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Some of the most intelligent people in history including renowned philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians did not seem to focus on using their intelligence
by yesenadam 8y ago
Some of the most intelligent people in history including renowned philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians did not seem to focus on using their intelligence to acquire as much power or wealth as possible.
More significantly, they tend to not have children.
"Men of the highest genius who were childless include Newton, Faraday, and Mendel; Vivaldi, Handel, and Beethoven;
Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle; Plato, Aquinas, Bacon, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Kant and Mill. Anyone who thinks he can frame a list of comparable individuals who had on the average enough children to counter-balance the childlessness of
these, is welcome to try; but he will not succeed. ...Just below the very highest level, and average number of children is again far below the average for people of no intellectual or artistic distinction. And it is, again, spectacularly depressed by the huge contribution of the childless: Copernicus, Swift, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Haydn, Dalton, Francis Galton himself - to mention a few examples at random." (David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales)
- nradov 8y agoOne wonders whether those geniuses were actually childless, or if they perhaps sired some unacknowledged children?