I can recall being intrigued by how many of the world’s most brilliant physicists were Hungarian Jews from Budapest.
It just about has to be genetics.
>>I can recall being intrigued by how many of the world’s most brilliant physicists were Hungarian Jews from Budapest.
>>It just about has to be genetics.
And why can’t the ability to acquire knowledge be as much a matter of culture and upbringing as using ones’ hands while speaking, saying “knock wood” for good luck, making a stranger feel welcome, etc.? The Florentine Renaissance, that little romp in a meadow that gave us 3-D rendering for blueprints, machine tool industry, modern astronomy and eventually the Industrial Revolution, happened in Northern Italy because of the creation of surplus value by the merchant class and the translation of lost Greek texts saved by Arab scholars, not by some indwelling knack for numbers. The Florentine Renaissance spawned the Elizabethan Renaissance, the French Enlightenment, the Prussian Education Reforms and, yes, the Philadelphian Renaissance centered around the printing press of Benjamin Franklin and others resulting in our American Revolution. If you are an oppressed minority and wish to survive, you begin to live by your wits and get smart as a culture. Conservatives will soon learn this.