The Genius of Childhood

The Life and Ideas of Edith Cobb

Abstract

The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, a slender book written by Edith Cobb and published after her death, is generally recognized as a first scholarly attempt to answer the question: Why is childhood so crucial to human evolution and culture?She believed that the “genius of childhood” is children’s ability from infancy on to use their five senses in a feedback process with the environment. According to Cobb, this exercise of sensory and perceptual processes in childhood lays the foundations for the neural network of human intuition. Cobb’s life was as compelling as her ideas. Although discouraged by her wealthy family from entering college, she was an extremely intelligent woman. She succeeded in a professional education program when she was over 45 and continued to revise her book for many years while coping with continual debilitating illness. She and Margaret Mead were close friends for almost four decades. It was Mead who recognized the brilliance of Cobb's work and after Cobb's death persevered to insure her book's publication and thus, its availability to future scholars. Cobb's life also demonstrates the magic of finding the perfect intellectual and spiritual mate.