The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius

In a fast-paced world full of intense economic/scientific/intellectual competition and decreasing opportunities for solitude, it is harder than ever before to justify spending significant time on intangible work that may or may not pay off. You can’t put on your resume—“I spend a lot of time thinking about ideas and scribbling notes that I don’t sh... See more

We should want exceptional people to believe they can do exceptional things on their own if they work hard enough at it. If everyone internalizes the myth of the lone genius to such a degree that they no longer even try to become lone geniuses then the myth will become a reality.

The problem here is that the myth of the lone genius is itself a myth. History (ancient and recent) is full of geniuses who came up with a revolutionary idea largely on their own—that’s why the archetype even exists in the first place (Aristotle, Newton, Darwin, Einstein to name the most obvious examples).

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the... See more

So what’s the take-home message? Let’s not treat the myth of the long genius like it’s gospel. Sometimes really smart people think long and hard about something and come up with an idea that changes the world. Yes, this happens very rarely and most innovation comes from the “hard slog of large armies of individuals, each making—at best—a tiny step ... See more

Uhhh ok, so they talked to other people while working on their ideas? Sure, we shouldn’t have this naive view that these so-called solitary geniuses work 1000% on their own without any input whatsoever from other people, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t do most of the heavy lifting.