Einstein and Newton 'had autism' !?

A news story from BBC, which makes me think if I am autistic!

[quote]However, the researchers insist that he continued to show signs of having Asperger’s.
Passion, falling in love and standing up for justice are all perfectly compatible with Asperger’s Syndrome,” Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge, one of those involved in the study, told New Scientist magazine.
“What most people with Asperger’s Syndrome find difficult is casual chatting - they can’t do small talk.”
The researchers believe that Newton displayed classic signs of the condition.
[/quote]

[quote]“Impatience with the intellectual slowness of others, narcissism and passion for one’s mission in life might combine to make such individuals isolative and difficult.”
He told the magazine that Einstein was regarded as having a good sense of humour - a trait not seen in people with severe Asperger’s.
[/quote]

What’s the meaning of this sort of report!?

I have read another Chinese news which said Chiuan had Depression . (Bipolar I Disorder, precisely speaking) Funny!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2988647.stm

[quote=“kate.lin”]A news story from BBC, which makes me think if I am autistic!

[quote]However, the researchers insist that he continued to show signs of having Asperger’s.
Passion, falling in love and standing up for justice are all perfectly compatible with Asperger’s Syndrome,” Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge, one of those involved in the study, told New Scientist magazine.
“What most people with Asperger’s Syndrome find difficult is casual chatting - they can’t do small talk.”
The researchers believe that Newton displayed classic signs of the condition.
[/quote]

[quote]“Impatience with the intellectual slowness of others, narcissism and passion for one’s mission in life might combine to make such individuals isolative and difficult.”
He told the magazine that Einstein was regarded as having a good sense of humour - a trait not seen in people with severe Asperger’s.
[/quote]

What’s the meaning of this sort of report!?

I have read another Chinese news which said Chiuan had Depression . (Bipolar I Disorder, precisely speaking) Funny!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2988647.stm[/quote]

Einstein used to abuse his wife as well. (alledgedly). He also got most of his work from his research assistant who hardly got any credit for anything. His assistant more or less did most of the math for Einstein.

Newton however was a total genius. Amazing!

Hello. Kate.lin again with an interesting link, and me again with my two cents. It has to do with “when science meets language”, which is one of my pet obsessions. The term ‘syndrome’ is a perfect example of a deliberately quasi-scientific category. A ‘syndrome’ does not entail a causality or a rigorously uniform etiology. It is (merely) “suggestive” of the presence of a root cause; i.e. a group of observable behaviors seem to occur along with each other suggesting a root cause. These behaviors get grouped together and then a scientist looks for a cause; but it all could just be a fiction, contingency. (It’s potentially very dangerous when this category is adopted as legal as in “repressed memory syndrome” not long ago.) At the same time, human beings are “suggestable”, perhaps even a priori suggestable, so any ‘syndrome’ gets our attention and the more suggestable one is, the more one wants to “know the truth” or flat out deny the whole thing (because of fear of one’s own suggestability). There’s no getting rid of human suggestability, otherwise we’d be some kind of processing machines. The point is to maintain a critical equanimity between what seems to be and what really is (or isn’t).

[quote=“kate.lin”][quote]“Impatience with the intellectual slowness of others, narcissism and passion for one’s mission in life might combine to make such individuals isolative and difficult.”
He told the magazine that Einstein was regarded as having a good sense of humour - a trait not seen in people with severe Asperger’s.
[/quote]

What’s the meaning of this sort of report!?
[/quote]

The part I quote here is part of Dr Glen Elliott’s argument that Einstein probably did NOT have the syndrome. People love to speculate out the wazoo about these kinds of things, but a bit of healthy skepticism is preferable. Here’s the argument against the idea, in full:

[quote]However, others believe these traits can be attributed to both men’s high intelligence.

‘Socially inept’

“One can imagine geniuses who are socially inept and yet not remotely autistic,” said Dr Glen Elliott, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco.

“Impatience with the intellectual slowness of others, narcissism and passion for one’s mission in life might combine to make such individuals isolative and difficult.”

He told the magazine that Einstein was regarded as having a good sense of humour - a trait not seen in people with severe Asperger’s. [/quote]

Here is a description from the Online Asperger Syndrome Info and Support page, describing the syndrome:

Yeah, so what? That would describe lots of people. Preoccupation with a particular subject of interest?! Such common, vague descriptors aren’t very useful. They continue:

I don’t recall anyone describing Einstein like this.

Not sure this fits either.

From another site:

[quote]# Problems with nonverbal communication

Clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements[/quote]

Any evidence of these in Einstein?

Never heard these about him either.

I’d give this speculation a thumbs down, myself.

well someone mentioned he was a wife beater,that might explain it :laughing: :laughing:

funny i saw a quote by einstein in a locally printed collection the other day, the end of which was “z is keeping your mouth shut.” it struck me as so banal i said, einstein never said that, but i looked on line and he did.

You know, I just checked out Hans Asperger and the syndrome named by him, and I find it intruiging. I mean, it is a syndrome, a collection of observations of behaviors, not really a disease per se. But, it intruiges me because of the special relation those with the syndrome seem to have with language; I mean the special passion those diagnosed have with language. Just as a knee jerk reaction (and everything I’m saying here in this post is hedging) I have known a couple of people like this. They were brilliant, loved to talk in detail about what they’d been reading/thinking; but could not engage in conversation broadly conceived, were physically awkward to a fault…

Anyways, a syndrome is like an adjective. It’s descriptive. I know people who are “easy-going” but if I try to define that precisely, I describe far too many people for the description to be very informative. So then I dig in and try to observe more.

So, here is a situation where skill in observation and also skill in verbal expression of what is being observed can go hand in hand and lead toward something concrete, some new understanding/appreciation of life. Here, scientific and linguistic skill must come together. (The background here is my reading of and love of Dr. Oliver Saks, who had the gift of observation of a special kind and also the gift of compassion and appreciation for syndromes of various kinds.)

In both poetry and science, the gift of observation is often the beginning of something important.

So kate.lin, maybe you are brillant, passionate, etc. … is that bad? Are you worried?

Good day! Professor!
I agree with what you said about the term ‘syndrome.’ I think another similar term is ‘disorder.’
I had a discussion with my professor about the term ‘disorder’ in psychological assessment.
It is to help to classify and to group abnormal behaviors. But there are at least two systems to classify abnormal psychological status.

Another agreement!
I don’t agree with the news story.
I think the news story is worthless so that I wanted to make fun of it. I didn’t do a good job though.

[quote=“dablindfrog”][quote=“Dragonbones”]

[quote]# Problems with nonverbal communication

Clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements[/quote]

Any evidence of these in Einstein?

[/quote]

well someone mentioned he was a wife beater,that might explain it :laughing: :laughing:[/quote]

ROFLMAO

and was me that said that :smiley: My quote :slight_smile: