Tag Archives: Mastermind

A Brilliant Mistake

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Issac Newton

isaac_newton

Isaac Newton was a reasonable man as long as he didn’t have to suffer fools.  This attitude made him appear as both an arrogant man and a humble man at the same time.   This is not surprising, for he is one of the iconic examples of the personality temperament, called Rational, in particular a Mastermind.  Masterminds are not concerned with ideas, for their own sake, as much as the Architects, but rather are interested in ideas for their use and utility in reality.  And Newton had no use for useless or wrong ideas, and for those people who could not see what was obvious to him.  However, Newton saw far — farther than anybody else in his age. But he did make a mistake, a brilliant mistake in a form of simplification, and with that, he, and notably his followers, opened up the world to reason and the scientific revolution.

Continue reading A Brilliant Mistake

A Modern Greek Tragedy in Temperament

… and Gender.

The Fates can be cruel or kind, or both.  It seems so in this story.  This story is about discovery.  This story is about life and death.

She had worked hard all her life.  She had overcome her circumstance. Latin: Circum– to encircle, stance to take a position, to contend. Yes, it had been a man’s world, she was surrounded by her society and her family who discouraged her from her passion: science. Of course, other women had suffered discrimination before her: Marie Curie and Emmy Noether to name two, but they had their families to teach them, encourage and help them. Nobody had encouraged her, certainly not her family, and still was a man’s world in science in 1952.  She had to rely on herself, so she thought and acted.

Continue reading A Modern Greek Tragedy in Temperament

Real Idea Men

It is one of the biggest corporations in the world, with yearly revenues greater than the gross domestic products of 169 countries. Not bad for a company that was co-founded by two young nerds on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell software on computers. They didn’t have much money then.

In fact, one of those guys who arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico airport from Boston in 1975, didn’t have enough money to afford the “upscale” moderately priced motel the computer manufacturer who was interested in buying this software had reserved for this nerd while he proved that his software worked on their computer. He was very nervous about the software — everything was riding on the code — which was punched onto a small role of paper computer tape he carried with him. But, it worked the first time, largely because they had used an emulator of the computer (a software program written by this guy) to build and test the code back in Boston.

This guy, although he didn’t have much money at the time, he did have a big idea. Now others had similar ideas,which was to sell software for computers. That wasn’t the big idea. He and his co-founder shared a firm belief in this big idea, but they were a little different in personality.

Continue reading Real Idea Men