founding food

 

what do you do at 5am?

great art is inexplicable

prodigy

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.'
- Blaise Pascal [1623-1662]

considered a loser

 

Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519] was considered a "misfit" until he completed the Last Supper in his late 40s/early 50s.  

The secret of Ben Franklin's success

 

"Inactivity."

Leonardo's secret

Saper vedere: "To know how to see."

polymath

"Nothing is more beautiful than to know all."
- Athanasius Kircher

Founding Father

Benjamin Franklin owned 2 slaves and advertised the sale of slaves in his New-England Courant.

polymath

"I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
- JFK at a Dinner Honoring Nobel Prize Winners of the Western Hemisphere.April 29, 1962

nature mastered

In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin discovered that lightening was electrical and that electricity was a force of nature waiting to be tapped. 

Striving for fuller development

... through an infinitely long process of adaptation and evolution; poet Goethe [1749-1832] influenced Charles Darwin [1809-1882].  

In contrast to Rousseau, polymath Goethe believed that it is not how things seem, but how they work if they are not interfered with.

Polymath

The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault [1791-1824] is referenced by concerned polymath neurologist Sir Jonathan Miller on the BBC here. The Pogues appreciated too.

Sir Jonathan's "Rough History of Disbelief" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

An updated blog reference to Géricault here.