Behavioral Theory of Genius

Genius as a Great Work and Productivity

The behavioral theory considers the essence of genius from the point of view of the creative product created by the genius, its volume, significance, influence on contemporaries and descendants, as well as contribution to the socio-cultural evolution of mankind.
According to the definition of the author of the behavioral theory R. Albert, a genius is a person who, over a long period of time, performs tremendous work that has a significant impact on other people for many years. The behavioral approach to genius, – writes the author, – focuses on the study of the highest achievements of geniuses, which allows us to operationalize such a universal, seemingly mysterious, dramatic and inexplicable phenomenon as genius.

R. Albert proposes several interrelated, essential characterizations or traits of genius:
1. Productivity. A genius is characterized by a huge amount of work and a gigantic legacy. So I. S. Bach left behind 46 volumes of works, A. Binet – 227 publications, C. Darwin -119, A. Einstein -248, Z. Freud -330, F. Galton -227, A. Poincare – 500 articles and 30 books, W. James -307 and A. Maslow – 165 works. We can add that the Weimar edition of works by J. W. Goethe includes 143 volumes, I.K. Aivazovsky wrote more than 5 thousand paintings during his life, and I.N. Kramskoy created more than 3 thousand portraits. At the same time, geniuses were distinguished by exceptional creative longevity: Z. Freud created his works over 45 years, P. Picasso created more than 75 years, Ch. Darwin-51 and A. Einstein-53 years. This list is supplemented by the example of Michelangelo, who was created for about 70 years.

2. Greatness of works and their influence on mankind. A distinctive feature of great people is the high significance of their works, saturation with a large number of ideas and meanings, and the focus on the disclosure of the most essential problems. Their works had a decisive influence on contemporaries and descendants and served as an impetus for further innovations and discoveries.

3. Longevity of works. The works of geniuses, according to R. Albert, are characterized by transacivity, understood as the property to retain significance and develop over time. It is this property that allows a genius to attract numerous supporters and followers. The most essential qualities of genius, – concludes R. Albert, – besides receptivity, are consistency, endurance, productivity and influence.
Actions of geniuses are measured by the greatness of the impact on contemporaries and descendants, benefit to humanity, and contribution to its progressive development. Even J.W. Goethe, discussing the essence and greatness of genius, said, that all comes down to whether his thoughts, deed and whether they are given a long life”. In the laid life-giving force, it passes from generation to generation, and it is not exhausted, not to destroy.
The same idea was expressed by T. Munro, who argued that geniuses are creators who contributed to world cultural values which can be highly appreciated by connoisseurs at a later time and in other countries.
The behavioral theory reveals the essence of genius in terms of objective, actionable and, in a sense, measurable criteria. Noting this fact as a positive contribution to the theory of genius, D. Simonton and V. Cassandro emphasize the limitations of the quantitative approach, which can not measure the essence of genius, as well as to determine a sense of humour by a number.
In this regard, the quantitative analysis should be supplemented with the disclosure of the qualitative characteristics of the product, determining the measure of universality and unique originality of artefacts and masterpieces created by geniuses.

Qualitative uniqueness of the creative product

A genius creates masterpieces saturated with universal values and folded universal meanings, which have a significant influence on the development of culture and humanity, and this influence becomes stronger and more tangible with time. The creative product exists in the context of cultural history and within the flow of interaction with contemporaries and descendants, which leads to the game and the generation of eternally new deep meanings.
The following qualities of an ideal creative product can be distinguished:
1. Meaningful inexhaustibility and saturation with higher values. The work of genius is the growth of being, a new reality, which is a fusion of the most universal, objective characteristics of the external world and extremely peculiar, unique properties of creative individuality. Each masterpiece is characterized by exemplarity, unsurpassedness, perfection and, at the same time, semantic incompleteness, understatement, mystery, openness to the outside and aspiration into the future, intended for recreation, co-creation and generation of new meanings.
A masterpiece of genius is a hologram reflecting the most fundamental laws of the construction and development of the Universe. V.S. Bibler wrote that a cultural work is a frozen form of being, in which is created anew, a form of understanding of being, cosmos, and things “as if” they were a work.
The work of genius is an organic whole, an animated, spiritualized essence, generating a matrix containing an inexhaustible wealth of eternal, timeless, universal meanings, unfolding new facets in infinitely new personal and socio-cultural contexts.
“An indicator of the authenticity of any work of culture,” wrote G. S. Batischev, “is its multiple revivals in renewing interpretations… The best and deepest of what was inherent in it underlyingly is often found in it and actualized only by other minds in other times, with a different spiritual atmosphere”.
Jean Paul Sartre wrote: “We shall refuse, for example, to understand by “genius”—in the sense in which we say that Proust “had a genius” or that he “was” a genius—a particular capacity to produce certain works, which was not exhausted exactly in producing them. The genius of Proust is neither the work considered in isolation nor the subjective ability to produce it; it is the work considered as the totality of the manifestations of the person… The genius of Proust, even when reduced to the works produced, is no less equivalent to the infinity of possible points of view which one can take on that work and which we will call the “inexhaustibility” of Proust’s work”.
The work of genius is always wider, deeper and richer than the author himself. Heine wrote that Cervantes wanted to write only a satire on chivalric times, not even assuming the depth and humanity of the meanings embedded in the novel.
Works of geniuses contain, mostly in implicit, hidden, folded form such universal, cultural universal values as Faith, Beauty, Truth, Goodness and Love.
These axiological universals in a super-concentrated form contain essential information about the world and, having immanent inner activity, generate in the recipients of works the joy of contemplating beauty, love for the world, the desire to create good, the pleasure of truth and faith in the existence of some incomprehensible, inexhaustible, just and effective power.

2. Global and fundamental novelty of the product, such as the discovery and foundation of new trends and styles in art and paradigms in science, new ways of human development. Greatness of a person is in accomplishing great deeds, creating masterpieces, and making epochal discoveries. P. Sorokin said that outstanding personalities accomplish great deeds, which can be characterized as “achievement”, “creation”, “discovery”, transformation”, ‘invention’, ‘modification’, ‘outstanding deeds’. As far back as H. Joly wrote that genius is one who has become famous for a scientific-philosophical system containing more truth, for a work of art revealing more beauty, or, finally, for deeds, having a greater influence on the lives of contemporaries and posterity.
The transformative new – satisfies the universal tendencies of Creative Evolution, the deep needs of cosmogenesis and the socio-cultural development of mankind. Thus, a genius discovery is one that, due to its novelty, significance (usefulness) and skill of execution, leads to the emergence of a qualitatively new vision, a new worldview, an image of the world, new opportunities and trends of cultural development.

3. Universal beauty and ideality. Works of genius – scientific theories, inventions, great achievements and masterpieces of art, possess inner beauty, complex symmetries, harmony, proportionality and perfect expediency of form. They cause spiritual joy, and pleasure of perception, awaken the sense of beauty and become role models.

4.The validity and effectiveness of masterpieces and their influence on contemporaries and descendants. Meanwhile, great scientific theories and concepts are characterized by a high level of pragmatism, practical applicability and effectiveness. So the basic statements and principles of the concepts of Hippocrates and Freud were known before them, but the effort of genius was to tie these provisions to practice, to address the most urgent and profound human needs.  Progress in science has always been accompanied by a radical transition from theory to method, from theoretical knowledge to its application in practice, from practice to man.
Masterpieces, the highest achievements of genius are distinguished by hidden, inner power, magical force, the ability to illuminate, uplift, inspire and strengthen the spirit, to develop, expand and deepen awareness, to awaken creative forces and to induce co-creation, the ability to influence and generate changes in all spheres of culture.