Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00202)

At 05:05 PM 4/10/96 -0500, you wrote:
>Alex,
>It's actually quite easy to explain.  Very often genius manifests itself in
>extremes, a person may be an absolutly brilliant artist and a child molester
>(Gauguin), or a great composer and a nut (Wagner).  When there is that much
>energy pent up in the soul it rushes to find an outlet and often, driven by
>that force, the genius does not see where it is taking him.
>The only exception to this seem to be physicists and most mathematicians,
>possibly because their work is so all-absorbing that it leaves no time for
>anything else.
>
>Chuck the Barbarian MTI, FTSA
>Heretic
>Troublemaker
>
>Actually, Wagner wasn't a nut, he was a "son of a bitch" and that's
different. He wasn't erratic, he was a thoroughly viscious man. Mozart
wasn't much better. Verdi and Rossini were certainly musical geniuses,
thought they were not seminal composers, they were definately major
composers, and they were both apparently very lovely people. Verdi, in fact,
was an aquaintance of HPB's.

Now as to great Physicists and Mathematicians...Chuck I've known a number of
people in that catagory, Norbert Weiner for one, and he was pretty wierd.
Did you know he wrote really corny "space operas" under a vast series of
comical pseudonyms? I've know a major astro-physicist who was a total
socio-path, and others like Harold Uhrey and Bob Oppenheimer who were the
most normal folks, and then there's "uncle Albert" who was a truly unique
but lovely man. Any man of his atature who takes the kind of time he did, to
play chess with a little boy (me) and talk seriously with him, is a really
neat guy.

Alexis, MTI, FTSA