A new view of science on talent. Part I. How talent is arranged and how it works

A new view of science on talent. Part I. How talent is arranged and how it works

Talent is one of the most mysterious phenomena of human nature. For a long time, science has investigated questions about how talent and abilities are arranged, what determines their strength and direction, and why people are so unequal in their achievements and capabilities. Psychologist and philosopher Eduard Barsky, applying an innovative approach, received a lot of new information about the nature and functioning of talent. He singled out and described previously unknown factors of the psyche that determine the strength and direction of talent, and also created qualitatively new methods for its diagnosis and assessment. In his works, the scientist notes that the division of abilities into innate and acquired is conditional, in fact, any ability combines both innate and acquired properties, while they perform different roles: innate determine the immanent qualities and strength of the ability, and acquired characteristics correspond to its adaptation to specific environmental conditions. From this point of view, any ability is innately exploratory.

When talking about “innate talent”, it should be borne in mind that it is not laid in a ready, mature form, but in an embryonic, condensed form, containing key qualities and characteristics that will be revealed and developed as the subject of activity is mastered. E. Barsky considers the development of talent as a process of adaptation of innate talents to real conditions. In the most general sense, the scientist defines talent as the capacity for activity and creativity; talent is inherent in every person, but people differ greatly in its depth and subject orientation.

The development of abilities occurs in a certain sequence: first, the simplest, necessary for survival and satisfaction of basic needs, are developed (see Maslow’s pyramid), then more and more complex abilities are formed – their study requires more complex research methods. The least studied and most complex abilities – those responsible for creativity, objective thinking and objective activity – together they form the sphere of talent.

The bearer of talent is a separate person, a personality. Society as such is not a carrier of talent, it cannot be a source of self-development and serves only as an environment, a system in which a person reveals or does not reveal his talent. It is thanks to the talent of individual personalities that civilization and culture arise and develop. In advanced countries, there is a huge demand for the creation of methods for recognizing and evaluating talent, research in this direction is conducted continuously. The first notable successes in the measurement of intellectual abilities were achieved by scientists more than a hundred years ago.

Intelligence

In the first half of the 20th century, tests for the so-called intelligence quotient (IQ) became widespread, they provide an opportunity to assess general intellectual abilities — to find out how well a person is able to perceive information and operate on it. Intellectual abilities allow you to recognize, compare images and concepts, perform various mental operations. Intelligence, in the traditional sense of the term, could also be called operational intelligence. For a long time there was a belief that a person with a high IQ is more capable of inventions and discoveries. It turned out that this is far from the case – on the basis of the intelligence index (IQ), it is impossible to predict a person’s success, judge his personal and business qualities, and creative abilities. There are many examples when people with a high index do not show any special talents, and vice versa, outstanding people can have very average IQ indicators, that is, talent is not determined by the level of IQ.

Emotional intelligence

In the second half of the 20th century, scientists (come to the conclusion) discover that the emotional sphere plays an even greater role than abilities intelligence, measured by IQ. The period of intensive research of the so-called begins emotional intelligence (EI), which are conditioned by the ability to understand one’s own and other people’s emotions and intentions, react to them, build relationships with others, set and achieve meaningful goals in life. By studying and comparing the emotional and behavioral responses of many people, psychologists have developed methods for diagnosing the abilities of emotional intelligence (Reuven Bar-On, 1988, 1996). Tests of emotional intelligence (EQ: Emotional Quotient) allow you to identify strengths and weaknesses in a person’s character and behavior, assess business qualities, sociability, emotional stability, motivation and other aspects of personality. Total in emotional intelligence distinguish according to various data from 5 to 15 separate abilities. Currently, the most common personal assessment systems (especially in business) are a compilation of tests such as IQ and EQ. Together, they provide a detailed assessment of many abilities and attributes, with the exception of talent. The hypothesis that talent is primarily determined by the properties of emotional intelligence has actually been confirmed. Like other groups of abilities, EI, for its part, also participates in the processes of formation and socialization of talent, but EI in itself is not a talent.

Talent

According to the complexity and significance of the tasks solved with its help talent significantly different from the rest of human abilities. The methods applied to other abilities are not suitable for the study of talent. For a long time, scientists failed to find an approach and determine what talent consists of, how it works, how it can be measured and evaluated. A breakthrough in this direction was made by a group of Russian scientists led by Eduard Barsky, who proposed a new approach and new methods.

The starting idea was that talent can be studied by its various manifestations, by the fruits of activity, that all properties and qualities of talent somehow remain reflected in the products of creativity, you just need to find a way to read and decipher such information. Considering any author’s work as an expanded thought, as a kind of mold (imprint) of individual thinking, E. Barskyi developed such methods that allow for a special analysis of works and to obtain previously unavailable information about various properties of thinking, talent and abilities of authors. He analyzed a huge number of works of science, literature and art, collected a large amount of necessary information, and managed to reveal how talent is arranged, what mechanisms and factors are behind the external manifestations of this phenomenon.

According to Barsky, the structure of talent includes at least eight different abilities, of which two are particularly important: “subject” and “cardinal”. Cardinal ability determines the level of talent, its scale and power, and objective determines its subject specificity, it allows to create thoughts corresponding to the subject of activity, be it physics, mathematics, or something else. For example, a person with the ability to compose thinks in musical images, his objective ability creates new melodic movements, new musical forms, necessary expressions of feelings and experiences. The key characteristics and properties of talent in any person remain unchanged throughout life, this is due to their innate nature, and is confirmed by the results of many years of research.

Let’s consider what is there cardinal ability. Investigating the differences and similarities in the talent of many people, E. Barskyi discovered that there are stable types of talent that vary greatly in scale or level of their capabilities and have different creative power. He introduced the term “talent level” to denote such types. Level talent of any person is determined by his innate type of cardinal ability. Cardinal ability determines the depth of cognition, understanding of the essence of things and phenomena, and even the constructiveness of thinking. The concept of “talent level” is mostly equivalent to the concept of “cardinal ability level”.

Based on the results of studies of cardinal ability, Barsky created a classification of talents, where the levels of talent are graduated according to the growth of creative potential from the lowest to the highest. Humanity has a large number of levels of talent, of which the 16 highest levels are characterized by particularly high productivity, — E. Barsky singles them out into a special group of so-called “supreme”, or “higher” talents The main feature higher talents in the fact that they are able to learn what was not known before, they create qualitatively new knowledge, make discoveries, inventions, ensure the development of civilization and culture. The results of diagnosing the level of talent according to the Barsky method in many famous figures of the past and present — writers, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, artists — show that there are no mediocre or low-level people among them. level of talentalmost all of them belong to the higher type of talent. As for outstanding geniuses, such as, for example, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Van Gogh, Aivazovsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, Lobachevsky, Einstein – they stand out as particularly high talent level (Level of cardinal ability).

A high level of cardinal ability is the main condition for deep creative thinking, without which it is impossible to create valuable artistic and scientific works and ideas. Eduard Barsky studied the frequency of birth of talents belonging to the highest levels. According to his data, higher talents make up only a small percentage of the total mass of the population, and with the transition from lower levels to higher levels, the birth rate of each subsequent level decreases several times each time.

The higher the level of talent, the more significant the ideas created by man, the higher their value for the development of civilization and culture. For example, I. Z. Bach is recognized as one of the most significant composers in the history of mankind, as the results of the study showed, he surpasses all contemporary and previous composers in terms of his cardinal ability. It is interesting that the level of cardinal ability was also recorded in physicist Albert Einstein and mathematician Grigory Perelman just as precisely as in Bach. Despite the great difference in the subject specifics of their talent, these three geniuses have absolutely the same depth (level) of creative thinking — this means that Hryhoriy Perelman thinks as deeply in the field of mathematics as Einstein understands the physics of the universe, and how deeply he understands . Bach the nature of musical art.

By its structure, a cardinal ability is a matrix for connecting elements of information, and the higher the level of talent, the more complex such a matrix is ​​arranged, the higher its functional capabilities, the more complex objects and processes it allows to model in the mind. Each level of the talent matrix is ​​arranged in a special way, so each level has its own unique type of thinking, which can be detected using special diagnostic methods.

Diagnostics of the level of talent is of interest both theoretically and from a practical point of view. In the following publications, we will try to use the example of a number of famous people and companies to show to what extent the talent of the leader affects the development and success of the company he leads, we will also talk about the level of talent possessed by the people who invented and created television, spaceships, copiers, and other important technologies. We will also publish the results of a large-scale study conducted to find out whether there really is a relationship between the level of talent of founders and leaders of startups and the real achievements of these startups, and if such a relationship exists, how exactly it is expressed.

Apropos

The hypothesis that certain abilities are inherent in a person from birth is confirmed by research in various fields of science. In particular, Yuri Arshavsky, a neurophysiologist at the California Institute for Nonlinear Science (Institute for Nonlinear Science) published in 2003. the results of his research in an article entitled “When Did Mozart Become a Mozart?” Arshavskyi’s main conclusion is that the individual parameters of each person’s abilities are laid down in the genes before birth, and no later than at the one-cell embryo stage. This means that exceptional abilities, such as Mozart’s, were programmed into the gene structures even before he was born. The earliest scientific studies on the innate nature of talent were published in the 19th century by the outstanding scientist Francis Galton.

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