CC: Well, I'll take that one. If you're trying to set up a fledgling professional military education system in the 19th century, and you've got the philosopher of war Clausewitz who basically says, "to master war you've got to be a genius".
Then you've got this other guy, Jomini who says, boy, if you apply these principles, you can be successful.
Which one do you get to base your Education on? So obviously that's the appeal of Jomini. There's an engineering solution to War. If you apply these principles, you'll be successful. You can teach it. So you can bring in young men from all over the United States and put them in a place like U.S. Military Academy, and you teach them these principles and send them out to be successful leaders. It's the attraction of his presentation, and the appeal of this scientific solution that appeals to professional military education, especially in the 19th century. And it carries on into the 20th as well.
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We typically think of genius as referring to people who are deemed by society as highly intelligent. They are set apart from the rest of us "normal" people. This understanding is based on the premise that intelligence can be accurately measured on a linear scale and that we can all be ranked by our relative intelligence.
Of particular interest is the case of the educational system, which has to consider not only the Inclusion of all in the educational process, but also the inclusion of its output in all functional circles of society.
> "giftedness" (Begabung, [⇒ Talent]) […] aptitude barriers (Begabungsschranken)
There are those who believe that intelligence can be measured, allowing us to compare and rank each other's capacity for thinking and creating. This belief has a relatively short history, reaching back only 150 years, back to Sir Francis Galton who used newly developed statistical tools to measure the potential for Creative Genius.
"It’s for those who wish to unlock their inner-genius so that they can contribute something to the world. It’s for those committed to Growth and Learning." (SCHEPER, Scott P., 2022. Antinet Zettelkasten. ISBN 979-8-9868626-2-0)
We hear the word 'genius' and we think of those of exceptional intellectual or artistic prowess, those who are Profoundly Gifted. These are individuals set apart from the rest of us, we who trudge through life with what is deemed 'normal' capacities.
DOT FROM lambda-browsing