Do we use concepts to control our own madness?
Take writing for an example: I don't know how to structure my thoughts into an essay. So I go back to my old memories and fetch up some theory about a topic sentence,supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. And here I go, I start with the topic sentence.
Now supporting paragraphs. "Quick, think of something." And it comes to me: Einstein's Theory of Relativity. We all have this image of a mad scientist, trying to figure out some allusive theory. What is driving them. Could it be madness?
Issac Newton is known to be a person you wouldn't want to be friends with, yet brilliant. Do you see the connection?
Perhaps not. But it seems like the craziest people need concepts to keep them sane.
Now supporting paragraphs. "Quick, think of something." And it comes to me: Einstein's Theory of Relativity. We all have this image of a mad scientist, trying to figure out some allusive theory. What is driving them. Could it be madness?
Issac Newton is known to be a person you wouldn't want to be friends with, yet brilliant. Do you see the connection?
Perhaps not. But it seems like the craziest people need concepts to keep them sane.
Comments (5)
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
It's usually either chaos or order. Religion, philosophy, math, science. Though many often intersect.
Madness is generally incoherent whereas eccentricity is a mere.. trait. Someone who blends in and is satisfied with the pleasures of this world or the state of a society often doesn't spend their time figuring things out.
John von Neumann was a famously social genius, as was Richard Feynman. Einstein, for all his eccentricities, was social. In the case of Feynman and Einstein, a little TOO social if you know what I mean. Besides, I'd have loved to have been friends with Newton.
Compare that to the collective - humanity as a whole: mutually inconsistent religions, worldviews, and what subsequently follows from them - opposing behavior and attitudes. If an alien were to observe the beliefs of humanity as a whole, it would be hard pressed not to conclude that what it's looking at is an insane lifeform.
That said, we have to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt given the inherent uncertainties the plague our combined knowledge and wisdom, which perhaps spawn these mutually incompatible beliefs and attitudes.
Maybe the issue you’re having is the differentiation between a madman and a genius, as the people you’ve quoted I’ll consider are the later.
But yes I agree that penning this concepts down do help as its somewhat like taking a mental dump, so with all this knowledge and ideas boiled up inside their head, not denying it will drive them mad if kept inside for too long. Hence I agree with you that concepts keeps us sane.