At Time.com today, I was reminded of the cost of invention to a human life as society suggests people should live it… in family and with well-being. In the article, by Walter Isaacson, The Intimate Life of A. Einstein, letters written during a tumultuous year and opened this week show the cost of discovery and invention to the man selected as the 20th century's greatest genius
According to Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and a former managing editor of TIME, is writing a biography of Einstein that will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2007, “the last remaining trove of Albert Einstein's personal family letters is being opened to the public this week. They had been closely held by his stepdaughter Margot Einstein, who decreed that they remain sealed for 20 years after her death.”
These letters reveal the cost of innovation and perhaps show why so few have achieved it as the level of genius. Einstein was said to have drowned in work --to complete his general theory of relativity – in spite of the fact his family and his social contacts left him isolated and often unwell.
Is discovery and innovation worth the human cost that Einstein and others paid… as you see it?
I guess my question is a different one. Are people who "drown" in their work and produce like Einstein somehow driven in ways that the rest of us are not? Picasso was an amazing prolific painter, often doing multiple paintings a day - while other great artists may never be known to the world because they weren't driven to pick up the paint brush. Is there something in the brain that "drives" certain people but not others? Is it a blessing or a curse?
Sorry to answer your question with a question, but it's what your post prompted in my thought process.
Posted by: Tom Vander Well | July 10, 2006 6:44 AM | Permalink to Comment