The Genesis of Genius: When McMillan Lectures all Make Sense at Once (Book Review Part 1)

On my flight home from the GSA Annual Scientific Meeting in New Orleans, I picked up a book in the airport, having exhausted my stash of scientific journals that I brought along with me. The title of the book is The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World's Most Creative Places by Eric Weiner. Weiner is a journalist who is on a mission to determine why "genius flourishes in certain places at specific times" in an effort to essentially find an algorithm for intelligence uprisings. Throughout the book (I am only half way through it at this point), he travels the world to speak with experts, temporaries, and prodigies of the most genius minds in history. His travels take him to Athens to explore the ancient and most profound philosophers, Edinburgh to immerse in the medical and other scientific advancements of Scotland, Hangzhou to bask in the glory days of the Song Dynasty, and many other adventures. He takes an in-depth look not only at the personal lives of individuals who we as a culture now deem as "genius," but also at the political, environmental, and sociocultural dynamics taking place at the time of the uprising of these great minds.

I found this book most interesting because of how I felt it related to the field of physical therapy. While a physical therapist hasn't been deemed an official genius to the greater community of the world (to my knowledge anyway), we have many individuals within our microscopic infrastructure and related-community who would qualify for the title based on their life's works in either the clinics, the research lab, or often times, both. 

Two Mary McMillan Lectures were called to mind thus far in my indulgence reading. The first of which was Alan Jette's 2012 lecture entitled Face Into the Storm. In this lecture, Alan makes several interesting and inspiring points in relation to managing the many challenges that physical therapy was about to face at the time. However, the most pertinent lesson that I internalized from attending the lecture was that the field as a whole must face into the incoming storm and not run away, but rise up to meet the challenges head on.  This pedagogy, according to Weiner's discoveries thus far, is a cesspool for breeding an influx of genius within the field. Many ideas are birthed in the face of adversity. Just as the need for good hand hygiene was the window of opportunity between post autopsy and pre-delivery events in the medical field, limited insurance reimbursement and rapid health care cuts led the way for the inspiration of many community based programs as well as health and wellness initiative for the physical therapy field. 

The second lecture that presented a parallel to my readings was Lynn Synder-Mackler's 2015 lecture entitled Not Eureka. In this 46th lecture, Lynn describes how the greatest moments of discovery are not necessarily known immediately and are not often a big event initially. In act, the greatest discoveries and moments of genius tend to occur with a quite moment followed by  a solemn "well, that's funny." A subtle change or shift in the winds can result in needing to adjust your trajectory to a solution, often leading you down the novel and rarely-traveled path of ingenuity. Many scientific discoveries are not considered major until years of discussion, attempts to discredit them, and other new theories begin to support this existing paradigm (think spherical earth theory). 

The two most important ideals established in this work of literature are the following: 

1. Genius is a Process. That is right, with a capital P. It often doesn't happen all at once and the efforts of the individual are often not rewarded until years after the death of the individual (which might be why we have no certified PT geniuses as we are still a relatively infantile field). Also, a major part of the process of genius is a collective cultural response to the works of said individual stating the status of "genius", as society as a whole often has to see the worth and relevance to the ideas. 
2. Genius is often a unique response to a unique challenge which is necessary to continue to drive forward progress, survival, and stability for the human race. The reason I say human race is that we don't often describe animals as geniuses, and the ones we do are somehow able to successfully mimic human qualities anyway (such as Suda the painting elephant or KoKo the gorilla) therefore, genius seems to be an explicitly human or human-esque title. 

I highly recommend this book. It is witty, information, and has enough fun side tangents to keep this piece of non-fiction from being too dry and boring. It is also a good reminder that when the going gets tough, the tough better get going to the library because genius is only a train of thought away.