Physical Genius: In My Mind's Eye

A physical genius is someone who has a penchant for converting thought into action. This very phenomenon is described in Malcolm Gladwell’s, “The Physical Genius.” Gladwell begins his essay with the story of one such physical genius, a neurosurgeon named Charlie Wilson. The nature of neurosurgery calls for only the most gifted medical students. However, even within the field of neurosurgery, just like most any field that requires such physical precision, there are those that are good and there are those that are great. Physical genius is what separates the good from the great (Gladwell 1079).

This finite difference between the good and the great is very curious because the closer you look the harder it becomes to see the difference (Gladwell 1079). On paper the good and the great do not seem all that different. For example, professional tennis great, Pete Sampras would not look that much different than Thomas Johansson, another profession tennis player, in a comparison of cut and dry athleticism ( i.e. speed, jumping ability, shot and serve strength ) but yet, there is something that allowed Sampras to win 14 Grand Slam titles where Johansson did not. Similarly, Charlie Wilson possesses this same edge over other neurosurgeons. What is this edge though and how do we identify it and understand it if it cannot be measured in a cut and dry manner?

Gladwell argues that this edge is physical genius. It “is not merely being able to do something but knowing what to do” (1079). It is the ability to pick up on the slight nuances and patterns of a task that the majority of us usually miss. This ability to catch subtle patterns and to see things where other do not has often been referred to as having a “feel” for something. Pete Sampras had a “feel” for tennis, Wayne Gretzky had “feel” for hockey, and Charlie Wilson has that same “feel” for neurosurgery—“an ability to calculate the diversions and to factor in the interruptions when faced with a confusing mass of blood and tissue” (Gladwell 1079-80).

Now, however, to add to the mystery of this edge or special “feel,” the question becomes: Where does it come from? Why do some possess this “feel” and others do not?

One aspect of a physical genius that gives them an edge over others is their personality. Charles Bosk, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a series of personal interviews with aspiring surgeons in an attempt to determine what distinguished the successful surgeons from the unsuccessful. What Bosk concluded was that, “far more than technical skills or intelligence, what was necessary for success was […] a practical-minded obsession with the possibility and the consequences of failure” (Gladwell 1081). What Gladwell is getting at by citing this study is that practice makes perfect. This seemingly obsessive personality trait is a cornerstone of the physical genius. Wayne Gretzky was this way. Gretzky was known for staying hours after the team practice was over, shooting shot after shot, striving for perfection (Gladwell 1082).

According to Gladwell this kind of obsessive practice does two things: it creates consistency but more importantly it changes the way a task is perceived. Consistency resulting from practice is quite apparent and hopefully requires no explanation. However, the second result of obsessive preparation is not so evident. Gladwell sheds some light on the subject with the concept of “chunking.” “Chunking is based on the fact that we store familiar sequences—like our telephone number or our bank-machine password—in long-term memory as a single unit, or chunk” (Gladwell 1083). What one who has that obsessive personality can do as a result of hours of practice is break down a task into familiar “chunks” and react to these chunks instead of having to react to each individual aspect of the task, one at a time.

The idea that mental processes can aid in physical activities does not end with chunking. In fact, the most defining and least understood element of physical genius is just that, the mental process of imagination.

Imagination is defined by Jacob Bronowski in, “The Reach of Imagination” as “the ability to make images and to move them about inside one’s head in new arrangements” (957). According to Bronowski, this capacity is inherently human and “of all the distinctions between man and animal, the characteristic gift which makes us human is the power to work with symbolic images: the gift of imagination” (957). While the gift of imagination is one that all of humanity received, some of us are simply better at it. Bronowski describes, in “The Reach of Imagination,” how some of history’s greatest thinkers used imagination to answer history’s most puzzling queries. For example, Galileo disproved Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas’s belief that a heavy ball would fall faster than a lighter one by constructing an imaginary experiment in his mind’s eye. Also, the use of visualization led Albert Einstein to his infamous theory of relativity (Bronowski 958-959).

Similar to these great thinkers physical geniuses use their imagination in a unique and sophisticated way. Harvard University psychologist Stephen Kosslyn asserts that imagination is composed of at least four separate capacities that work in concert. The first is “image generation.” The second is “image inspection,” which is the ability to draw conclusions from the image. The third is “image maintenance.” And, the fourth is “image transformation,” which is the ability to manipulate the image (Gladwell 1084). According to a study conducted by Kosslyn these four abilities are highly variable, meaning that one might be good at maintenance but terrible at inspection, or good at generation but not so good at transformation. A physical genius, like Wayne Gretzky or Charlie Wilson, on the other hand is a master at all four. Bennett Stein, former chairman of neurosurgery at the CPC, says that many aspiring neurosurgeons do not make it because of their inability to visualize what a problem depicted in an X-ray or an M.R.I. will look like in real life (Gladwell 1085).

These visualization skills which, as Gladwell suggests, can be thought of as a pyramid are the defining characteristic of physical genius. Forming the base of this imagined physical genius pyramid are rudimentary coordination and dexterity. On top of that is the practice that sharpens the coordination and allows for “chunking.” Finally, the top and most vital layer is imagination which “is what separates the physical genius from those who are merely very good” (Gladwell 1085).

Works Cities

Bloom, Lynn Z. & Smith, Louise Z. (Ed.) (2003). The Arlington Reader: Canons and Contexts. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s

Bronowski, Jacob. “The Reach of Imagination.” Bloom and Smith 955-61.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Physical Genius.” Bloom and Smith 1077-87.

-Back to the top- Enjoy.

-Wilson Mack