Book on Genius Out.

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 23 Oct 03 | GARY ROSEN

[sbw123]

The Best and Brightest Charles Murray tries to quantify "Human Achievement."

BY GARY ROSEN Thursday, October 23, 2003 12:01 a.m.

In our age of overused superlatives, none stands in greater need of rehabilitation than "genius," a title that Leonardo now shares with such eminences as Warren Buffett and Eminem. Charles Murray's rough-and-ready test is whether an individual's work makes us ask, in wonder, "How can a human being have done that?" But he doesn't stop there. Incorrigible social scientist that he is, Mr. Murray wants to prove that supreme excellence actually exists in the arts and sciences. The result is "Human Accomplishment," a systematic effort to rate and rank the likes of Aristotle, Mozart and Einstein and to describe the conditions that have allowed them to flourish. Much of this brick of a book is devoted to explaining, in tiresome detail, just how Mr. Murray goes about quantifying the seemingly unquantifiable. His trick is to consult the experts--or, rather, to distill usable numbers from their encyclopedias, anthologies, general histories and biographical dictionaries. An individual making an appearance in at least 50% of the selected sources for a given field wins the label "significant figure." By Mr. Murray's reckoning, there have been 4,002 such "people who matter" in the period 800 B.C. to 1950. Each member of this Pantheon gets an "index score" on a 100-point scale, based on how much attention--pages, column inches, etc.--he receives in the specialist literature.

[sbw123]

Well, this is by Charles Murray, so you know all the PC vultures will hate it. He examines 4,000 plus people who have made the greatest impact on the world. www.chapination.blogspot.com

[Wonder Warthog]

"Edison and Watt in technology"

I'd be interested to see how Murray handles Tesla, the impact of whose work in our daily lives equals or exceeds those mentioned in the posted article.

[wizr]

The next overused noun he needs to explore is HERO. When everyone is a hero, none truly stand out.

[beckett]

Soon as I saw this thread was about geniuses I just had to check it out and see what my peers have been up to. ;-)

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Well, the liberals are going to HATE this book- although they are all convinced that THEY are far above average, it is not permissible to discuss diffrences in human cognitive abilities in polite society these days.

There is a really annoying "Public Service Announcement" that goes something like "Stupid kids are really brilliant- they just learn differently".

That pretty much sums it up for me.

[Billthedrill]

We're not in it. I checked.

[macamadamia]

"Wealth matters, as does the critical mass of talent present only in elite cities."

Talent tends to find its way into cities because that is where the MONEY is. IMO, the West (glorious above all else, hahaha!) has flourished because of, for lack of a better word, capitalism; or, how about the free-market (o.k. more or less free). The bustling, rowdy, competitive market place is intimately tied to the West's fantastic record of geniuses.

[fqued]

the West's rate of achievement has been in serious decline over the past century. In the sciences, whose progress is cumulative, we have simply exhausted many of the possibilities for fundamental advancement; the laws of nature can only be discovered once

Now, THAT is a bizarrely naive statement.
The greatest inventions and advancements have been made in the last century.
True, there can be only one Newton [who should be ranked at the top of the 4,000 with Aristotle (leaving out Jesus, who outranks them all in importance)], but he never dreamed of quantum mechanics, nor of personal computers, nor of quarks, nor of - ad infinitum.

[goldstategop]

I'm pining to buy it along with John Gribbin's The Scientists. Once a year there are books that are a real treat to add to one's collection. Charles Murray's work is a must have next to Paul Johnson's magisterial survey, Art: A New History. Oh and the conservative book lover should definitely NOT miss Jean Francois Revel's little tome just out, Anti-Americanism. Choices, choices, choices... sigh>

[Mr. Jeeves]

When Mr. Murray invokes the "Aristotelian principle" as the measure of artistic greatness--the notion that the highest human pleasures derive from appreciating complexity and refinement--he stands in the tradition of aristocracy and aristocratic connoisseurship.

Then call me an aristocrat. And all of you leftists can kneel now, to receive your bread and stripes. ;)

[patton]

Some are. Such as Einstein - he about flunked out of shool.

And then there was the time he wanted to study the rate of growth in a house fire...

I thin the author makes some good point, but I strongly disagree with his assertion that the rate of progress is decaying.

It most certainly is not.

[patton]

Except for that whole calculus thing, Newton stole his work from Keppler.

[macamadamia]

I think it was Leibniz, Gottfried Leibniz, not Kepler, who was (is?) the other half of the calculus controversy.

[patton]

Johannes Keppler derived "Newton's" laws numerically - Isaac Newton provided the closed form solutions. Both acts were pure genius, but Keppler is oft forgotten.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

"Some are. Such as Einstein - he about flunked out of shool."

True- I am pretty familiar with Einstein's life, but I do not believe that American schools are being overwhelmed by a plague of kids so brilliant that they just can't be bothered to do the regular schoolwork.

I do think that we are raising the worst-educated generation in the history of this Nation- with consequences that are likely to be unfortunate. And making absurd excuses for these dummies is not going to help, in the long run.

[patton]

I agree with you - but I gotta tell you, boring the kids out of school is still a problem, on a massive scale.

It is a constant struggle to keep the smart ones engaged. In many respects, "special education" has helped this - schools have adopted the idea that different kids learn differently. And that is good for the top end, too.

[Andy Ross]

What absolute garbage. This is straight from Wolfram:

"Newton singlehandedly contributed more to the development of science than any other individual in history."

He revolutionised mathematics, physics, optics and astronomy. To suggest that his work was the result of theft is without any merit.

Andrew

[Cacique]

btt

[ASA Vet]

Keppler is oft forgotten.

Keppler who?

[balrog666]

Some are. Such as Einstein - he about flunked out of shool.

No, he didn't. It was a grading method discrepancy when he changed schools.