How Geniuses Think

Galileo Galilei revolutionized science by making his idea visible with diagrams, maps, and drawings. Einstein believed that words and numbers as they are spoken did not play a significant role in his thinking process.

Geniuses seem to develop a skill to display information in visual and spatial forms, rather than only mathematical or verbal lines.

One characteristic that stands out in geniuses is immense productivity. Thomas Edison held 1,903 patents. Bach wrote a cantata every week, regardless of sickness. Mozart produced over 600 pieces of music. Einstein published 249 papers.

Out of the vast quantity of work came quality.

Geniuses form more novel combinations than talented people.

They continually combine and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations.

Geniuses force relationships that enable them to see things to which others are blind.

Leonardo da Vinci forced the relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water, to make the connection that sound travels in waves.

Geniuses can tolerate contradictory ideas, between opposites or two incompatible subjects.

Mixing opposites creates the conditions to discover a new relationship or a new point of view.

• Aristotle believed that the person who could see resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them was a genius.
• If unlike things are really alike in some ways, perhaps, they are so in others. Underwater construction was made possible by noticing how shipworms tunnel into timber by first constructing tubes.
• Einstein used the analogies of everyday occurrences to explain abstract principles.

Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else.

Instead of asking why we failed to do what we intended, the creative accident asks 'what have we done?' This produces a creative insight of the highest order.