Ah Third Eye another tardy bienvenu on my part, but welcome all the same and thank you for your observation post, as it were, it has certainly elicited response from the regulars.
Firstly let me trot out a school of note's motto, 'Turpe Nescire' translating to, 'It is a disgrace to be ignorant' would you find being educated under such a banner sane or red rag provocative I would ask? Supplemented by does it imply an imposed opinion or a simple aspiration to a better place in your eyes?
They say and I am always not exactly sure in my personal madness, who they are and where the voices come from! - that the world's keenest minds tread a fine line between insanity and genius, but does having wildly innovative or creative off the wall thoughts constitute a form of madness. We very much appreciated your initial accompanying image by the way Third Eye.
“There is no great genius without a tincture of madness” (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman Stoic Philosopher 1st Century A.D.).
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide" (John Dryden, English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright, 17th Century ).
It is indeed fact that many great artists, composers, playwrights and poets, who at least some time in their lives found themselves in the thrall of depression, alcoholism, obsessionality, bipolar or psychotic disorders .
A number of scientists too appear to have gone slightly mad following significant achievements. Isaac Newton considered by many to the greatest physicist of all comers, having developed the concept of gravity as well as taking enormous strides forward in the fields of optics, mechanics and mathematics. However, he was a highly suspicious individual with an intense mistrust of his peers who dabbled in alchemy in later life. Therefore he could well have been suffering from phsycotic reactions as a result of alchemy-associated mercury poisoning, which perhaps fuelled an equally obssessional pursuit of hidden messages in the Bible. All of which caused contemporaries to question his sanity.
Another brilliant applied scientist, who appeared to mingle genius and madness was Nikola Tesla, whose inventions rivalled those of Edison. Tesla secured around 300 patents in radio and electricity technologies, pioneering AC (alternating current) and hydro-electric power. However, simultaneously he claimed to be in regular communications contact with other planets, was convinced that he had invented fully functional “death rays” and was also subject to bizarre compulsions.
Both classical composer Beethoven and artist Van Gogh were deemed to have gone progressively mad, although the reasons for this are subject to debate in both cases. Beethoven’s mania could well have been due to one or a combination of alcoholism, syphilis, or lead poisoning, not helped one would suggest by his extreme deafness, which would distress most people not least a musician! Some theories concerning Van Gogh’s mood swings point to porphyria rather than bipolar disorder as a root cause. Stories that Vincent's ear was physically lost in a duel with his great friend Gaugin not self inflicted surgery at all and also that his apparent “suicide” attempt was actually an accidental shooting by two local lads playing cowboys, continuing to surface.
An almost a hypnotic subject, I hope you agree, and one where probably the more powerful evidence to support the genius-madness link comes from behavioural genetics as described in
The Genetics of Creativity: A Serendipitous Assemblage of Madness - Andrea Kuszewski, 2009. A modern work in which she determines that the close relatives of creative people are significantly more likely to be schizophrenic and vice versa, as in psychotics possessing a larger network of creative relatives.
As an example Einstein, had a son who was schizophrenic, while philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate, Bertrand Russell had a large number of schizophrenic relatives. A factor prevalent within many distinguished family trees, including the Darwins, Galtons and Huxleys according to Dean Keith Simonton referring to “creative hits and crazy misses” in his
Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity (1999).
