Darrin McMahon, “Deconstructing Genius” (Open Agenda, 2021)
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
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The Origin of Genius in the Eighteenth Century
The way genius gets defined in the eighteenth century is precisely that it can't be learned. You either have it or you know. And original here has this double sense of being, you know, unprecedented, but also original at the origin, at birth. There are still people around in the nineteenth century ino the twentieth century who would put the emphasis onon nerture as opposed to nature. But there's a lot to be said for that way of looking at and the're modern proponents of this view.
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