Nikola Tesla (Inventor, Mechanical and Electrical Engineer), at the time of his death, had 278 confirmed patents in 26 countries. Some of these magnificent inventions include the first VTOL aircraft, wireless energy transfer and the alternating current. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_patents --for more on his patents)
The man’s achievements are obviously exemplary. He was also celibate and seemed to claim abstinence from sex as beneficial to his studies. Now at first glance we may say, “Oh, well, the guy just couldn’t get any.” That does not appear to be the case.
Now there are plenty of instances where we see sexually active individuals making great contributions to various fields: Debussy, for instance, or Mozart. I’m not suggesting celibacy is requisite or that if you have sex you automatically lose your ability to achieve greatness. You may simply not be capable of “greatness.” What I am looking to explore is whether we can find a logical explanation for correlations between sexual activity and substantial achievement in artistic, philosophic and scientific fields.
Social relationships, as we all know, are time consuming (that is not to say a bad thing, simply to state that they do in fact take time): especially romantic/sexual relationships. In propagating these relations, do we limit how much time we devote to our aspirations, indeed no longer strive for quite as much? If we have a romantic partner we are, unless in an unhealthy, unsatisfying relationship, generally more content than we would be as bachelor(ette)s, are we not? We have the prospect of offspring to “carry on our name,: to give our life a greater purpose, no? Do our celibate (or near celibate) individuals find in their creations a sort of surrogate offspring, whether or not that is their conscious motivation?
I am not looking in this opening to declare anything, simply to put forward this question and some of the thoughts that brought me to it.