Talents and Savants
Today’s post does not have much to do with science, just a little about genes. Several years ago at school, a teacher asked me what Monty’s special skill is; as she understood autism, people always have one. Recently, at the same mainstream school, a teacher was explaining to the assembled now older kids why it was that she had decided to establish a talent show. Did the kids really know what talent means? Her point was that everyone has a special ability, something that they are surprisingly good at. You just have to find it and develop it. The key is what you do with those talents, do they grow or not? “Talent” came ultimately from Greek talanton , and referred originally to a unit of weight used by the Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, and Greeks. The use of talent to mean ‘natural aptitude or skill’ comes from the biblical parable of the talents in the Gospel of Matthew . In this story a master gives one, two, and ten talents of silver to...