Creativity/Rev I - Seen above is Darwin’s first depiction of the evolutionary tree, drawn and written shortly after the 2nd Voyage of the Beagle ended, the only time this extraordinary naturalist ever traveled outside of England during his long life. When looking at his sketch, one sees just how intimate the creative process truly is as Darwin struggled to understand the profound implications of evolution and how it applied to life on earth years before writing his seminal work On The Origin of Species in 1859. In essence, it was his undiscovered country, being discovered in real-time by a charming and decent man who was a genius in every sense of the word.
To yours truly, the word genius is all too often connected to IQ tests but this description seems too narrow as there are many people who are visionary to the max without astronomical IQs. Genius, to me, is the ability to make connections, to see relationships and to be able to articulate how these relationships apply to the task at hand. Newton had this as did Jobs, Einstein, Miles and ... without question, Darwin.
Creativity/Rev II - Melville's Moby Dick, besides being existential, is also analytical and scientific as Melville was an acute observer trying to understand how reality works, in this case ... “Why does a Sperm Whale look so strange, being all head ... and, how does a whale navigate in the ocean when it’s eyes are on the opposite sides of it’s head?” Good questions are they not? Melville tried to answer but failed because back in 1851, the notion of sound, let alone, sonar, was not part of the equation nor did whalers even conceptualize why spermaceti existed in the head of a sperm whale in the first place.
Questions, Questions indeed ...
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