Brain Expansion: Einstein's brain in early years (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 20:10 (1479 days ago) @ David Turell

A strange childhood:

https://www.ducksters.com/biography/scientists/albert_einstein/early-life.php

"As one might expect, Albert Einstein was not the typical child. However, not in the way one might think. He was not a child prodigy who could read at the age of two and do high level math at four, but quite the opposite. Albert appeared to have great difficulty in learning to talk. An older Albert once recalled that his parents became so concerned about his speaking difficulties that they consulted a doctor. Even when he did start talking, Albert had the strange habit of repeating sentences several times to himself. At one point, he earned the nickname "der Depperte," which means "dopey one."

"As he grew older and entered school, Einstein developed a rebellious attitude towards his teachers and authority in general. Perhaps it was a result of being so intelligent, but not being able to communicate it. His first school was a Catholic school where the teachers treated him fairly, but he was constantly picked on by the other students for being Jewish. He eventually began to excel in school and, contrary to some legends about Einstein, he did not flunk out of math, but typically performed at the top of his class.

"Albert would later conjecture that perhaps his ability to think in unique ways and to develop new scientific concepts differently came from his early struggles. He liked to think in pictures, rather than in words.

"Early brilliance: "While there are many stories telling about how Einstein struggled in school and even failed in math, these are not true. He may have not been the ideal student, but he scored high in most subjects, especially math and physics. As an adult, Einstein was asked about his failure in math and he replied "I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.'"

And it is widely accepted he was dyslectic:

https://www.dyslexia.com/famous/albert-einstein/

Einstein also frequently described his thought process as being nonverbal:
Words or language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play
any role in my mechanism of thought.
(From a letter to mathematician Jacques Hadamard, 1945)

Thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I very rarely think in
words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words
afterwards. (Said to his friend, psychologist Max Wertheimer).
Writing is difficult, and I communicate this way very badly. (Reported by physicist Robert S. Shankland in Conversations with Einstein)

Einstein’s childhood and early education also shows a pattern of strengths and weaknesses commonly seen among very bright dyslexic children:
Childhood Strengths:
special interest and a knack for studying geometry
as a teenager, he thrived while attending a Swiss school based on creative, visual methods of instruction and discouraging memorization

Areas of Weakness:
verbal development was delayed and Einstein did not speak
until the age of three
early speech was described as laborious and searching, persisting to age 7, suggesting difficulties with word retrieval
as a schoolboy, his poor facility for arithmetic and his great difficulty with foreign language let a teacher to predict that “nothing good” would come of him

Comment: There is no question he was born with a strange brain, contra to your attempts to squeeze him into an example of your unsupported theory of brain expansion. Dyslexia is common and often comes with brilliance. My wife is one, and I've worked a small number of others who fit the point.