Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

360 I HOW THE MIND WORKSthe world. Educated understanding is an enormous contraption of partswithin parts. Each part is built out of basic mental models or ways ofknowing that are copied, bleached of their original content, connected toother models, and packaged into larger parts, which can be packagedinto still larger parts without limit. Because human thoughts are combinatorial(simple parts combine) and recursive (parts can be embeddedwithin parts), breathtaking expanses of knowledge can be explored with afinite inventory of mental tools.EUREKA!And what about the genius? How can natural selection explain a Shakespeare,a Mozart, an Einstein, an Abdul-Jabbar? How would JaneAusten, Vincent van Gogh, or Thelonious Monk have earned their keepon the Pleistocene savanna?All of us are creative. Every time we stick a handy object under theleg of a wobbly table or think up a new way to bribe a child into his pajamas,we have used our faculties to create a novel outcome. But creativegeniuses are distinguished not just by their extraordinary works but bytheir extraordinary way of working; they are not supposed to think likeyou and me. They burst on the scene as prodigies, enfants terrihles, youngturks. They listen to their muse and defy the conventional wisdom. Theywork when the inspiration hits, and leap with insight while the rest of usplod in baby steps along well-worn paths. They put a problem aside andlet it incubate in the unconscious; then, without warning, a bulb lightsup and a fully formed solution presents itself. Aha! The genius leaves uswith masterpieces, a legacy of the unrepressed creativity of the unconscious.Woody Allen captures the image in his hypothetical letters fromVincent van Gogh in the story "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists."Vincent writes to his brother in anguish and despair, "Mrs. Sol Schwimmeris suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit herridiculous mouth! That's right! I can't work to order like a commontradesman! I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing, withwild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she isupset because it won't fit in her mouth! ... I tried forcing the false platein but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier. Still, I find it beautiful."