Member-only story
Where Geniuses Hide Today
Where are today’s Michelangelos? Goyas? Shakespeares? Cervantes? Goethes? Montaignes? Pushkins? Dostoevskys? Balzacs? Mozarts? Where are our Einsteins, our Darwins, our Maxwells, our Newtons, our Aristotles, our Socrates? Why is there no more music as acclaimed as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony? Paintings as important as Las Meninas or the Mona Lisa? Why are there no more discoveries that rewrite textbooks, like the Theory of Gravity or Thermodynamics?
Dozens of thinkers complain that there are no more geniuses. Most just don’t know where to find them.
The Geniuses of Yesteryear
The most illustrious philosophers were Greek. And they are ancient! Socrates taught Plato; Plato taught Aristotle; Aristotle went on to teach Alexander the Great, who would create the biggest empire the world had ever known.
The Greeks made such great discoveries as the size of the Earth, the distance of the Earth to the sun, the prediction of eclipses, the heliocentric theory, Euclid’s geometry, the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, etc. — Is Science Slowing Down?, Slate Star Codex.
What was in the ancient Greek water?
It probably wasn’t the water as, globally speaking, this was not limited to Greece. Within a few decades of Socrates’ life, the religions of Buddhism…
