Charles Murray has made the entire database compiled for his book Human Accomplishment freely available at the Open Science Framework.
Here is the link: https://osf.io/z9cnk/
Incidentally, my concept of Apollo’s Ascent was to a significant extent the result of my reaction to Human Accomplishment. (A brief reminder of the AA thesis: The rate and global distribution of technological progress is dependent on the absolutely numbers of literate “smart fraction” people available to different societies at different points in history). Although Human Accomplishment was a thoroughly brilliant work, I had some quibbles with its core argument – namely, that Christianity was at the root of Europe’s post-1450 intellectual preeminence.
The Greeks laid the foundation, but it was the transmutation of that foundation by Christianity that gave modern Europe its impetus and differentiated European accomplishment from that of all other cultures around the world.
This was a judgement that Murray appears to have made relatively late in the writing process, and I suspect that as a social scientist he might not have been 100% satisfied – intellectually, at any rate – with ascribing possibly the biggest puzzle in world history to unquantifiable and unfalsifiable “transcendental values.”
After all, purely cultural explanations don’t tend to have a greaat track record in explaining economic success/failure (which are substantially related to intellectual achievement: You need smart fractions both to invent stuff and to have more productive economies). See how Confucianism was first used to explain the stagnation of East Asian societies before 1950, before the historians and sociologists did a 180 and started citing that same Confucianism to explain the success of the East Asian tiger economies when they burst into prominence by the 1980s. I don’t think it’s a particularly wild or radical idea that concrete, quantifiable concepts such as literacy rates and smart fractions would be a more credible explanation. But let the eventual critics of Apollo’s Ascent be the judge of that.
Speaking of Apollo’s Ascent, writing the book will be much easier with access to Charles Murray’s database. It would also be on much firmer theoretical ground, since instead of just highlighting general patterns – it’s not as if I have the time or resources to construct a comprehensive database of human accomplishment by myself – I will also be able to run numerical experiments, e.g. on on the correlation between calculated historical “aggregate mindpower” levels in different countries (aka literate smart fraction people) and their production of eminent figures.
Charles Murray was actually kind enough to email me the HA database a couple of months ago, so this public release is mostly redundant for my own project. But it is a very good thing nonetheless that many more people will now be able to run their own historical and social “experiments” using his data, including those who might earlier have shied at openly requesting it.
It is also part of a general process now underway in which there is growing demand for scientists to make their data publically available as opposed to just on request. To a significant extent I think the reason more scientists don’t yet do this is that the technical means for doing so – especially for older scientists who tend to be less computer savvy – are still few and far between. The Open Science Framework, for instane, only began operations in 2011. So persons such as Emil Kirkegaard who are heavily involved with the opening up of the scientific process – incidentally, it was partly thanks to his timely prodding that the Human Accomplishment data was released – should also be strongly commended.
To go a bit meta, this process – both in its technological and social aspects – is itself an information technology that acts as a multiplier on aggregate mindpower, in the style of Renaissance reading glasses and the Internet. The Flynn Effect has stopped in the developed world, literacy rates are pretty much maxed out, and Apollo’s load almost always gets heavier, not lighter. Just like in the Civilization video games, you need more and more “science points” to generate discoveries as you go up the technology tree. As such, we have to start eking everything we can out of existing technology to keep up the production of our Great Scientists. Shifting to open science paradigms is by far not the worst way of going about this.
I thought most of big human societies tend to have traditionally a strong long term planning while western civilizations and specially modern western civilization have been (also, is not just it, of course) greater freedom to improvise (creativity) new paths because generally, seems or can be, ”civilizations” has worked or had been used to perpetuate certain privileged classes at long term AND not necessarily to improve itself and not just FOR ”natural” aristocracies around the world. Creativity mean high risk and specially it can cause revolts against ”elites”.
Greater or comparatively greater freedom not just create a social atmosphere of incentive and acceptance of creativity as well help to increase reproductive fitness of creative people while long term nepotism can have a greater impact in their social acceptance and reproduction.
Thanks for the article, Sir. I used to respect Charles Murray until he started revealing himself as a Jewish puppet.
… [snipped]
AK: Blah blah blah.
There is obvious dunning kruger element in Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment after reading its database.
Nice article. Thanks…HBD1
“namely, that Christianity was at the root of Europe’s post-1450 intellectual preeminence”
Before the Renaissance the most impressive intellectual achievements were made by the ancient Greeks. So the two best efforts in that direction were made by essentially the same people, Europeans. If that were a coincidence, it would be a big one. The ancient Greek effort was made before Christianity came into the existence. So I think it’s the hardware, not the software. In other words it’s the people themselves.
What made Europeans special? I think it’s interesting that the farming zone extends much further to the north in Europe than in the Far East. The north of the Far East is the Mongolian and Manchurian steppe, pastureland. Above that is Siberia.
Low population density of farmers up in the European north, people on isolated homesteads having to battle against the inanimate forces of nature more than against other people, this slowly selecting for a specific kind of mindset – that’s my guess as to where science ultimately came from.
I’ve listed some reasons for thinking that the Greeks were conquerors from the north before, but here’s another one:
The word laconic comes from Laconia, the part of Greece where Sparta is located. Ancient Greeks loved to tell jokes about how laconic Spartans were, the same sort of jokes that modern Europeans tell about Finns.
As a person of nearly 100% Mediterranean background I think I can say with some authority that none of us are laconic. I’ve never heard anyone accuse any native Mediterranean people of that. Which is just another little thing that tells me that ancient Spartans, Dorians, and likely Greeks in general, were newcomers to the region, like the Brits at Gibraltar now.
Stop plagiarize my speech!!!
Christianity laid the groundwork for genius by banning cousin marriage “to the 7th degree.” That ultimately led to smarter people.
My own question after reading HA the first time was: where was Nicola Tesla?
ok, 😉
I believe Murray’s methodology was looking at the number of citations in prominent books such as encyclopedias. Tesla was actually relatively obscure until recently. He fell into obscurity among the general public after his death until the internet, where enthusiasts and fans of him have helped make him more well known.
What made Europeans special?
Who said they were? A non-European?
Special or spatial?
Are you European?
My feeling is completely the opposite – there is no one more laconic than Mediterranean people. A Greek villager, or a Palermo cafe goer, will always be 100 times more laconic than a loud British tourist.
Some quibbles? That claim should raise serious objections. It disqualifies Murray as a rational observer.
If Christianity was at the root of Europe’s post-1450 intellectual preeminence what was it doing in the many centuries preceding 1450 when europe lagged behind the muslim middle-east?
The Modern Age owes nothing to christian (or muslim) superstition. There is no STEM to be found in the Bible or the Koran.
You are as irrational as Murray. It is really dumb to think that discounting christianity as the root cause discounts all software. If it was the people themselves why did Europe lag behind for so long?
Your nordicism is even more ridiculous, considering that northern europeans were barbarians until not so long ago. Aristotle in Politics writes that the europeans living in the regions colder than Greece were stupid and incompetent (but free-spirited).
If it was the people themselves why did Europe lag behind for so long?
I tnink I’ve explained this to you before. The reason was low population density. The mindset necessary for the scientific and industrial revolutions was likely born on isolated farmsteads, but you can’t have a complex civilization on them.
Northern Europeans achieved high population density in Greece and Italy in ancient times through conquest, followed by a demographic explosion due to warm-weather farming. But this was temporary. They kept on conquering (old habits die hard), bringing Middle Eastern slaves (POWs) to Greece and Italy. Eventually they merged with them.
More than a thousand years later agricultural techniques improved to such an extent that high population density became possible in places like England and Germany.
Typically crackpot nordicist fantasies. Everything you have written is self-serving conjecture with no connection to reality. Nordicist nonsense has been polluting and perverting millions of minds since at least the 19th century. In the mid-20th century this racial megalomania led directly to the deaths of tens of millions of northern europeans during WWII. Yet you fools haven’t learned your lesson.
Your excuses for the inability of nordics to create a civilization are pathetic. There were millions of nordics, in contact with greek and roman civilization, yet for many centuries they were unable to even learn to copy their betters from the south. The ancient greeks had a very low opinion of the intelligence of nordics nor did they see the nordics as being akin to themselves.
You are a people without an ancient history. Deal with it.
Actually, I’m Jewish by ancestry. I’m curious about where civilization comes from, how it developed, and this is my best guess. It’s the opposite of self-aggrandizing. It doesn’t put me in a good light.
Assuming that people who talk about history and politics are motivated by self-interest is the right approach most of the time. Just not with me.
History is weird in that you can come closer to the truth in it than most of the people who are smarter and/or more well-read than you are simply by looking for the truth. Most of them don’t.
Much like this year’s Oscars, blacks have (almost entirely) boycotted Murray’s data: only 5 out of the 4000 entries.
”In the mid-20th century this racial megalomania led directly to the deaths of tens of millions of northern europeans during WWII. Yet you fools haven’t learned your lesson.”
I agree absoutely with you. White europeans had been slaved by their lovely ”elites” since a long long time, the history of Europe is a history of continuous sequence of stupid wars by ”foreigner gods”. No have a single century where has not happened this stupid wars.
In this part whites working classes become absolutely blind forgeting the past (and pres… and possibly a futur) of exploitation. They thought that industrial revolution was a ”white pride”, the ”white genius”, man!!! european working class people was absurdly exploited, what happen in countries like China and in Africa today. This international solidarity there should be among workers around the world. Indeed, people are exploited but it doesn’t mean that every pseudo-philosophical egalitarian dogmas regurgigated by people-on-the-left are correct.
White nationalism is not just the non-political movement par excellence as well become a factory of excuses to explain why at least 30% of swedes believe that ”they are” guilty by african slavery or that ”races doesn’t exist”.
Average(s) white people seems have lack of intellectual curiosity, include a great % of academics.
Glossy, you’re talking out of your ass with your ancient-greek-being-nordic case, I’m sorry.
You’re usually very interesting to read but here you are about 60 years late to that party.
Read this blog:http://eurogenes.blogspot.ae/
It is the blog of a man who calls himself Polako and has performed tests using modern ancestry analyzing software, i.e., PLINK, Admixture, etc. on ancient DNA collected from Europe, the middle east and central asia.
Do you want to hear some surprising things?
Mesolithic europeans who lived through the ice ages, your democratic, free, dictator-detesting, ubermensch? Extinct like the dodo.
Who replaced them?
Wog farmers from the middle east. These guys owned europe for the entirety of the neolithic.
Who replaced those guys? Now things get interesting.
A strange group from southern Russia and eastern Ukraine river valleys begins to appear in European graves and Central asian graves around this time. They are all very tall, one man being 2 meters in height. They are usually burried with their horses.
Who are these people most similar to out of modern populations? Davidski found out that they share most ancestry with modern northeastern europeans.
So your theory holds out so far. Here’s where it falls apart: That group was also a mixture.
A mixture between a georgian/chechen like population and an ancient lost north eurasian population that also contributed ancestry to siberians and native americans.
You’re going to have to rework your theory a bit.
Who replaced those guys? Now things get interesting.
A strange group from southern Russia and eastern Ukraine river valleys begins to appear in European graves and Central asian graves around this time. They are all very tall, one man being 2 meters in height. They are usually burried with their horses.
I think you’re describing Indo-Europeans. They came to Europe from the Pontic steppes a long time ago, roughly 5k years before present. I think modern northern Europenas are to a large extend their descendents.
The thing that’s necessary for my view of things to be valid is for them to have undergone a few thousand years of selection as northern farmers. And yes, they did that. The fact that they themselves were a mixture of guys from the Caucasus and ancient Siberian hunter-gatherers is immaterial to me.
“The thing that’s necessary for my view of things to be valid is for them to have undergone a few thousand years of selection as northern farmers. And yes, they did that. ”
But that’s the thing. They were recently mixed (a few thousand years) BUT they weren’t farmers.
They were herders.
They became farmers once they got out of the steppes and conquered most of Europe.
And I think proto-Indo-Europeans practiced both farming and herding, though more of the latter than most farmers.
To be clearer: proto-Indo-Europeans were both farmers and herders in the steppes. The amount of farming that they did increased once they came to Europe.
“the Greeks were conquerors from the north”
No they weren’t.
http://dienekes.awardspace.com/articles/hellenes/
Note that the dataset is incomplete. It does not have the text length data from the primary sources. These however would be important to have if one was interested in checking that the index numbers were calculated correctly, or if one wanted to add more primary sources, or wanted to split up the persons into other groups, or wanted to examine different cut-off threshold for inclusion. I will ask Murray if the other data can be released too. I have in mind doing a replicating study by comparing the lengths with Wikipedia articles’ length and the number of articles linking to each article.
“bringing Middle Eastern slaves (POWs) to Greece and Italy. Eventually they merged with them”
That’s not true either.
http://italianthro.blogspot.com/2014/06/mediterranean-sea-as-genetic-barrier.html
I think that’s part of it too. Gulf Stream = big deal.
If the (simplified) root of it all is something like
how much your country doesn’t suck = IQ * CQ
where
IQ is IQ (either accurate average IQ or smart fraction depending on your opinion)
CQ is some kind of corruption quotient
then if “clannishness” can make both IQ and CQ worse then the Christian ban on close cousin marriage may have been a major factor.
In which case well done Augustine and Aquinas (and possibly Cleisthenes as well h/t tajikchik).
He’s there. Score of 17.77 in Technology
Anyone who takes Charles Murray’s list seriously is an idiot. For example he has rated 17 japanese (all in art and literature) and 23 chinese (all but one in art and lit) among his top 100 but not a single russian. Apparently Pushkin and Tolstoy were not good enough for this “expert” in world literature.
Slavs in general are few and far between among the thousands he has listed and ranked. There is always bias and prejudice in such lists, but this one is beyond ridiculous.
One fact that the list does help to highlight is how almost every accomplished northern european died less than 500 years ago. It took many centuries after the northern barbarians were civilized for them to start showing up in the list.
Actually, both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky occupy high positions in the Western Lit category:
10: Tolstoy (score: 42)
11:Dostoevsky (score: 42)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment#Western_Literature
The top four European countries (in terms of producing significant figures in the arts and the sciences) in Murray’s book are Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. Given what they have produced over the last 1,000 years, that’s not surprising.
So, perhaps in a thousand years or so, we’ll start seeing Black African versions of Newton, Bach, Shakespeare, Gauss, Kant, Mozart,Edison, etc, etc…
FWIW, here is a Russian ranking of its literature greats with a methodology that is (very loosely) similar to Murray’s:
http://russianbookchamber.blogspot.com/p/russkie-pisateli-klassiki.html
Top 10:
Incidentally, this illustrates a rather funny feature of West/Russian differences. Since Pushkin, as a writer of poetry or at most short, highly stylistic prose, is much harder to translate into foreign languages, he appears third on Murray’s list. However, he appears first on the Russian list, and this is a rating that has face validity, i.e. Pushkin really is central in Russian school literature classes.
In Murray’s list, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are joint first.
I do think Dostoevsky is strangely low on the Russian list. I could just about see Chekhov edging him out, but Turgenev? A. Tolstoy?? Very strange.
And look at the list for Western music. No Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky in the top 20. No Vivaldi for that matter.
I didn’t find Albinoni either. Maybe I missed it accidentally. The list is a complete crap.
I think Turgenev is in this position for obvious reason–Fathers And Children is one of the archetypal pieces of “Western” realism, no less important than anything Dostoevsky wrote. Per A.Tolstoy, if we are talking about Alexey Nickolaevich–considering his range from sci-fi Aelita or Hyperpoloid Of Engineer Garin to Hozhdenie Po Mukam, which is one of the best epics ever written, seems reasonable to me. I mean his fairly high position. I would, however, trade his position with Gogol’s.
Could this list reflect the observation that L. Tolstoy fans dislike Dostoevsky and vice versa?
Murray also probably places Tolstoy and Dostoevsky too far down on his list. I agree with Smoothie’s statement that Murray’s list is complete crap.
In compiling his Western Lit inventory, Murray was quite worried about linguistic chauvinism. To get past that problem, he made a decision to evaluate each author via critical sources that were not in the same language that the author wrote in. Hence, Anglo authors were scored according to evaluations made by non-Anglo critics, Germans were scored according to evaluations made by non-German critics, etc.
This has a tendency to produce rankings that can seem a bit odd.For example, here’s his lost of giants in Western Lit:
Figure Index score
William Shakespeare 100
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 81
Dante Alighieri 62
Virgil 55
Homer 54
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 48
Voltaire 47
Molière 43
Lord Byron 42
Leo Tolstoy 42
Fyodor Dostoyevsky 41
Petrarch 40
Victor Hugo 40
Friedrich Schiller 38
Giovanni Boccaccio 35
Horace 35
Euripides 35
Jean Racine 34
Walter Scott 33
Henrik Ibsen 32
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment#Western_Literature
Now, the top scoring Anglos are Shakespeare, Byron, and Sir Walter Scott. Not many Anglos would argue about Shakespeare’s ranking, but Byron and Scott look weirdly out of place. How many Anglo critics would rate Byron above figures like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Milton, Eliot, Frost, Pope, etc? Very few, I’m sure. And I can’t think of anyone who would place Scott above Dickens, Austen, Henry James, William Faulkner, George Eliot, etc.
However, those scores do make sense when one thinks of the impact that Byron and Scott have had outside Anglo Lit.
Re art and literature, would that Murray examine the good/bad impacts ‘artiststs’ have had on civilizations’ successes/failures . . .
The entertainment class (( artists of whatever venue )) has done more to topple high-culture civilization than any other factor, save environmental cataclysms.
Generally, high culture rises upon left-brain reason (( masculinism )) and falls by right-brain emotion (( feminism )).
“The past informs the present to predict the future.” -Brule’
Examine the entertainment class in ancient Greece and Rome to predict present-day Hollywood’s bad impact on Western Civ.
Dostoyevsky is kinda hard to read in Russian. My observation is that few in Russia read him for pleasure. Translations generally cannot fully convey his style, which ironically makes his books more accessible in other languages.
True to a degree, yet, sometimes his language almost replicates Tolstoy’s free flowing narrative. Both are quintessential Russian writers, and that never failed the attention of Isiah Berlin who wrote his masterpiece “The Hedgehog and the Fox”.
What part of top 100 total didn’t you understand?
Tolstoy is ranked #218 and Pushkin #375. There are scores of obscure western euro and east asian writers/poets ahead of Pushkin who is the #1 most creative writer in the russian language. Does that actually makes sense to you?
Clearly Murray is hopelessly biased. His asian fetish and western euro chauvinism is shamelessly expressed in his rankings. And his pathological antipathy for africans explains his absurdly low ranking of the part-ethiopian Pushkin. Ditto for his ranking the part-african Alexandre Dumas, the most popular writer of french fiction, at #1371 (well below numerous obscure french writers).
If Murray knew that Beethoven was also part black he surely wouldn’t have ranked him #5:
https://www.google.com/search?q=beethoven+black&espv=2&biw=1097&bih=492&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF7t_CoNPKAhUP-GMKHSGLAd0QsAQIGw
Dear fellow, here’s Murray’s list of the greatest authors in the Western Lit category:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment#Western_Literature
Tolstoy is ranked at number 10. That means that only 9 Western authors are ranked ahead of him.
As to why Pushkin ranks so far below Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, that has to do with Murray’s methodology for assigning scores to literary figures. In order to avoid linguistic/nationalistic bias, authors are assigned scores according to how they are regarded by critics who do not belong to the same linguistic category as the author. For example, Anglo critics were not used for the purpose of assigning a score to Shakespeare. Pushkin has had a tremendous impact on Russian Literature, but his work does not translate well. Hence, he has had a relatively small impact on non-Russian literature. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, in contrast, have had a huge impact on non-Russian authors.
No, as I pointed out above, it has to do with the fact that Pushkin has had relatively little impact outside of Russia.
Popularity often has very little to do with quality…
Beethoven is tied with Mozart for number one in Western Music:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment#Western_Music
And, needless to say, Beethoven wasn’t part Black:
http://www.academia.edu/4074689/Black_Beethoven_and_the_Racial_Politics_of_Music_History
http://www.sjsu.edu/beethoven/research/faq_beethoven/
Nonsense. There are dozens of writers from Asia and Europe ranked above Pushkin who have had lesser impact outside their countries…and much lesser impact within their countries.
Hmmm, actually Beethoven is tied at #1 along with 21 others in total (all nations, all categories). He is #5 only because of alphabetical order within that shared ranking (I overlooked that).
Coming from the pathologically dishonest character who denies that the Sphinx of Giza and the Olmec heads of Mexico are negroid in appearance you of course cannot be expected to be rational and objective in matters of race.
http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/sf/faq068.htm
Frederick Hertz, German anthropologist, in “Race and Civilization,” refers twice to Beethoven’s “Negroid traits” and his “dark” skin, and “flat, thick nose.” (pp. 123 and 178).
Frau Fischer, an intimate acquaintance of Beethoven, describes him thus, “Short, stocky, broad shoulders, short neck, round nose, blackish-brown complexion.” (From r. H. Schauffler, The Man Who Freed Music, Vol. I, p. 18, 1929).
Paul Bekker, another very noted authority on Beethoven, says that “the most faithful picture of Beethoven’s head” shows him with “wide, thick lipped mouth, short, thick nose, and proudly arched forehead.” (Beethoven, p. 41, 1925. trans. Bozman). Thayer adds that Beethoven was an ugly little man, and no one would be more astonished than the great composer should he return and see how he has been idealized by sculptors and painters.
Murray’s list starts with Ancient Greece showing his eurocentric bias. History didn’t start with Greece. The human accomplishments of Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Indus Valley predate Greece by thousands of years. Even the Olmec civilization of central america predates the beginning of this list by many centuries.
Some observations:
The ancient greeks start off the list 2700 years ago with Homer and Hesiod. Indians enter 2600 years ago with Carvaka and Kapila. Chinese start showing up 2550 years ago with Laozi. Romans ~2200 years ago. Arabs ~1500 years ago. Japanese ~1400 years ago. Northern europeans are the last to make the list, and among them the slavs are the last to appear on the scene.
In the 700 years between 400 A.D. and 1100 A.D. europeans were conspicuous by their near-total absence. Arabs, Indians, Chinese and Japanese completely dominate. Conversely, europeans start dominating the list ~500 years ago and take off into the stratosphere after the Enlightenment.
The writers from Asia don’t count, as I am discussing Pushkin’s place within the Western Lit category. As for writers within the Western category who are placed above Pushkin, which ones bother you? Which ones do you think are being overrated by Murray?
Dear fellow, an all categories ranking is an absurdity. How would one begin to compare Bach to Newton? Or James Watt to Michelangelo? That’s why I use Murray’s rankings within categories. And Beethoven is tied with Mozart for number one in Western music.
You’re really not helping yourself by bringing up your belief that the Olmec heads depict Black Africans…..
Dear fellow, only Afrocentric cranks take the “Black Beethoven” theory seriously:
http://www.academia.edu/4074689/Black_Beethoven_and_the_Racial_Politics_of_Music_History
http://www.sjsu.edu/beethoven/research/faq_beethoven/
It is really stupid to claim that asian writers don’t count when they figure so prominently on Murray’s list. Where the hell did you learn that impact outside the country applies only to western writers? On what basis do you think Murray ranks asian writers? Do you even think before you post?
You really helped yourself….look foolish by denying the obvious with laughable comparisons like this:
http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Native-Olmec-compare-3.jpg
The descriptions of Beethoven by people who actually saw him in real life trump all the denials and delusions of dumb and dishonest racists such as yourself.
Btw, Socrates too was described (including by himself) as showing visible african ancestry: low nasal bridge, broad nose, flaring nostrils, big lips, bulging eyes.
Murray starts his list at 800 BC for reasons of practicality. As he notes in his book, that’s about as far back as we can go and still discuss creative individuals.And it’s also about as far back as we can go in terms of the direct transmission of culture. The ability to read Egyptian hieroglyphs and cuneiform was only regained in the 19th century. And we still can’t read the writing system used by the Indus civilization.
On the other hand, Blacks Africans are nearly non-existent……
Yeah, a well-known low point for European Civilization.Of course, Europe had produced one hell of a lot between 700 BC and 400 AD: the Homeric epics, Hesiod, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Tacitus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Archimedes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, etc, etc
Actually, the Western European recovery begins more than 500 years ago, as demonstrated by figures like Dante, Fibonacci,Thomas Aquinas, William of Occam, Chaucer, Giotto, etc
They don’t count in terms of Western rankings. Murray has separate listings for Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Arabic lit. For example, here’s his “Giants” list for Chinese lit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment#Chinese_Literature
The Western lit category involves people writing in a multiplicity of languages: German, Latin, Greek, French, Russian, English, Dutch, etc. This is not the case in, say, the Japanese lit category.This means that writers within the Western canon have to have an impact outside their home languages in order to receive a high score from Murray.
Dear fellow, feel free to believe whatever makes you feel good about yourself.
Again, dear fellow, if it helps you overcome your feelings of inferiority, go right ahead and believe whatever you like.
Of course, dear fellow, of course. And I’m sure that Plato and Aristotle were Black, too…..
You didn’t even bother to read that list did you? Pushkin is not in there. You seem to be confusing Pushkin with Tolstoy. As Karlin posted the russians rank Pushkin ahead of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
It is absurd that Pushkin is not included in Murray’s list of top 20 in western literature. He should be in the top ten. How the hell are Lord Byron, Jean Racine, Schiller for example, bigger than Pushkin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin#Legacy
Pushkin is usually credited with developing Russian literature. Not only is he seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, but he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon. Where he found gaps in the Russian vocabulary, he devised calques. His rich vocabulary and highly sensitive style are the foundation for modern Russian literature. His accomplishments set new records for development of the Russian language and culture. He became the father of Russian literature in the 19th century, marking the highest achievements of 18th century and the beginning of literary process of the 19th century. Alexander Pushkin introduced Russia to all the European literary genres as well as a great number of West European writers. He brought natural speech and foreign influences to create modern poetic Russian. Though his life was brief, he left examples of nearly every literary genre of his day: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, the critical essay, and even the personal letter.
Pushkin’s work as a journalist marked the birth of Russian magazine culture which included him devising and contributing heavily to one of the most influential literary magazines of the 19th century, the Sovremennik (The Contemporary, or Современник). Pushkin inspired the folk tales and genre pieces of other authors: Leskov, Esenin, and Gorky. His use of Russian language formed the basis of the style of novelists Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, and Leo Tolstoy, as well as that of subsequent lyric poets such as Mikhail Lermontov. Pushkin was analyzed by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, his successor and pupil, and the great Russian critic Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky who has also produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Pushkin’s work, which still retains much of its relevance.
Yes, I know that Pushkin doesn’t make Murray’s “Giants” list. But Tolstoy and Dostoevsky do.Why? Because Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have had more influence outside Russia than Pushkin has.
Because Schiller, Racine, and Lord Byron have had more influence on Western Lit. Pushkin’s influence within Russian Lit is enormous.However, he’s had very little impact outside Russia.
Lord Byron offers an Anglo parallel.Murray’s list places him over Milton, Chaucer, Pope, Donne, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Whitman, Dickinson, Tennyson, Eliot, etc.Frankly, I can’t imagine an Anglo critic doing that. But Byron has had an enormous amount of influence outside the Anglosphere, and that explains his placement.
Why do asian nations have separate listings but all european nations are lumped together in one list? That the criteria Murray uses to rank his list leads to so many absurdities clearly proves that they are flawed.
Where are the non-arabs of the muslim world? Why are such big names as Khwarizmi, Rumi etc not on the list?
Where is the greatest writer in the portuguese language: the part-african brazilian Machado de Assis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machado_de_Assis
Murray’s list can be quite useful but it is far from accurate or complete as a compendium and ranking of human accomplishment.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MKVcE0zn6lgXPetpMBcce1UA0oY4Zz6q2AxFVebAhuc/edit#gid=708222749
The list confirms that jewish accomplishment is almost entirely a post-Enlightenment phenomenon. With the great majority of the 183 jews on the list active in the 20th century, followed by the ones from the second half of the 19th century.
Antiquity had just one jew (Philo, died 54 A.D.) and the next western jew (Rojas, died 1541 A.D.) on the list comes 1500 years later and he was actually a christian. After him there are 5 more jews (only 2 by religion) until the 19th century. Add the 2 jews from medieval muslim Spain and you have a total of only 9 jews on the list before the 19th century. In other words 95% of the jews on this list are from post-Enlightenment Europe and the Americas.
林安德， you might be interested in following documentary about current innovation of Chinese machine industry which starts to provide high end of equiments for developed nations like USA, Germany.
https://youtu.be/x2i5s71GTbw?list=PLodP2yDwGRJGYp8yuZi1uNMOE3PcaBiYI
Like Japan, people start innovation after learning. This documentary was made in 2013. Now far more stuffs come out.
http://edge.org/conversation/richard_nisbett-the-crusade-against-multiple-regression-analysis
Hope this will help in your analysis. Correlation study is not very reliable at all. Be very careful.
Because Murray feels that Europe, Anglo-America, the antipodes (Australia and New Zealand), Latin America, etc, can best be studied as a group.
Literature, as it is inextricably bound to the language in which it is composed (cf Robert Frost’s famous quip:”Poetry is what gets lost in translation”), is probably the most difficult of the arts to evaluate in a cross-cultural context.Murray’s approach is problematic (cf my comments on Byron and Scott), but I’m not sure what should replace it.
Murray confines his list for Arabic Lit to authors who wrote in Arabic and Persian.
He’s there.Murray lists him as” al-Khwarizmi, Abu Ja’far.” He gets a score of 23.92 in the Mathematics category.
He’s there. Murray lists him as Jalal al-Din ar- Rumi (Mawlana).
He’s there. Murray lists him as Machado, Antonio. He gets a score of 6.95.
Dunno if he’s the “greatest writer in the Portuguese language,” though. Just confining ourselves to Brazil, there’s João Guimarães Rosa.
On the other hand, kudos for listing someone who actually is part Black.
No he’s not. Antonio Machado the spaniard writing in spanish is not Machado de Assis the brazilian writing in portuguese.
Murray not including the premier literary figure of the most populous latin nation is utterly inexcusable. There is no better explanation other than his notorious racism. Ditto for him leaving out Pushkin, the most significant literary figure of the most populous european nation, from his top 20. Likewise for his low ranking of Antarah bin Shaddad whose poems were hung in the Kaaba in pre-islamic Mecca. And his low ranking for Alexandre Dumas, the most popular writer in the french language, whose books have been translated into numerous languages and made into many movies.
Very stupid of Murray to list Rumi not by the surname he is known by but by his first name.
Yeah, you’re right.
Dunno. It might have a lot to do with the fact that he hasn’t had much of an impact outside of the Portuguese speaking world.For example, I sent an email to my colleagues in the English, French, and German departments. The overwhelming majority have never heard of him. And even the ones who have heard of him have never read him.
Milton and Chaucer didn’t make the top 20 either. As with Pushkin, that has everything to do with varying levels of impact outside the author’s home language.
Dunno. He makes Murray’s list of “Giants” in Arabic lit. He’s number 17, with a score of 29. That sounds rather impressive to me.At any rate, he did better than Milton did in Western Lit.
Ian Fleming has been translated into umpteen languages. And loads of movies. That doesn’t mean that he’s an important writer. If anything, Dumas’ score of 11.77 seems a tad generous.
Feel free to send him a note voicing your complaint.
Brazilian literature and music are both very rich…
of course, a typical hbd moronic on knowledge in intellectualitet.
Achievements, specially in culture, there are in throughout the world.
“Shifting to open science paradigms is by far not the worst way of going about this.”
Yeah, how’s that working out?
Charles is a good guy for releasing this; I know it was painstakingly gathered, and I plan on noodling around with it myself. Still, I doubt as “open science” will ever become a thing. Most of ’em are frauds; particularly in the psychological and other social sciences. It would be lovely if they started posting their data. They won’t. Because it will immediately become obvious what frauds they are.
The old ideal of science as a quest for knowledge is long gone. Science is a quest for a sinecure and social status. I could probably get you rigorous p-values on that assertion, but it doesn’t really matter any more.
Racine is really really good, better than Shakespeare in some ways (Shakespeare, for example, is a little too excitable when describing eccentric and charismatic people – Racine sees such people in the light of truth). Pushkin is indescribably good – imagine a guy almost as clever as Shakespeare but with, unfortunately, less classical education (read too much Apuleius and not enough Ovid in his youth, that sort of thing) – but also imagine that the deficit in education is almost made up for with a greater desire to say what one really wants to say without caring about what other people think. All three of them, of course, were mere mortals, and much of what they wrote was a waste of their time and ours. But that is not a criticism of their genius, that is just what it is like to live in this world.