PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

4. THE RISE AND FALL OF CREATIVITY
297, overshooting his perceived potential by 8 percent! Looking at the graph,
we see that during the last eleven years of Einstein’s life his publications deviate
from the curve, which has practically reached its ceiling around
1945. However, his cumulative works continue growing in a straight
line, implying a constant rate of production, like a machine printing
away at a preset rate.
I looked up these late publications. As a rule the original scientific
thought in their content is sparse. Some are open letters or honorary addresses
at gatherings and social meetings. But most of them are simple
translations or old works republished with a new introduction. It would
seem that Einstein was overcompensated at the end for what he was deprived
of early in his life. Who would dare refuse to publish a document
bearing Albert Einstein as its author’s name?
CAN WE PREDICT OUR OWN DEATH?
Marchetti pioneered work in correlating the end of life with the end of
creativity/productivity by studying selected outstanding personalities
from the arts, literature, and science. In a paper titled Action Curves and
Clockwork Geniuses, he presents curves for scores of personalities. 5 He
admits to being biased in choosing cases by his personal interest in the
visual arts and the availability of reliable data in his library. The cases
he covers include Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Beccafumi, Guido Reni,
José Ribera, Sebastiano Ricci, Tintoretto, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jonh
Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare,
Ludwig Boltzman, Alexander von Humboldt, and Alfred J. Lotka.
Marchetti concentrates on persons whose actions have been appreciated,
studied, and classified. The work done by editors, authors, publishers
and critics contributes to the validation of the data to produce a sample
that accurately represents the worthy creations of a genius.
I checked a few of Marchetti’s cases (Mozart, Botticelli, Bach,
Shakespeare) and ventured to study others on my own. I did not always
obtain agreement between a natural growth curve and the lifework in
question. (Some “failures” are discussed in the following section.)
My preoccupation from the beginning, however, was that if such an
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