Wednesday 26 January 2011

Genius, Quotes and... Prawns

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The shrimp Heterocarpus ensifer.


Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
At the moment, there is no shortage of scientific breakthroughs in the news. Perhaps one of the most exciting is this story about the potential use of chitosan: a substance found in the shells of prawns and crabs: to rebuild damaged human nerves and ultimately, it is hoped, offer a cure for certain paralyzed patients-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616164002.htm


The structure of Chitosan

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"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age."
- Aldous Huxley

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One of my long-term preoccupations is with the human mind: a truly weird and beautiful thing. Consequently, I was very interested to read this article on genius, which was recently brought to my attention-

http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html

Essentially, it highlights the extreme separation of people of extremely high intelligence from the general population. IQ tests are-indisputably-unreliable and often flawed in many regards, but that clearly does not mean that they have no use. I am not sure that I fully endorse the article and its conclusions, but they are certainly thought-provoking.



In her excellent biography of Rosalin Franklin,
"Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA",
the science writer Brenda Maddox talks about the "otherness" of working in research science- the sense of separateness from society that can arise when one's work is beyond the ken of "ordinary" people and the loneliness of a life where one toils on abstract problems that perhaps -what?- 80%? 90% ? 95%? of the population cannot really grasp in outline, let alone in detail. She mentions it in the context of Franklin's struggles in her mid career and her sense of isolation. It seems to me that this overlaps with a lot of the ideas in the "outsiders" article.

The article also explains the reason that childhood prodigies are often quoted as having apparently astronomical IQ scores that later "regress towards the mean" as they age. Essentially, this is an inherent problem with the measurement of childhood intelligence and not any indication of brain decline.


Many thanks to Nurit for the genius article link.

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