savants?

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how many savants are here, if any? just curious...

I have a question that I think is interesting: how do people today define savant?

the dict. def is learned, scholarly, wise but i think it tends to mean
uncanny or peculiarly advanced abilities in some specialized area.
i am around plenty of learned and scholarly types and would not
think of them as savants.

i like the concept of idiot savant for myself. idiot actually comes from
the greek word for "private person" or "person lacking skills". that
fits me when it comes to certain key people skills. but i do have odd
savant-esque musical and visual skills that other people think odd.

fG

Savant Syndrome

It pretty much explains it there.

thank you :D I just wanted to know what you all think. I tend to not like the dictionary in it's rigidity sometimes. :S

I have seen definitions that said that someone needs to have a IQ in the mentally ret*d range, along with some highly advanced and highly specific splinter skill (e.g. mathematical, artistic etc.). Other definitions are much less restrictive, and include people with normal or above normal intelligence who have a highly specific skill that seems to be innate, highly advanced, and often operates by a thought process that is inaccessible to most people.

For example, Daniel Tammet is considered a savant by basically everyone. He has Aspergers and normal intelligence, though can do advanced numerical calculations in his head, and he memorized thousands of digits of pi in a few weeks, which has never been done before. However, Tammet was unable to learn algebra, as his method of understanding numbers did not lend itself to substituting them with variables.