Ars Ingenica
". . . boldness alone is not yet exploration unless it is coupled with a critical sense. . . . the more we learn to look at the individual and particular work of art as the work of skilled hands and great minds in response to concrete demands, the more we shall teach authority that what the artist needs is not more myth or more propaganda, but simply more opportunities, opportunities for experiments, for trial and error, which alone can lead to the emergence of those skills which can meet the ever-changing challenge of the here and now."
-- Ernst Gombrich, "Art and Scholarship" (1957)
Not too long ago, I chided colinmarshall for conceding legitimacy to romantic myths about art and genius that really have no basis in fact, albeit only for the sake of pushing off against them. Reading critical studies of the history of art by a lucid analytical mind like Gombrich is one kind of antidote to this, but a shorter kind is to simply know the etymology: the Latin ars unambiguously denotes what we'd call a method or craft -- a skill that requires practice and discipline to acquire (whence "liberal arts", etc). As for genius, gignere (L.) means to produce, by metaphor from its older biological meaning of "to beget" (c.f. "genus"). To be a genius is to be artistically fecund, in the correct sense of artistic -- and there's a reason why it has the same root as the term "engineer".
On the other hand, an interesting factoid of which Elizabeth Gilbert has lately reminded me (via queueball) is that in pre-Renaissance use of the term "genius" the locus of description is not the person who actually produces but an external spirit that guides his mind and hand -- a use that survives (albeit in an endangered way) in figurative talk of muses. Gilbert is right to point out the enormous pressure that internalizing this hypostatic entity consequently put on artists, and there might be an argument to be made that this contributed more than a little to the subsequent cultural nervous breakdown, collectively referred to as "romanticism", from which we're still recovering.
Gilbert suggests that the way out is to go back to the old Roman way of speaking about genius, but I'm not so sure that putting the toothpaste back in that particular tube is feasible or desirable. The problem with it is that there's a reason why that kind of speech waned at the same time that science waxed: the two modes of thinking presuppose incompatible ontologies, and intentional language is incorrigibly obscure -- other agents, though we might be able to describe them and even predict their behavior (in a weak sense) by knowing their personalities, are largely inscrutable black boxes to us. We talk about entities that way when we have no more enlightening way to talk about them. Transferring genius to an external locus may take the pressure off you, but it's not an improvement in any other way because it still leaves you at the mercy of the whims of a fickle and mysterious companion.
I'm big on approaches that center on making your own luck, and I think we can do better. There's a small but growing current in the intellectual zeitgeist which recognizes that genius is itself an art -- a mental discipline to be refined through relentless practice and tinkering -- and that while there is no algorithm for an epiphany, there are recurring patterns in any creative endeavor and heuristics that can make you more efficient at being creative. The first step is to have a language that you can talk about these motifs in -- a pattern language. Language is a killer cognitive labor-saving device that amplifies your creative powers enormously, and instills a greater sense of mastery to boot. Ars ingenica is a topic that's still relatively unmapped, but I'll leave you with a talk by Merlin Mann that takes a first fumbling step in this direction. If Gilbert's talk points the way back, Merlin's points the way forward.
-- Ernst Gombrich, "Art and Scholarship" (1957)
Not too long ago, I chided colinmarshall for conceding legitimacy to romantic myths about art and genius that really have no basis in fact, albeit only for the sake of pushing off against them. Reading critical studies of the history of art by a lucid analytical mind like Gombrich is one kind of antidote to this, but a shorter kind is to simply know the etymology: the Latin ars unambiguously denotes what we'd call a method or craft -- a skill that requires practice and discipline to acquire (whence "liberal arts", etc). As for genius, gignere (L.) means to produce, by metaphor from its older biological meaning of "to beget" (c.f. "genus"). To be a genius is to be artistically fecund, in the correct sense of artistic -- and there's a reason why it has the same root as the term "engineer".
On the other hand, an interesting factoid of which Elizabeth Gilbert has lately reminded me (via queueball) is that in pre-Renaissance use of the term "genius" the locus of description is not the person who actually produces but an external spirit that guides his mind and hand -- a use that survives (albeit in an endangered way) in figurative talk of muses. Gilbert is right to point out the enormous pressure that internalizing this hypostatic entity consequently put on artists, and there might be an argument to be made that this contributed more than a little to the subsequent cultural nervous breakdown, collectively referred to as "romanticism", from which we're still recovering.
Gilbert suggests that the way out is to go back to the old Roman way of speaking about genius, but I'm not so sure that putting the toothpaste back in that particular tube is feasible or desirable. The problem with it is that there's a reason why that kind of speech waned at the same time that science waxed: the two modes of thinking presuppose incompatible ontologies, and intentional language is incorrigibly obscure -- other agents, though we might be able to describe them and even predict their behavior (in a weak sense) by knowing their personalities, are largely inscrutable black boxes to us. We talk about entities that way when we have no more enlightening way to talk about them. Transferring genius to an external locus may take the pressure off you, but it's not an improvement in any other way because it still leaves you at the mercy of the whims of a fickle and mysterious companion.
I'm big on approaches that center on making your own luck, and I think we can do better. There's a small but growing current in the intellectual zeitgeist which recognizes that genius is itself an art -- a mental discipline to be refined through relentless practice and tinkering -- and that while there is no algorithm for an epiphany, there are recurring patterns in any creative endeavor and heuristics that can make you more efficient at being creative. The first step is to have a language that you can talk about these motifs in -- a pattern language. Language is a killer cognitive labor-saving device that amplifies your creative powers enormously, and instills a greater sense of mastery to boot. Ars ingenica is a topic that's still relatively unmapped, but I'll leave you with a talk by Merlin Mann that takes a first fumbling step in this direction. If Gilbert's talk points the way back, Merlin's points the way forward.
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