A Majority Of "Blind Alleys"

I was struck by a revealing criticism in Henri Poincaré’s otherwise glowing recommendation of Albert Einstein for an academic position in Zurich. It spoke to me of how subtly a conventional paradigm can sneak into our thinking about exploration:

"Einstein was, 'one of the most original minds I have ever come across,' he said... '[but] since he seeks in all directions, one must expect the majority of the paths on which he embarks to be blind alleys.'" (From Walter Isaacson's, "Einstein: His Life and Universe," emphasis mine.)

This is an exact description of the creative process. By the very nature of exploration, the majority of paths on which we embark will be blind alleys; that's because exploring is a variation-embracing endeavor. But whenever a person demonstrates particularly exploratory capacity, such a fact somehow becomes an accusation.

In "The Medici Effect," Frans Johannsen explains it this way:

"Groundbreaking innovators also produce a heap of ideas that never amount to anything. We play only about 35% of Motzart's, Bach's, or Beethoven's compositions today; we view only a fraction of Picasso's works; and most of Einstein's papers were not referenced by anyone... Pioneering scientists have published papers with no impact whatsoever on their colleagues. Consider Charles Darwin. After having proposed the groundbreaking theory of evolution, he developed the dead-wrong theory of pangenesis..."

Did you catch that? Most of Einstein's papers were not ever cited by another scientist! Which is to say, as Poincaré pointed out, "the majority of the paths on which he embarked were blind alleys."

Which brings me back to a question I posed a couple of weeks ago: What are the best ways to deal with the embarrassment inherent in the creative process?

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