Take Benjamin Franklin, for example. Having practically no schooling and studying on his own, he became the most important inventor, diplomat, scientist, writer and politician of the American Enlightenment. He proved that lightning has an electrical nature, and invented a way to curb it. He measured the temperature of ocean currents, becoming the first to make an accurate map of the Gulf Stream.
The fate of Albert Einstein was shaped in a similar way. As a child, he started talking late. And because of the rebellious attitude towards the then education system, he was in bad standing with teachers.
He questioned and pondered all the knowledge he received, which well-trained adherents of classical education would never have thought of.
And the slow development of speech skills in childhood gave him the opportunity to observe with interest everyday phenomena that others take for granted. Later, Einstein turned our understanding of the universe upside down by developing the theory of relativity and quantum theory. To do this, he questioned the basic idea described by Isaac Newton: that time moves sequentially, second by second, and its course does not depend on the observer.
Or think of Steve Jobs. He, like Einstein (who played the violin when he was at a dead end in his work), believed in the importance of beauty. He believed that the arts, the exact sciences and the humanities should be connected with each other. As you know, after dropping out of school, Jobs enrolled in calligraphy and dance classes, and later went to India in search of spiritual enlightenment.
But perhaps the most outstanding genius can be considered Leonardo da Vinci. He thought both as an artist and as a scientist, so he could visualize theoretical concepts. In his own words, he was a follower of experience and experiment. His most inspiring trait was curiosity.
The thousands of pages of his remaining diaries are full of questions that interested him. For example, he wanted to know why people yawn, how to build a square equal in area to a circle, what causes the aortic valve to close, how the human eye perceives light and how it can be useful in drawing. He decided to study cow placenta, crocodile jaws, human facial muscles and moonlight.
Da Vinci wanted to know everything there was to know about everything, including space and our place in it.
His curiosity was often directed at things that ordinary people only think about in childhood (for example, why the sky is blue).
Some people can be considered geniuses in a certain field, for example, Leonhard Euler in mathematics, Mozart in music. Da Vinci's talents and interests extended to many disciplines. He removed the skin from the faces of corpses, studying the structure of muscles, and then painted the most famous smile in the world. He examined human skulls, sketched bones and teeth in order to reliably depict the torments of St. Jerome.
Da Vinci was a genius, but not just because he was smart. More importantly, he was a model of a universal mind, a man whose curiosity extended to everything around him.
