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Heres another way to test your hypothesis that Mozarts genius can be credited to his training and advantage of a musically literate family. If we applied the s

by s_dev 8y ago

Heres another way to test your hypothesis that Mozarts genius can be credited to his training and advantage of a musically literate family. If we applied the same training and familial advantage to many kids would any of them turn out like Mozart? I'd argue they probably wouldn't because his brain was fundamentally different and that made the difference. If he didn't have those advantages would he have been discovered as a prodigy as quickly and as early? Maybe not.

throwawaymath 8y ago
Your proposal can't actually test the hypothesis because it can't (reasonably) be done. We don't know how many children were similarly situated and did not turn out like Mozart. It could be that many musicians with a similar background were/are similarly as good as Mozart, and Mozart's music is especially famous for its cultural appeal and his father's aggressive "marketing" to royalty. There are many reasons one particular musician's musicical legacy can succeed aside from raw skill and creativity, much like the success of a company has a nontrivial luck component. It could also be that he really was extraordinary above and beyond his family's musical background. Like most discussions about the nature versus nurture of genius, we can't really assert one thing or another.
- textor 8y ago
  But it was tested time and time again. How vain do you think musicians are? Or rather, do you believe that the idea of early musical education didn't occur to anyone except Mozart's dad? It's very widespread. But most children don't even have manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination to start out so early, "talent" aside. The fact of the matter remains, that no secret educational approach has ever been verified; that the rate of extraordinary geniuses appearing in history wasn't affected by the attempts to replicate the conditions of their manifestation; and that most of said geniuses had abnormally talented parents – some of whom deliberately tried to raise an even better successor and some did not.

by s_dev 8y ago

throwawaymath 8y ago

Your proposal can't actually test the hypothesis because it can't (reasonably) be done. We don't know how many children were similarly situated and did not turn out like Mozart. It could be that many musicians with a similar background were/are similarly as good as Mozart, and Mozart's music is especially famous for its cultural appeal and his father's aggressive "marketing" to royalty. There are many reasons one particular musician's musicical legacy can succeed aside from raw skill and creativity, much like the success of a company has a nontrivial luck component. It could also be that he really was extraordinary above and beyond his family's musical background. Like most discussions about the nature versus nurture of genius, we can't really assert one thing or another.

textor 8y ago
But it was tested time and time again. How vain do you think musicians are? Or rather, do you believe that the idea of early musical education didn't occur to anyone except Mozart's dad? It's very widespread. But most children don't even have manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination to start out so early, "talent" aside. The fact of the matter remains, that no secret educational approach has ever been verified; that the rate of extraordinary geniuses appearing in history wasn't affected by the attempts to replicate the conditions of their manifestation; and that most of said geniuses had abnormally talented parents – some of whom deliberately tried to raise an even better successor and some did not.