Genius

:This article is about people with exceptional mental abilities. For the cartoon, see Genius (cartoon).

Gifted

Geniuses come gifted with phenomenal brilliance, and are often as insensitive to the limitations of mediocrity as they may be very sensitive emotionally themselves, sometimes both. The term prodigy simply denotes the presence of exceptional talent or genius in early childhood. The term prodigy and child prodigy are synonymous, the latter being a redundancy.

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Artistic genius may show itself in early childhood (prodigy) or later in life; either way, geniuses eventually differentiate themselves from the rest through great originality. Intellectual geniuses usually have crisp, clear-eyed visions of given situations, in which interpretation is unnecessary?the facts just hit them, and they build or act on the basis of those facts, usually with tremendous energy. Here too, accomplished geniuses in intellectual fields start out in many cases as prodigies, gifted with superior memory, pattern recognition or just understanding.

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A theory put forth by Harvard professor Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind states there are seven kinds of intelligences, each with their own type of genius. See theory of multiple intelligences for more on this view.

Related Topics:
Howard Gardner - Theory of multiple intelligences

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