The congregational theory of genius

Lecture



4. The congregative theory ( from Lat. Congregatio - unification) theory of genius asserts that the essence of genius is manifested in its desire and ability to unite various layers and spheres of reality, in linking and bringing together worlds, in the productive combination of various disciplinary matrices in science, directions, forms and genres in art, in combining and combining meaningful spaces, distant matrices of meanings, ideas, and associations. According to this theory, a genius is a person who is able to see and create the most profound, universal and essential connections of objects, as well as to form new, unusual connections between content spaces, images, concepts.
At the same time, a genius is distinguished by the ability to combine, unaccustomed association of various phenomena, their sides, which seem far away, leading to nontrivial artistic or scientific thinking, to discoveries in science, technology, art, etc.
If universal geniuses first see, seize integrity, and then they are detailed and filled out by tracing components and connections, then the geniuses combiners build the whole from the inside, from below, connecting, uniting and rallying the parts.
They combine spaces, lands, nations, synthesize and mix directions, genres and styles, integrate and connect various scientific paradigms, subject areas, disciplines, theories and methods.
At the same time, it is not any associations that lead to brilliant accomplishments, but only those that form balanced integrity of related, internally consistent components, lead to the creation of a qualitatively new, to the formation of new worlds and to the growth of being.

1. Geniuses are combines of lands and cultures.
Geniuses combiners project in their activities all the substantial wealth of such a fundamental entity as interaction and therefore are primarily practitioners and implementers. The interaction is explicated and embodied in real life in the form of an active exchange of vertical management actions and influences and underlies objectification, materialization, productive practical and managerial-creative activity.
Among the geniuses of the unifiers stand out: Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, who were not only the creators of great empires, but also the combiners of cultures and peoples, Qin Shi Huang - the unifier and the first emperor of ancient China, Akbar the Great Collector and unifier of India, Otto Bismarck the unifier of the German lands, Karl the Great - the unifier of European countries, cultures and peoples, Oda Nobunaga, an outstanding samurai who united Japan and Abraham Lincoln - the 16th President of the United States, the unifier of the northern and southern territories and the whole of American kind.

2. Geniuses combines styles, genres and expressive means in art.
The idea of ​​the synthesis of arts, the productive unification of its various types, the reviving syncretism of primitive art and the synthetic nature of the ancient mysteries, was the first
implemented in the Baroque style and its distinguished representative D. Bernini , who united architecture, painting and sculpture in his work. To the geniuses of this type, Claudio Monteverdi can be distinguished, who created the opera by combining, combining musical drama and vocal music, visual arts and choreography.
Subsequently, by the efforts of E. T. A. Hoffmann and, especially R. Wagner, musical drama was born, in which instrumental-symphonic music dominated the stream of poetry, sculpture and painting. “The real drama,” wrote Wagner, “must necessarily be musical, because only music can depict human experiences in all their intimate depths.”
The creator of the color music and light music, A.N. Scriabin, combining color and sound, and in consequence
boldly including in his work not only a change of colors, but also complex spatial-graphic light projections and plastic forms.
At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that the synthesis of the arts is carried out not simply by combining certain types of creativity, but by implementing and affirming some initially existing organic whole.
So, L.Timoshenko wrote: “Like Wagner, Scriabin wanted to express the cosmic scale of the World in art and was looking for an art form that would reflect the fullness and diversity of the Cosmos in the synthesis of arts”. The concept of synthesis is revealed by relating the process of interaction with a single whole and even some semantic center and higher beginning. In the dialectic connection “interaction - the whole”, the first pole expresses the mechanism itself, the process of building the whole from the inside. The concept of "synthesis of arts" focuses on creating a qualitatively new integrity, in which certain types of art, without intermingling with each other, expand, deepen and strengthen the effective artistic image.
In modern music, among the stars who boldly united in their work various styles and genres can be identified Elton John , who skillfully combines the melodiousness of pop music, energetic orchestration and gospel style,   Shania Twain, who managed to combine classical country music, pop, rock hard and video-oriented image, Jean Michel Gérare, who combined electronic music with grandiose light shows, James Carter, the genius of jazz, who combined opposing currents of neotraditionalism and avant-garde, as well as music and life itself.
The most important component of the success of such representatives of Latin American “magical realism” as Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes was the art of merging the history and myth, fact and fiction, epic traditions and bold modernist innovations in their work.
Many representatives of modernism and postmodernism were distinguished by their striving for simultaneous application, unification and bold, bizarre mixing of various discourses, genres of methods, styles and techniques, and continuous updating of artistic forms. At the same time, in modernism and, especially in postmodernism, with its presumption of acentrism and a randomized and fragmented vision of the world, it’s rather a matter of accidental unification, mixing of styles, and not a synthesis of the arts.
At the same time, the principle of stylistic permutation can be singled out, allowing to combine various forms of visualization and a collage in one work, which is a way of organizing the whole through the mechanical connection of heterogeneous parts.
So creativity of representatives of abstract art V. Kandinsky and K. Malevich was based on the desire to create extraordinary combinations of colors and geometric shapes, adherent of synthetic cubism Juan Gris, on the image of real objects by superimposing a set of intersecting planes and figures, representatives of surrealism by Salvador Dali, Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, on the combination of the principles of realism and modernism, combining sleep and reality.
One of the essential features and basic principles of postmodernism is eclecticism, and the most productive techniques are citation, a museum collection and a collage. Moreover, if the collage appeared in modernism as a private device, then in postmodernism, it appears as an expression of the postmodern vision and universal principle of the organization of cultural space. The collage manifests itself in the form of combinations, constellations - eclectic and random connections of disparate elements and bricolage, representing a "combination of art with non-art" (L. Steinberg).
These principles and techniques claimed and actively used in their work J.Foucault, who synthesized history, sociology and psychology in his work, J. Derrida combining phenomenology and linguistics, J. Lacan, who combined linguistics and psychoanalysis, J. Kristeva, who, in turn, combined semiotics and psychoanalysis. These principles and methods of postmodernism were embodied not only in the works of philosophers, but also representatives of artistic creativity: the writers W. Eco, J. Fowles, artists Sandro Kia, Francesca Clemente, Mimmo Paladino and film director RV Fassbinder.
 

3. Geniuses combiners in science
The result of the creative work of the genius of the unifier in science is the interdisciplinary synthesis, the emergence of new metatheories, integrated concepts of reality, new paradigms, universal methods and complex matrixes of meanings. The genius unifier is able to overcome the framework of a separate scientific discipline, see the object of research from a new point of view, rethink it in a new way and through the synthesis of research positions, create new sciences. There are a number of brilliant scientists whose fruitful work in the field of interdisciplinary research led to the birth of new scientific disciplines. Among them M. Lomonosov - creator of physical chemistry, Karl Neuberg, founder of biochemistry, K. E. Tsiolkovsky, founder of modern cosmonautics and rocket dynamics, A. N. Chizhevsky, founder of space biology and heliobiology, aeroionification, electrohemodynamics, G. Haken - founder of synergetics , Israel Brehman, creator of Valeology, is V.I. Vernadsky, the founder of biogeochemistry, Norbert Wiener - the founder of cybernetics, Leslie White - culturology.
Geniuses discover new, deep and unexpected connections between things and events, thereby creating new properties and meanings. The basis of their creativity is such universal mechanisms as connectionization, which is a search, discovery and creation of new connections, increasing their diversity, wealth and quality, combining - a free combination of various elements of consciousness, analogization - searching for similarities, similarities, correspondences, equality of relations between objects. , the implementation of forced links and the free linking of everything with everything, transferring - the transfer of properties, relationships, structures and meanings from one object to another, leading to quality change the object and the increment of novelty.
At the same time, genius is distinguished by the ability to unite the incompatible, to unite distant, different, or unrelated phenomena. “Discoveries,” wrote P. S. Laplace, “consist in the rapprochement of ideas that are interconnected by their nature, but hitherto isolated from one another.” M. Mikalko continues this thought: "The essence of creativity lies in combining incommensurable, seemingly, things in the most incredible ways."
The activity of geniuses of this type leads to the discovery of new generalized forces and determinations, new general laws that unite various spheres of reality.
So, A. Schopenhauer believed that the essence of genius is the ability to see the general in the private and incessantly drawing forward the study of facts, the feeling of genuinely important.
Archimedes, discovered the universal law of nature, having managed to connect a single fact of his own immersion in the bathroom with the problem before him, to connect two particular cases and generalize them to a universal law. Twenty-year-old Galileo , observing the movement of the chandelier on the 49-meter pendant in the Cathedral of Pisa and, noting the time of the pulse pulse on his arm, discovered the isochronism of the pendulum oscillations, Newton, observing a simple fall of an apple from a tree branch, saw in this particular case deeper and more general interrelations and created the theory of the World, Mayer, noting that at the equator venous blood becomes bright scarlet and enriched with oxygen, made the assumption that the functions of the body are directly dependent on external conditions and discovered the law of preservation energy conversion.
In turn, Alfred Wegener noted the similarity of the tracing of the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean, east and west, created the theory of continental drift, which became the first in the world science theory of the Earth.
According to A. Koestler, the basis of creativity is a universal process and mechanism of bisociation, which is a simultaneous connection of two, usually incompatible contexts, concatenation of initially unrelated and incompatible matrices of thought or meaning, the connection of two distant, heterogeneous ideas belonging to different areas of knowledge or experience. . In this case, the combination of these value matrixes can occur in three different forms: a). clashes leading to the emergence of a comic idea, sharpness, b). a merger, as a result of which the highest scientific synthesis is realized, a scientific idea is born, a discovery, an invention, c). opposition - causing the appearance of the artistic image.
A. Koestler argued that the basis of the scientific discovery is a specific type of bisociation, manifested in the mutual linking of two previously unrelated matrices of thought. The author cites three examples from the history of science, which from different points of view confirm this idea. Thus, the basis of the invention of I. Guttenberg of the printing press was the unification of the principle of a wine press and the technology of creating a font, by casting absolutely the same type letters. In turn, I. Kepler discovered his laws, thanks to the synthesis of astronomy and physics, and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was created by combining two well-established matrices of thought — an evolutionary doctrine originating from antiquity and the ideas of “natural selection” and “struggle for existence ”, gleaned from Malthus theory.


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Psychology of creativity and genius

Terms: Psychology of creativity and genius