the paradigm of the nineteenth century, held that there must be a mechanical ether through which light propagated. All other waves traveled through some medium, and light was no exception. Anomalies arose, however, when both celestial observations and terrestrial experiments failed to find any drift of light through the ether. These anomalies provoked a “crisis”, an unstable condition in which a new paradigm has a good chance of acceptance. Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which he published in 1905, was a direct response to this crisis. This theory led to a new physics paradigm not only about the nature of light, but also about relative space, mass, and motion.

The above analysis is compatible with objective and rational scientists. When they practice normal science scientists are objective. After a new paradigm is accepted, and the crisis which led to it is resolved, scientists are objective. It is in their response to anomaly, and their resistance to change during revolutionary periods, that scientists reveal that there are only human.

When anomalies happen, such as the problems verifying an ether medium through which light travels, scientists have a few options:

1) They can stick with the current paradigm, and either ignore the anomalies, or try to come up with theories explaining the anomalies. Many times these theories are competing. Sometimes these theories and revisions of theories create a confusing mess, such as the modifications to Ptolemaic astronomy that occurred during the Middle Ages.

2) They can abandon the current paradigm in favor of a new one. This presupposes that some creative individual or group of people has put forth an alternative.

When a new paradigm is offered to the scientific community, it usually has not been verified, and doesn’t fit the existing facts and observational data better than the old one. For example, Copernicus’ heliocentric theory did not explain existing astronomical data better than Ptolemaic geocentric theory. It took years for Einstein’s theory of relativity to be experimentally verified.

That’s why scientists cannot choose between competing paradigms based on fact or logic. Many times new theories have an esthetic appeal to some scientists. These scientists help promote the new theory, and bring a greater likelihood that experiments or observations will be done to verify the theory.

Most scientists will stick to the current paradigm, even if it has many anomalies. This is due to the fact that they are human, and most humans resist change. This can be seen in nonscientific contexts. Contemporary American political life is characterized by widespread corruption, inefficiencies, and indebtedness. But due to inertia, it’s very hard to enact even the most basic and obvious reforms. From an external, objective perspective, this resistance to change is irrational, just as scientists sticking to flawed paradigms are irrational. But most people will defy logic and reason in order to maintain stability.

There are some scientists who will embrace a new paradigm. These people have different personalities than most—more open to new experience, more novelty seeking, and less bound to tradition. The most extreme examples are scientists who come up with the new paradigmatic theories. They are usually very young or new to the field. Einstein was in his mid-twenties and not yet a professional scientist when he published his paper on the special theory of relativity.

Let me use a current example to illustrate Kuhn’s thesis. I previously mentioned clinical psychology as pre-scientific field, one that has competing paradigms and theories. This is true when one looks at clinical psychology as a whole, including both psychologists and psychiatrists. Let me focus, however, on psychiatry, i.e. medical doctors who specialize in mental health. They have a shared paradigm, the biochemical/drug theory, which states that mental disorders are caused by chemical imbalances that can be treated by drugs. It’s rare to find a psychiatrist who has time or inclination to provide any kind of talk therapy. Most of them are now pill pushers, who restrict patient interaction to brief sessions, primarily to make diagnoses.

This wasn’t always the case. In the middle of the twentieth century, psychiatrists had a much different paradigm, Freudian psychoanalysis. They spent their time in lengthy analytical sessions with patients. When psychiatric drugs were first introduced in the 1950’s, they were a novelty, and most psychiatrists continued doing psychoanalysis. But over the next few decades, psychiatrists eagerly embraced the new biochemical/drug paradigm. It isn’t hard to understand why. Psychiatrists are trained as medical doctors, which means that they have to take the same biology, chemistry, and physics classes that other doctors take. They had extensive knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry that was wasted when they became psychoanalysts. By prescribing drugs to treat mental disorders, however, they got to be “real” doctors. They could put their medical knowledge to use in their professional life, something that they couldn’t do when they were psychoanalysts.

Over the next half century, the biochemical/drug paradigm developed anomalies. These anomalies were summarized by Robert Whitaker in his recent book Anatomy of an Epidemic. The chemical imbalance theory, i.e. that schizophrenia is caused by too much dopamine, and depression by too little serotonin, was never verified. Scientists haven’t made much progress in understanding the cause or pathophysiology of mental illness. Diagnosis is still based on symptoms due to a lack of any reliable or valid lab tests. Drugs that seem to help patients in the short term, have a much more problematic long-term outcome. As newer drugs began to be prescribed more frequently, patients seemed to function worse than they ever did before, many of them becoming permanently disabled and unable to work. Corruption became endemic, with many leading psychiatrists becoming paid spokesmen for drug companies.

In spite of these anomalies, most psychiatrists (and biological mental health researchers) continue to support the biochemical/drug paradigm. Part of the reason for this is the normal resistance to change that I described above. Another reason is that there has been no newer biological paradigm for mental illness. According to Kuhn, “a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to takes its place” (p. 77).

There’s no way to predict how long the wait will be for an alternate candidate. In the case of the crisis in physics about the nature of light, a new theory became available within decades. It took over a millennium for an alternative to the geocentric Ptolemaic theory to arise.

The reason why we can’t predict when an alternate paradigm will come forward is that scientific creative achievement is not linear and progressive. As Kuhn describes in his book, scientific progress is characterized by long sterile periods of pre-science or normal science, interrupted by occasional revolutions. Many times these revolutions are the result of individual creative genius, as in the case of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. Understanding the psychological characteristics of creative individuals, and the social characteristics of societies that promote create achievement, is beyond the scope of this book. For a psychological perspective, I recommend Eysenck’s Genius or Simonton’s Origins of Genius. For a sociological perspective, I recommend Murray’s Human Accomplishment.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is only about 200 pages, and not difficult to read. I’m not interested in the philosophy of science, and sections devoted to philosophy I found boring. I’m more interested in historical examples, and found the historical sections more interesting. A problem is that Kuhn briefly goes over some of the older theories and experiments, and I would have preferred to see a more thorough explanation, including illustrations. Another problem is that Kuhn’s examples are exclusively in the physical sciences, and I would have liked to see more biological and psychological examples.

Notwithstanding these limitations, this book is a classic in the history and philosophy of science. I recommend it to anyone interested in science and creativity.

Are We Overmedicating Our Kids? A Review of "We’ve Got Issues" by Judith Warner

Judith Warner answers the controversial question of whether or not children are being overdiagnosed and overmedicated in her new book We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication. One interesting thing about the author that motivated me to read this was that she changed her mind on this question during the course of writing the book. At first, she held the view that kids were being overmedicated by their affluent, competitive, perfectionistic parents. She changed this view 180 degrees in the course of researching the book. The book argues that mentally ill kids are in fact undertreated and undermedicated. Most parents are very reluctant to drug their children, and do so only as a last resort. Many children with mental health issues (about 70%) are not being treated, partly due to parental neglect or opposition, but mostly due to lack of quality, affordable mental health providers and resources in many communities.

Warner first tackles the question of whether or not there is in fact an epidemic of pediatric mental illness. There’s no question that in recent decades there has been a massive increase in both diagnosis and medication treatment. Since the early 1990’s, the number of children receiving diagnoses of mental health disorders has tripled. From 1991 to 2006, there was a 3,500 percent increase in autistic children participating in special-education programs. Prevalence of depressed children has increased from near zero in the early 1970’s to between 2 and 15 percent today. Before the mid-1990’s, there weren’t any children diagnosed with bipolar; today prevalence is up to one percent. Prevalence of ADHD went from 1.5 to 2 percent in the mid-1970’s to about 8 percent today.

With the increased diagnosis, comes increased medication usage. Prior to the 1990’s, kids usually weren’t prescribed antidepressants or antipsychotics. Now 1 to 2 percent of kids are prescribed antidepressants. Atypical antipsychotic drugs, which can cause serious metabolic changes and weight gain, were used by over half a million children in 2003. Ritalin and other stimulant use has skyrocketed along with the increased number of children diagnosed with ADHD.

Warner argues that much of the increase is due to changing diagnostic patterns; what she calls “increased visibility.” Many children who suffered from mental illness in the period from 1945 until 1980 were, depending on the symptoms, punished for misbehavior or conduct disorder, kicked out of school, institutionalized, or labeled as retarded. They weren’t diagnosed with psychiatric disorders because there were no effective treatments (this was a time when psychoanalytic techniques were dominant). Quoting Edward Shorter, “Physicians prefer to diagnose conditions they can treat rather than those they can’t” (p. 46).

Warner tackles the contentious issue of the fortyfold increase in juvenile bipolar disorder diagnosis between 1994 and 2003. She presents evidence skeptical that many of these children in fact have bipolar: the connection between the doctors promoting the diagnosis and the pharmaceutical industry; the fact that mood disorders occur predominantly in women, but juvenile bipolar is largely diagnosed in boys; and that the symptoms of extreme irritability that the supposedly bipolar children have is not a valid predictor of adult bipolar disorder. On the other hand, children diagnosed with bipolar disorder do have serious problems, and probably need some type of medication.

Warner also presents research that indicates that there has been in fact an increase in mental illness prevalence separate from changing diagnostic standards. For example, one study found that successive generations of Americans born after World War II seemed to have a greater incidence and earlier onset of depression. Anxiety seems to be increasing, also, as the number of teens between the ages of 14 and 16 who agreed with the statement that “Life is a strain for me much of the time” quadrupled between the early 1950’s and 1989.

The truth is that there’s no way to know if actual prevalence of pediatric mental illness has increased. According to Warner, “The research that could provide solid answers—epidemiological studies conducted in a parallel manner over time, asking the same questions, looking for the same disorders, using consistent language and definitions—for the most part doesn’t exist” (pp. 56-57).

My view is that she’s right, we can’t be sure of this. But it does seem that something in the environment is making kids more depressed, anxious, and autistic than before. Warner focuses on the post-World War II period, in which parents of young children today grew up. But what about if you go further back in history? It must be remembered that psychiatry, clinical psychology, and other mental health professions didn’t exist before 1900, nor did any mental health treatments. If there were so many mentally ill children (and adults) back then, wouldn’t someone have noticed it? There was no safety net; people had to pull their own weight or starve. If there were as many children and adults with disorders back then, and no way to treat them, wouldn’t society have come to a standstill?

Another way to look at things is the flip side of mental illness: creativity. Many mentally ill people are also creative. Many creative achievers of the past had mental illness. While there is no consistent way we’ve diagnosed mental illness over time, creative achievement is, by definition, public and visible. Michelangelo, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein and others achieved things that make them household names today; there are no contemporary equivalents. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the rate of creative achievement in the arts and sciences declined precipitously in the 20th century, to near-zero today. People who would have achieved in the past are not achieving. There are many explanations for this, but one is that they are acquiring severe, debilitating mental illness that prevents them from achieving. Another explanation, that they are taking emotion and motivation-blunting drugs, is something that I’ll discuss below.

Warner next makes her central argument, bolstered by a variety of anecdotes and quotes from parents, doctors, and researchers. She argues that most parents don’t want to medicate their children, that they usually try a variety of useless alternative treatments before reluctantly agreeing to medication, and that they are usually pleased by the results. While medications don’t work miracles, and some of them produce side effects, they result in improvement. Children who were unable to cope or function in school can now function at a tolerable level. We should stop blaming parents and doctors for overmedicating children, and instead focus on the large percentage of children who, for various reasons, are denied effective treatment for their mental illness.

I found it interesting that Warner didn’t include any examples of cases in which medications did more harm than good. She didn’t include any examples of parents who were eager to use medication on their children. While she says that she couldn’t find such examples, a reviewer indicated that this is an example of her selection bias. There’s no evidence in the book that she took a random sample of medicated children and then tracked down and interviewed the parents. She’s a popular writer, not a researcher, so she can be excused for this unscientific methodology, but the reader must be wary of any generalizations that she draws.

It isn’t hard to find examples of unhappy results from pediatric use of medications. Stephany, the author of the blog Soulful Sepulcher, writes poignantly about her daughter, currently institutionalized, who is such an example. I would have preferred to seen a more balanced presentation from Warner.

Of course, the fact that some children don’t excel with medication isn’t an argument that medication is ineffective. No treatment is successful 100% of the time. All drugs have side effects, and sometimes the side effects are worse than the treatment effect. Another reviewer is critical of the scientific evidence that Warner presents in favor of medication use. Warner says that there are treatments for kids that “actually work” (p. 211), that allow children to “improve and live their lives to the fullest” (p.210). Warner is basing these Pollyannish assessments on short-term measures of success, especially in school. The reviewer is skeptical about how much we know about the long-term effects of drugs on children’s developing brains.

My view is that we can’t be sure of the long-term efficacy of drugs unless we do longitudinal studies, comparing control versus experimental (drug) groups, that extend up to about age 50. The reason for such a long time frame is that by the age of 50, we should know whether or not someone has been successful in his or her career. What if children on drugs do well in school, but not so well in their adult life? Since most of the drugs (except Ritalin) haven’t been used in children for more than 20 years, we’re being premature about declaring a success.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t prescribe these drugs in children, although I do think that they should be a last resort, after every type of therapy has been tried. We also need to distinguish between the more serious types of disorders and less serious ones. For less serious childhood disorders, the ones in which children can function in some contexts (e.g. home) but not in school, I think we need to think about changing the school environment. The typical public school classroom is OK for an average student, but ones with special needs and/or abilities don’t thrive there. There are some special education classes, but to get a child into them a parent has to have significant time to deal with public school bureaucracies, or money to get into a private school program. Warner mentions this in her book; these services are effectively denied to the lower middle and working classes. We need to try to expand these services, and also think about coming up with less expensive alternatives that focus on vocational or artistic training.

As I mentioned earlier, psychotropic drugs are one of the causes of the lack of creative achievement in arts and sciences today. The legal, prescribed ones blunt emotions and motivation. The illegal ones can cause destructive addictions. Even if a child does better in school while taking drugs, will he contribute more to society than he would have otherwise? In another blog post, I mention that our society has a narrow (academic) definition of talent, that lacks context and empathy. Both context and empathy are necessary for good decision making, and in recent decades America’s political and economic leadership has made some poor decisions. Probably some of these deficits are due to the effects of drugs on people. These effects are hard to quantify, and won’t show up in a typical study, but they are incredibly important for society.

For the more serious types of disorders, in which the child can’t function anywhere, medications are an unfortunate necessity. Warner admits in her book, echoing many parents, that medication is not going to make these kids successful. It may make them less disabled than they would have otherwise been. The most important thing for us to do is to find out genetic and environmental causes of serious psychiatric disorders, to prevent them from happening in the future.

On the environmental side, we’ve covered just about every base imaginable, including diet, chemicals, vaccines, infections, etc. One thing we haven’t looked at is the effect of artificial magnetic fields. The reason for this is that scientists don’t think that humans have the ability to perceive magnetic fields. I present evidence in my research paper contradicting this. I found that I’m sensitive to artificial magnetic fields when sleeping, but not when I’m awake. If I’m sensitive now, as an adult, I was probably much more sensitive as a child. My hypothesis is that some children with serious psychiatric disorders are sensitive to artificial magnetic fields, especially when sleeping. My hypothesis would explain the increased prevalence in recent decades of serious pediatric psychiatric disorders. When I was growing up in the late 1960’s through mid 1980’s, the only artificial magnetic fields I had to worry about when sleeping were the innerspring mattress, steel bed frame, steel building structure, and a fan that I used in the summer to keep cool. Today, we have wireless Internet, home security, cordless phones, cell phones, baby monitors, computers, widescreen TV’s, iPods, central air, etc. Many of these devices and appliances emit strong magnetic fields, and are kept on while sleeping. It would be easy to test my hypothesis. Start turning things off, change to a non-magnetic bed, and see if the disturbed child becomes a little less disturbed. See if he can sleep better, which will make him function better the next day.

In conclusion, I found Warner’s book to be well written, with a lot of useful information for those interested in pediatric mental health. Its major flaw was a lack of balance in presenting evidence in favor of medication use in children.

Ben Bernanke—A Creative Leader

In my Triumph of Dullness blog post I say that there aren’t any contemporary creative geniuses in the arts and sciences. Creativity can be exercised in other fields, however, most notably in business or political leadership, and technology. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are two names that come to mind as geniuses in technology management. Those of us who are old enough to remember life without the PC or Mac realize how much our lives have been transformed by these devices. When I was in high school in the early 1980’s, the early versions of PC’s and Mac’s were available. There was no Internet, however, and we still did our term papers on typewriters. I couldn’t imagine using a typewriter now.

It’s much rarer to find intelligently creative political leadership. FDR was a good example of a creative leader, who guided his country through two of the biggest crises of the last century: the Great Depression and World War II. There was no guidebook to follow, no historical precedent, so FDR had to improvise. While you can disagree with specific policies or programs, by the time he died in 1945 the U.S. had defeated Hitler in just 3 ½ years, and was on its way to defeating Japan. World War II also ended the Great Depression.

After reading Time Magazine’s Person of the Year article, I have to conclude that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a creative leader. In the fall of 2008, the world financial system ground to a halt. The housing bubble had burst, and a Depression 2.0 was a real possibility. Instead of responding in predictable ways, such as only lowering interest rates, this scholar of the Great Depression did some creative things. These had never been done before on the scale that Bernanke did them:

1. Coordinating rate cuts and other interventions with central bankers around the world
2. Buying up commercial paper, mortgage-based securities, and other debts.
3. Bailing out troubled banks and other financial firms.

One can disagree with specific actions, such as some of the bailouts, but that’s the case for any leader or policy maker. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we were threatened with an economic depression. If Bernanke hadn’t acted, we could have 25% unemployment now, instead of 10%. It’s easy to blame people for disasters that actually happened; it’s harder to praise them for disasters that didn’t happen. A good example of this is that we haven’t had any terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. Our national security agencies deserve credit for this, but they’re rarely praised. For the same reason, Bernanke deserves recognition for the disaster that didn’t happen.

Gone with the Wind

I just watched the 70th anniversary DVD edition of Gone with the Wind. Earlier this year, I had read the novel for the first time. I loved both the novel and the film. Since the story is probably familiar to most of my readers, I won’t try to summarize or review it. I want to use it as an example of a standard by which I evaluate contemporary culture. In my Triumph of Dullness blog post, I said that we don’t have any contemporary geniuses. We have people writing novels, and people making movies, but these novels and movies aren’t in the same universe as Gone with the Wind. A great historical novel requires a combination of engaging story, interesting characters, plot, vivid historical details, and clear style. There may be some contemporary novels that have some of these elements, but none have all the elements that Gone with the Wind had. Many contemporary novels try to substitute sex, violence, foul language, and other gimmicks to make up for their lack of literary quality. A great epic movie requires a great story, great acting, cinematography, music, direction, and all the other elements that made Gone with the Wind so fantastic. Contemporary movies have access to better technology, which makes for gee-whiz special effects, but these effects cannot hide the movies’ lack of quality storytelling, direction, and cinematography.

Ironically, Gone with the Wind was about how a once-great civilization (antebellum South) was destroyed in just four years of war. The creative fecundity that characterized what was otherwise an awful time (the 1930’s) helped engender the novel and movie Gone with the Wind. Creative achievement of this high order is, like the antebellum South, gone with the wind.

In my Triumph of Dullness blog post, I mention how there’s a lack of ambition among potential creative geniuses. There’s also a lack of mentoring, role models, inspiration, and any other social aspect of creative accomplishment. I want to focus on these social aspects, because it’s directly relevant to the publication of Gone with the Wind. Margaret Mitchell, the book’s author, was a Southern journalist who wrote a rough draft of the novel between 1925 and 1930. She had no desire to seek publication, however, and stashed away the manuscript in her apartment.

In 1935, Mitchell met MacMillan editor Harold Latham, who was in Atlanta to scout for promising writers. Her duty was to show him around the area. She gave him her manuscript, which he read on the train back. He recognized the book’s potential, and arranged for her to get an advance, in order to finish the novel. The rest is history.

Contemporary fiction writers can recognize just how much has changed since then. Major publishers don’t send editors around the country looking for new talent. They don’t give out advances to first-time authors with unfinished manuscripts. They, in fact, do everything possible to discourage wannabe authors. They make them finish the novel before even trying to get a publisher. They then force writers to get an agent, a difficult and arduous process that most people don’t want to go through. Even after getting an agent, there’s no guarantee that the agent can sell the book to a publisher.

Publishers will say that economic conditions have changed, that they can’t afford to publish books by unknown authors, most of which fail commercially. It’s true that traditional publishers are losing money and that they can’t conduct business the way they used to. My point is not to blame publishers but to comment on how things have changed in the last 70 years. It’s doubtful that Margaret Mitchell had the ambition to do the things that writers need to do today to get published. There are probably many talented contemporary writers who have started a novel, perhaps a very good novel, who would have been published in an earlier era, but are never going to be published today.

There are other social aspects of creative achievement that are relevant. Gone with the Wind (the book and movie) inspired thousands of writers, directors, actors, and other creative people to write books and create movies. The lack of any contemporary Gone with the Winds has resulted in the lack of inspiration for potential writers, directors, and actors to achieve anything.

There’s a painting that visually represents this transmission from genius to lesser creative people:

I like this painting, entitled “Genius Calling Forth the Fine Arts to Adorn Manufactures and Commerce,” by Anglo-American painter Benjamin West (1738-1820). The painting shows the winged male genius inspiring his female devotees. These devotees are engaged in various creative pursuits, the most prominent being the painter. In reality, a genius doesn’t have to directly interact with people he influences. For example, Mozart strongly influenced Beethoven, although they were together only for a short time, if at all.

What we need are one or two Margaret Mitchells who can inspire thousands of others to begin a rebirth of a glorious literary tradition that is, today, gone with the wind.

The Triumph of Dullness

Updated October 18, 2021

Read the following poem, written in the early eighteenth century by English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744):

In vain, in vain,—the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night Primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rain-bows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppressed,
Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See sulking Truth to her old Cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that leaned on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defense,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries all.

This poem, entitled "The Triumph of Dulness [sic]," and the larger work to which it belongs, The Dunciad, have been referred to as a "mock apocalypse." They describe the end of the world in a humorous way. The Dunciad is a complex work, containing many layers of biblical, Greco-Roman, and eighteenth century British political and cultural allusions.

To help the contemporary reader understand the "Triumph of Dulness" poem, I'll explain some of the allusions. The "sable throne" symbolizes night and chaos. Medea was a sorceress in Seneca's Latin tragedy, who summoned monsters outlined in heavenly constellations as she prepared to murder her children. Why did she murder her children? She did it in revenge of their father's infidelity. Medea finally escaped into the heavens in a chariot drawn by dragons, after which her husband concluded that there were no gods.

Argus had eyes over all his body, which slept in rotation to keep a constant watch. He was set by jealous Hera to keep watch on Io (Zeus's mistress) to prevent her husband Zeus's infidelity. Hermes was able to put out all Argus's eyes at once, allowing Zeus to fool around unwatched. Hermes' putting out all Argus's eyes is symbolic of the lack of perception and vision in society.

Casuistry (deceptive argument) is heaped over the head of Truth, forcing Truth to flee to an old cavern. Philosophy has abandoned heaven (God—the first cause) and shrinks to its second cause (mechanical necessity, or causation). By doing this, philosophy disappears. "Physic" (natural sciences) and "Metaphysic" (philosophy) are dependent on each other, leading each to circular reasoning. "See Mystery to Mathematics fly" refers to the vain attempts to "prove" the mysteries of religion by mathematical reasoning. They (truth, religion, philosophy, natural science, and math) die. Religion blushes, veils her sacred fires, and morality goes down the drain (implying that morality is grounded upon religion). The final lines refer to an apocalyptic ending of the world, brought down by chaos and anarchy.

Let's interpret "The Triumph of Dulness" in the context of our present age. Has dullness triumphed in our time? In Pope's words, "Art after Art goes out, and all is night", and "Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires." Also, "Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!" There is neither art nor wit in contemporary culture. If you go to a movie, turn on the TV, go to an art gallery, concert hall, or playhouse to watch and/or hear anything new, stupidity, incompetence, and mediocrity reign. Creative achievement, the "human spark," the "glimpse divine," exemplified in history by Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Beethoven, is nowhere to be found. This makes for a dull society.

For the last fifty years, there has been very little major individual creative achievement. It's true that every year there are new products and inventions, new scientific discoveries, and new technologies (e.g. cloning, medical advances, new computer technologies, new software, new books, new music, etc.). The problem is that these advances have been made by relatively minor, unknown people or groups of people. None of these people compare to the giants of the Western art and science tradition. If they did compare, then they would be as famous or more famous than these giants.

Is it a public relations problem? It's true that the media mainly reports bad things. Maybe someone is a genius, but the media only wants to report on the latest murder-suicide. The media is a problem, but it's unlikely that a genius would go unnoticed in today's age of individual glorification and celebrity. Actors, sports stars, popular musicians, and politicians certainly go noticed. Einstein today would likely be more famous and in the media spotlight than he was in his time.

Why this dearth of creative genius? Consider this quote: "Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings." C. Archie Danielson's pithy metaphor compares intelligence to a bird's ability to fly. Intelligence, like wings on a bird, can cause the individual to soar. Intelligence can also help uplift society by means of the products of intelligence.

Bird without wings cannot fly. The potential for flight is present in the bird's genetics, but without wings it cannot actualize this potential. Intelligence without ambition has the genetic potential to do constructive things, but the person cannot do it. The bright person sits on his or her ass and watches TV or plays video games.

A better quote would be: "Creativity without ambition is like a bird without wings." Creativity is not the same as intelligence. Creativity is coming up with new, original ideas, works of art, or inventions. From the point of view of society, creativity is much more important than what intelligence alone can do. Creative geniuses are intelligent, but have something more than intelligence (i.e. high IQ scores alone cannot predict creative achievement—or else everyone in Mensa would be a creative genius). Intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for genius.

There is certainly a lack of ambition among potential creative geniuses. These birds are not growing the wings that they need to fly. Why don't they have ambition? There are environmental factors in modern society that have robbed virtually every potential genius of any ambition. One of these factors may be the lack of structure, standards, and morality in contemporary society, a descent to Hobbes “state of nature.” This condition, known as “hyperindividualism,” i.e. every man out for himself, undercuts the prestige and altruism motivations that induced creative people to achieve in the past. Both prestige and altruism are important motivators because creative work in the arts and sciences is usually not financially rewarding. Another related factor is that our information-age economy gives bright people so many more opportunities for high-paying careers than it did in the past. Most of these careers (e.g. business, law, medicine, and technology) don’t provide the opportunity for creative achievement in the arts and sciences.

Another environmental factor is widespread availability of psychotropic drugs (both legal and illegal) that rob people of their creative ambition (and other things). Marijuana reduces motivation in some people. The stimulant drugs like amphetamine and cocaine target the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is important to motivation. Antidepressant, mood stabilizing, and antipsychotic drugs have helped keep people with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia out of the hospital, but their anti-motivational and emotional blunting side effects have prevented these people from achieving anything. With a few exceptions, prior to the 20th century potentially creative people had only alcohol as a means to escape from reality.

Another reason is that it's hard to start from scratch. Other geniuses were part of artistic and scientific movements that were prominent in their time. Michelangelo was a product of the High Renaissance; Newton was a product of the scientific revolution. Today, there are no movements; there's nil. Modernism and Postmodernism are dead. They've contributed nothing. There isn't anything more to rebel against—all literary, artistic, and moral standards are gone. There are no role models, no heroes, and no mentors that can inspire creative people to achieve. This shows the supreme importance of culture and environment to creative achievement. There wasn't much creative achievement in the Dark Ages, even though there were certainly some people who had the potential. It's hard to believe that with today's wealth, living standards, and technology that we're not doing much better than the Dark Ages.

To get a better understanding of why there is no creative genius, it's important to recognize when the problem began. Although it's been glaringly evident since at least the 1960's, the problem began a century before that, according to Charles Murray. In his book entitled Human Accomplishment, Murray dates the problem from sometime in the 19th century. His reasoning is that although there was a great deal of accomplishment in the late 19th and early 20th century, there should have been more, based on the fact that more people were educated and had more opportunities to create than ever before. If we accept his premise, then the explanations mentioned above don't apply, because they refer to environmental factors that came into existence after 1900.

Another perspective is from Eugen Weber, in one of the programs from his PBS series The Western Tradition. This program, entitled “Fin de Siècle,” used the best of times/worst of times theme to portray life and culture at the turn of the 20th century. On the one hand, it was the best of times for almost everyone. Inventions such as the bicycle, the automobile, the airplane, electric power, the railroad, and the steamboat had transformed or would soon transform the lives of everyone, including the common people. Public education had for the first time provided literacy for the majority of people in the developed world. Economic progress had allowed more leisure time for working people than ever before, and the consumer economy and transportation revolution gave these people more things to do with their leisure time than ever before.

On the other hand, for the sensitive, creative types, it was the worst of times. As a symbol of this, Weber showed Munch’s painting “The Scream.”

Something in the environment was driving creative people to near-madness, leading them to abandon all traditional notions of beauty, logic, coherence, and harmony, which we know today as the avant-garde/modernist movement. The fact that the basic themes of modernism still dominate the arts today, a century later, indicates that the root causes haven’t changed. Artists and other sensitive people are still screaming.

My human magnetoreception hypothesis explains why creative people had such a difficult time with modern life. Let’s assume that potentially creative people are also potentially mentally ill people. The link between creativity and madness is generally accepted by researchers who study creativity. Read Eysenck’s Genius or Simonton’s Origins of Genius for corroboration. This link is strongest for nonconformist artists and scientists. There are three aspects of modernity that have hammered people with the genetic predisposition for either creativity or mental illness.

1. Some mentally ill people are highly sensitive to artificial magnetic fields when sleeping and/or waking. The industrial, electromagnetic/electronic, and computer revolutions have exposed us to all kinds of artificial magnetic fields. The innerspring mattress, which first became widely used in the 1930’s, exposes sleepers to artificial magnetic fields (from the steel springs). Other harmful magnetic fields are from steel headboards and bed frames, steel building structure, and various electrical and electronic appliances. In recent decades, with the introduction of wireless networks and devices, we’ve become more and more exposed to these fields. Some mentally ill people have become psychologically damaged by the sleep disruption caused by artificial magnetic fields. Others have been harmed from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
2. Some mentally ill people are highly sensitive to the geomagnetic field differences between different places on the Earth. The transportation revolution that began in the nineteenth century with the invention and widespread use of the steamboat and the railroad, and accelerated in the twentieth century with the invention of the automobile and airplane, has exposed people to vastly different geomagnetic field properties than that in which they grew up. Our bodies didn’t evolve with the ability to adapt to these differences. Some mentally ill people have become psychologically damaged by moving from one city or country to another.
3. Some mentally ill people are highly sensitive to differences in circadian rhythm, the internal daily rhythm that is influenced by sleep/wake time. The industrial revolution began the move toward artificial time and away from the natural/sun clock that people had always used in centuries past. The rise of shift work and the introduction of daylight savings time in the twentieth century further moved us away from natural time. Some mentally ill people have become psychologically damaged by their circadian rhythms being out-of-sync with the solar day.

All three factors began to influence mentally ill people in the nineteenth century, then accelerated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Put another way, our technology is destroying our civilization by psychologically damaging a group of people who in previous eras might have become creative geniuses, but now are not achieving anything.

A civilization cannot thrive without creative achievement. There are always problems that require creative solutions. For example, contemporary America is drowning in debt, the war on drugs has been lost, we’re threatened by terrorism, our schools are failing us, prisons are the only high-growth industry, we need a vaccine for AIDS, and we need to come up with green alternatives to oil and the internal combustion engine. Our two political parties are so far apart on most issues that the federal government is gridlocked, unable to pass needed reforms. While there are some good ideas floating around, very few of them get implemented. We need creative geniuses to not only come up with solutions, but figure out how to get these solutions put into practice. Dullness pervades all our political/artistic/scientific life and intellectual discourse. At least during the Great Depression, people could go to Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies as a healthy temporary escape. Today, all we have to offer are reality TV shows and rap music. Until we address the connection between our own technology and creativity/mental illness, i.e. until we begin researching human magnetoreception, dullness will be triumphant.

Crazy Ideas

I want to talk about crazy ideas. Most crazy ideas are not influential nor socially useful. A good example is the perpetual motion machine. No one has heard of the vast majority of crazy ideas, for good reason.

Some crazy ideas are influential, some are socially useful, and some are both. I want to talk about 2 crazy ideas that came into existence about the same time, at the beginning of the 20th century: Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Freud's theory was influential, but socially useless. He came up with the theory at a time when psychology was in its infancy. He could get away with creating an unverifiable and unfalsifiable theory that captivated and influenced many mental health professionals, including psychiatrists. After a century of practice, there's no evidence supporting his ideas. An enormous amount of time and money has been wasted on psychoanalytic therapy. Experimental psychology has advanced enough now that he wouldn't be able to get away with perpetuating such an unscientific theory today.

Einstein's theory was both influential and socially useful. It laid the groundwork for modern physics, which is behind much of the technological advances in the 20th century. Einstein couldn't get away with a speculative and unverifiable theory like Freud's. The reason for this is that physics had several centuries of development prior to Einstein, and was much further advanced than psychology.

My human magnetoreception hypothesis, in which I claim that my OCD and tics are connected to the Earth's magnetic field, is definitely high in craziness, probably higher than Freud's and Einstein's theories. Whether it will be influential or socially useful remains to be seen. It's not quite as crazy as the idea that my symptoms are caused by the Martians, but it's close. Since I'm writing this in 2009, and there's been over a century of research in psychology, I can't get away with what Freud did. So if no one is able to verify my theory, it won't become influential. In my paper, I list specific experiments that can be done to verify my theory. Even though my data is based on subjective experience, it is still empirical, and can be verified in a double-blind manner. Compare this to Freud's theory, which is pure speculation. Compare it to the Martian idea, which obviously cannot be verified.

The key problem with my hypothesis is that human magnetoreception isn't accepted by scientists. But we know that animal magnetoreception exists, and we know that humans are animals. So there's no reason a priori to reject human magnetoreception. I'm hoping that the necessary research will be done to verify or reject my hypothesis.