Genius, Creativity, and Leadership

Simonton believes that if we subject the lives of the eminent to scientific analysis we may be able to discover general laws of history and social behavior. To do this he defines a discipline called historiometry. He begins with an explanation of the method: choosing a unit of analysis, be it individual philosophers, historic land battles, or classical melodies; defining and calculating the crucial variables; and teasing out with advanced statistical analysis the most probable causal connections in the data.