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Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950
A sweeping cultural survey reminiscent of Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence . "At irregular times and in scattered settings, human beings have achieved great things. Human Accomplishment is about those great things, falling in the domains known as the arts and sciences, and the people who did them.' So begins Charles Murray's unique account of human excellence, from the age of Homer to our own time. Employing techniques that historians have developed over the last century but that have rarely been applied to books written for the general public, Murray compiles inventories of the people who have been essential to the stories of literature, music, art, philosophy, and the sciences—a total of 4,002 men and women from around the world, ranked according to their eminence. The heart of Human Accomplishment is a series of enthralling descriptive on the giants in the arts and what sets them apart from the merely great; on the differences between great achievement in the arts and in the sciences; on the meta-inventions, 14 crucial leaps in human capacity to create great art and science; and on the patterns and trajectories of accomplishment across time and geography. Straightforwardly and undogmatically, Charles Murray takes on some controversial questions. Why has accomplishment been so concentrated in Europe? Among men? Since 1400? He presents evidence that the rate of great accomplishment has been declining in the last century, asks what it means, and offers a rich framework for thinking about the conditions under which the human spirit has expressed itself most gloriously. Eye-opening and humbling, Human Accomplishment is a fascinating work that describes what humans at their best can achieve, provides tools for exploring its wellsprings, and celebrates the continuing common quest of humans everywhere to discover truths, create beauty, and apprehend the good.
688 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 2004
About the author
Charles Murray
68 books523 followersCharles Alan Murray is an American libertarian conservative political scientist, author, and columnist. His book Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (1984), which discussed the American welfare system, was widely read and discussed, and influenced subsequent government policy. He became well-known for his controversial book The Bell Curve (1994), written with Richard Herrnstein, in which he argues that intelligence is a better predictor than parental socio-economic status or education level of many individual outcomes including income, job performance, pregnancy out of wedlock, and crime, and that social welfare programs and education efforts to improve social outcomes for the disadvantaged are largely wasted.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 24, 2012
When I get to a bookstore one of the first places I head for is the Western Civilization section, which is usually about 1/2 a shelf tucked away in History between Ancient Rome and European countries in alphabetical order. I was surprised to find a book by Charles Murray, whose book Coming Apart I enjoyed. Even better, the book was really cheap and signed by the author. (The person to whom the book was inscribed took a black marker and violently scribbled out their name, further endearing the book to me.)
My plan was to flip through it for lulz like one of those Q Magazine "500 Best Songs In The World" issues and then donate it. [Aside: I am old enough to remember when rock and roll writing, while not great by any means, at least wasn't link bait.]
Instead of skimming it, I wound up reading the whole thing through, including the appendices. I'm not sure how to rate it other than to give it high markings for effort. I finally decided to go with 4 stars plus a bonus star for being the only history book I've read that contains an explanation of what a p-value is.
Apparently there is an entire field called histriometrics, but I've never heard of it. What Mr. Murray does is boil down human accomplishment (humankind's resume, he calls it at one point) into a series of graphs and tables.
To figure out who these significant figures are, he counts the column inches of a bunch of references for different fields like science, math, literature, and ranks people by how much they are written about. The period covered is 800BC to 1950AD, or -800 to 1950 as he prefers to write.
This reminds me more than a little of Google's infamous PageRank algorithm in which links to a web page can boost its "authority." In this case the column inches add up to "accomplishment." Interestingly, each field produces a Lotka curve, which either means that Mr. Murray is on to something here or the writers of reference books are copying off of each other. A good argument against the latter is that many figures aren't in more than 50% of the reference books, the minimum requirement to be considered "significant."
From there, Mr. Murray goes stats crazy and starts figuring out what historical factors can contribute to the rise of a da Vinci, Edison, or Euler. He checks things like war (slightly positive correlation), GDP (strongly positive), oppressiveness of government (depends -- if the government is oppressing peasants but not artists, no effect; if the government is oppressing everyone, strongly negative correlation). Some results are very interesting, such as the positive correlation of growing up in an urban area and the positive correlation of having a large number of significant people in the previous generation.
He also lays out the significant contributions on a map, which shows that it is a small triangular part of Europe that is responsible for most of the accomplishments listed in the book. America is definitely a late bloomer in this area. (And of course the Sahara Of The Bozarts has nothing to contribute. Go Mencken!)
Also tucked into the book is a neat primer on statistics and an interesting but quick take on the history of civilization.
As seems to be the case with Mr. Murray's books we get into some uncomfortable areas. For example, how come all these great people are mostly white, mostly dead, and mostly European? (China, Japan, and India get their own indexes for arts, though.) It turns out that we can thank Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas for this. Aristotle gave us a definition of happiness as applying your senses to the fullest, and Aquinas gave us the okay from God that it won't annoy Him if you use the reason that He gave you to its fullest extent. (The priests might burn you alive in His name though, by the way.)
Follow this reasoning, then maybe he should have included St. Francis of Assisi who brought the natural world back into the Church?
The last few chapters have to do with decline, because one of the best parts of being old is getting to say how crappy everything is now compared to when people wore onions on their belts as was the fashion back then. But after spending all that time in Excel and MATLAB I'm willing to let him riff for a few chapters.
The gist of our decline is two fold: 1. Our culture has taken a nihilistic turn, which robs us of the important inspiration of feeling there is a purpose in one's life and by extension one's work. 2. We have largely abandoned the idea of an absolute good, truth, or beauty. As a result, we are doomed henceforth to create shallow and inconsequential art, no matter how clever it might be. Think Sistine Chapel vs. Simpsons; A Modest Proposal vs. Idiocracy.
I was captivated by the utter weirdness of this book. It seemed so wrong, yet it felt so right to read. I'm still not quite sure how it went from Excel tables to bar charts to Aristotle's theory of happiness, but I'm glad it did.
Bookmark: Cody's Books, includes a web site address and the 4th St. store, so it must be recent. RIP Cody's.
My plan was to flip through it for lulz like one of those Q Magazine "500 Best Songs In The World" issues and then donate it. [Aside: I am old enough to remember when rock and roll writing, while not great by any means, at least wasn't link bait.]
Instead of skimming it, I wound up reading the whole thing through, including the appendices. I'm not sure how to rate it other than to give it high markings for effort. I finally decided to go with 4 stars plus a bonus star for being the only history book I've read that contains an explanation of what a p-value is.
Apparently there is an entire field called histriometrics, but I've never heard of it. What Mr. Murray does is boil down human accomplishment (humankind's resume, he calls it at one point) into a series of graphs and tables.
To figure out who these significant figures are, he counts the column inches of a bunch of references for different fields like science, math, literature, and ranks people by how much they are written about. The period covered is 800BC to 1950AD, or -800 to 1950 as he prefers to write.
This reminds me more than a little of Google's infamous PageRank algorithm in which links to a web page can boost its "authority." In this case the column inches add up to "accomplishment." Interestingly, each field produces a Lotka curve, which either means that Mr. Murray is on to something here or the writers of reference books are copying off of each other. A good argument against the latter is that many figures aren't in more than 50% of the reference books, the minimum requirement to be considered "significant."
From there, Mr. Murray goes stats crazy and starts figuring out what historical factors can contribute to the rise of a da Vinci, Edison, or Euler. He checks things like war (slightly positive correlation), GDP (strongly positive), oppressiveness of government (depends -- if the government is oppressing peasants but not artists, no effect; if the government is oppressing everyone, strongly negative correlation). Some results are very interesting, such as the positive correlation of growing up in an urban area and the positive correlation of having a large number of significant people in the previous generation.
He also lays out the significant contributions on a map, which shows that it is a small triangular part of Europe that is responsible for most of the accomplishments listed in the book. America is definitely a late bloomer in this area. (And of course the Sahara Of The Bozarts has nothing to contribute. Go Mencken!)
Also tucked into the book is a neat primer on statistics and an interesting but quick take on the history of civilization.
As seems to be the case with Mr. Murray's books we get into some uncomfortable areas. For example, how come all these great people are mostly white, mostly dead, and mostly European? (China, Japan, and India get their own indexes for arts, though.) It turns out that we can thank Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas for this. Aristotle gave us a definition of happiness as applying your senses to the fullest, and Aquinas gave us the okay from God that it won't annoy Him if you use the reason that He gave you to its fullest extent. (The priests might burn you alive in His name though, by the way.)
Follow this reasoning, then maybe he should have included St. Francis of Assisi who brought the natural world back into the Church?
The last few chapters have to do with decline, because one of the best parts of being old is getting to say how crappy everything is now compared to when people wore onions on their belts as was the fashion back then. But after spending all that time in Excel and MATLAB I'm willing to let him riff for a few chapters.
The gist of our decline is two fold: 1. Our culture has taken a nihilistic turn, which robs us of the important inspiration of feeling there is a purpose in one's life and by extension one's work. 2. We have largely abandoned the idea of an absolute good, truth, or beauty. As a result, we are doomed henceforth to create shallow and inconsequential art, no matter how clever it might be. Think Sistine Chapel vs. Simpsons; A Modest Proposal vs. Idiocracy.
I was captivated by the utter weirdness of this book. It seemed so wrong, yet it felt so right to read. I'm still not quite sure how it went from Excel tables to bar charts to Aristotle's theory of happiness, but I'm glad it did.
Bookmark: Cody's Books, includes a web site address and the 4th St. store, so it must be recent. RIP Cody's.
July 31, 2018
Pseudo-science dressed in rhetorical tricks and reasonable statistics. Very appealing premise, of understanding human accomplishment in arts and sciences over the past 3.5 millenia, and what causes it. Hides a political agenda (far right), many logical and statistical fallacies, personal belief sold as fact, instances of sexism and racism unsupported by evidence but offered as truth, etc. Requires careful reading and training to debunk, which makes this book insidious.
Details follow when I'll have the time, but, for now:
1/ The author uses garbage as input, that is, space given in Western encyclopedias to various figures and events in arts and sciences. If this sounds just fine, then you are missing (1) that some concepts get more space than others of possibly equal importance, (2) that some people/events get more space than others of possibly equal importance, (3) that Western encyclopedias copy much from each other, (4) that space given is not the same as a balanced judgment on the importance of a concept/person/event, (5) that a balanced judgment is not known to be possible.
2/ The author gives us garbage as output, with plenty of incorrect expertise at play. Scatter plots? Perhaps choropleth maps. Grouping by period? Very good, just don't compare periods of 200 years with another of 150 years, only to conclude the latter has fewer samples (and, from this, that the human civilization is in decline).
3/ Confusing correlation with causality, over and over again.
4/ Circularity galore. The Western white males are über alles, because they are, because they are, because they just are, ok?
5/ Inconsistent arguments. For example, the author first argues it's the Christians who are so over-superior that it's not even worth doscussing anyone else (but he does discuss a couple of elses, as it turns out, women and a certain minority in thw US), then concludes the Jewish group, since legal emancipation, has outperformed relatively to its demographic (the author estimated high quality achievements are about 15 times more likely to appear than the <1% population size would let us predict). So perhaps this is a prominent counterexample to the author's claim it's the Christian religion who is the engine of crearivity and proven genius. Alas, the author continues, this Jewish achievement onky demonstrates how well Christianity empowers others to excel!? With such friends, Christianity, who needs enemies?
6/ The author chooses an end cut-off point in the period surveyed here, 1950, convenient for someone who does not want to give credit to anyone but ancient achievers and Western Christian white males (the author goes through many hoops to disparage the demographic alternatives). After 1950, of course, we have the black and women emancipation in the US, the rise of Japan and China in science, the rise of India and Brazil in technology, the cold war race also in arts and sciences between US and Russia (and their satellites), more recently rights goven to LGBTQ, etc. But, even with a cutoff in 1950, it seems brazen to exclude jazz and other minority music originating in modern form in the US (how can one ignore Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin from a genius list around 1950s?!), to ignore computer science (and the geniuses kick starting it and letting it do its job in World War II and just after), to forget the geniuses powering the mulți-disciplinary Manhattan Project, etc. Just convenient forgetfulness, and nonsense surveying of history.
7/ Many predictions offered by the author have already been invalidated. Women? Plenty to mention in the genius range. A woman played a significant part in the discovery of the DNA, regardless of whether Watson says otherwise. A woman invented CRISPR, regardless of the theft of her idea. Demise of the Western culture? We'll have to wait some more; and the rise of the bottom resulting in a more global share of ideas and fame seems beneficial. Death of science? Forget the deepening of existing work, computational sciences (which use computers as instruments to collect and analyze, and more recently to control and even to suggest) have led to discoveries that we could not have envisioned before. If anything ironic for the author's view of life, the Human Genome Project, which did not exist as a possibility in the 1950s, has led to some interesting invalidation of the notion that a single gene can clearly be linked with superior achievement in science or art.
8/ The author overextended the claims, entering areas he knows too little about or where new theories invalidate his claims. For example, and it's one of the many pertaining to this book, we know much more now about the evolution of technology and science, to still believe it's heroic figures working alone - - the author is adamant this is the leading process and the only one that matters (see circular arguments, earlier). See books on the cyclotron, astrophysics, and The Nature of Technology for counters.
Ok, enough time spent on this nonsense. It's shoody science and garbage data.
Details follow when I'll have the time, but, for now:
1/ The author uses garbage as input, that is, space given in Western encyclopedias to various figures and events in arts and sciences. If this sounds just fine, then you are missing (1) that some concepts get more space than others of possibly equal importance, (2) that some people/events get more space than others of possibly equal importance, (3) that Western encyclopedias copy much from each other, (4) that space given is not the same as a balanced judgment on the importance of a concept/person/event, (5) that a balanced judgment is not known to be possible.
2/ The author gives us garbage as output, with plenty of incorrect expertise at play. Scatter plots? Perhaps choropleth maps. Grouping by period? Very good, just don't compare periods of 200 years with another of 150 years, only to conclude the latter has fewer samples (and, from this, that the human civilization is in decline).
3/ Confusing correlation with causality, over and over again.
4/ Circularity galore. The Western white males are über alles, because they are, because they are, because they just are, ok?
5/ Inconsistent arguments. For example, the author first argues it's the Christians who are so over-superior that it's not even worth doscussing anyone else (but he does discuss a couple of elses, as it turns out, women and a certain minority in thw US), then concludes the Jewish group, since legal emancipation, has outperformed relatively to its demographic (the author estimated high quality achievements are about 15 times more likely to appear than the <1% population size would let us predict). So perhaps this is a prominent counterexample to the author's claim it's the Christian religion who is the engine of crearivity and proven genius. Alas, the author continues, this Jewish achievement onky demonstrates how well Christianity empowers others to excel!? With such friends, Christianity, who needs enemies?
6/ The author chooses an end cut-off point in the period surveyed here, 1950, convenient for someone who does not want to give credit to anyone but ancient achievers and Western Christian white males (the author goes through many hoops to disparage the demographic alternatives). After 1950, of course, we have the black and women emancipation in the US, the rise of Japan and China in science, the rise of India and Brazil in technology, the cold war race also in arts and sciences between US and Russia (and their satellites), more recently rights goven to LGBTQ, etc. But, even with a cutoff in 1950, it seems brazen to exclude jazz and other minority music originating in modern form in the US (how can one ignore Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin from a genius list around 1950s?!), to ignore computer science (and the geniuses kick starting it and letting it do its job in World War II and just after), to forget the geniuses powering the mulți-disciplinary Manhattan Project, etc. Just convenient forgetfulness, and nonsense surveying of history.
7/ Many predictions offered by the author have already been invalidated. Women? Plenty to mention in the genius range. A woman played a significant part in the discovery of the DNA, regardless of whether Watson says otherwise. A woman invented CRISPR, regardless of the theft of her idea. Demise of the Western culture? We'll have to wait some more; and the rise of the bottom resulting in a more global share of ideas and fame seems beneficial. Death of science? Forget the deepening of existing work, computational sciences (which use computers as instruments to collect and analyze, and more recently to control and even to suggest) have led to discoveries that we could not have envisioned before. If anything ironic for the author's view of life, the Human Genome Project, which did not exist as a possibility in the 1950s, has led to some interesting invalidation of the notion that a single gene can clearly be linked with superior achievement in science or art.
8/ The author overextended the claims, entering areas he knows too little about or where new theories invalidate his claims. For example, and it's one of the many pertaining to this book, we know much more now about the evolution of technology and science, to still believe it's heroic figures working alone - - the author is adamant this is the leading process and the only one that matters (see circular arguments, earlier). See books on the cyclotron, astrophysics, and The Nature of Technology for counters.
Ok, enough time spent on this nonsense. It's shoody science and garbage data.
April 17, 2021
Charles Murray is extremely intelligent, and he is a very gifted writer, elucidating his arguments beautifully. For these reasons I enjoyed the first few chapters, and also the last few. The middle of the book was very academic, with reams of data and technical analysis concerning the nature of human accomplishments over the ages. I found these pages to be a bit of a slog, though they undoubtedly buttress the author's assertions, which seem very convincing to me, if not unassailable. All in all, this was an interesting and thought provoking look at the nature of human accomplishment and the conditions that foster it. I'm giving it three instead of four stars only because I was looking for more narrative and celebration, and this was more like an excellent college textbook...and that's on me, not the author. So there it is.
May 23, 2023
The purpose of Human Accomplishment is twofold: to establish that there are objective measures of accomplishment in the arts and sciences, and that there are objective disparities between each society's contributions which can be explained.
Murray utilizes William James pragmatic criterion of the truth of propositions according to their possibility of verification/falsification. For measures of taste, Murray utilizes David Hume's essay Of the Standard of Taste. Though taste is a subjective experience, it relates to objects of experience. Those who have more experience, familiarity with something are in better place to judge its nature and worth.
"True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those we cannot"-James
"It must be allowed that there are certain qualities in objects which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings"-Hume
The time span Murray works off is is 800 BC to 1950 AD given the scant survival or historical records. Murray choose 1950 as the end date because of "epoch-centrism", the tendency to be biased towards the time we live in due to lack of distance.
The method Murray uses to identify human excellence is to take significant figures and events which appear in at least 50% of qualified sources like encyclopedias. These qualified sources are for arts and philosophy persons, for science it includes inventions in addition to events. In this Murray follows Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, who attempted a measure of eminence in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius. The representation of accomplishment is the Lotko curve, which is basically the right side of a bell curve for three standard deviations. Achievement is expected to be more skewed than normal distribution.
The big takeaway is that 97% of accomplishments, defined as significant events and figures in the arts & sciences featured in at least half of qualified sources, belong to Western Europe and North America. This is largely four countries: Britain (southern England in particular), France, Germany, and northern Italy, the United States catching up in the 20th century. The great qualification however is that the overwhelming majority of these accomplishments occurred after 1400. Before that the contributions were more even. The disparity is greatest in the sciences relative to literature which is language specific.
Murray outlines the reasons for this at the end of the book, which ideologically are purpose and autonomy, which the modern West has had in abundance. The renaissance and reformation were no doubt responsible for this Faustian epoch. The West really benefitted from the recovery of ancient texts after the crusades in the Middle East and via Moor Spain, but put them to good use. I think the fact that the Mongols and/or Muslims did not conquer Europe or were driven out was a big factor, whereas it took far longer for Russia and Eastern Europe to fight them off and become truly independent.
Streams of human progress have not typically been disrupted by war and civil unrest, aside from literal destruction like the Mongol sack of Baghdad. Accomplishments in the arts and sciences are facilitated by growing national wealth, both through the additional money that can support the arts and sciences and through indirect spillover efforts of economic vitality on cultural vitality. Wealth from the new world corrupted the Spanish after the 17th century to the 20th when accomplishment diminished (save for Goya), compared to the Dutch whose accomplishment declined over time gradually. It's what people do with the wealth that matters.
Murray counters feminist and multiculturalist arguments about underrepresentation of women and non-whites, as if we applied the looser standards evenly, we would find even more accomplishments for “white men” that would dwindle whatever potential boost is given. That and the disparity has continued over the past century. Also not included are teachers, translators or those women who got there first, for doing something already done; no political activists, family of the famous, or researchers.
"No fair using the naked eye to search for European accomplishments and a microscope to search for non-European ones."
"Whatever mechanism one uses to try to augment the non European contribution in both the arts and sciences will backfire if the same selection rules are applied to Europe"
"the pool of mistakenly omitted men is at least as large as the pool of mistakenly omitted women."
"Using social construction to explain why human societies have been universally constructed according to these sex differences in role and attainment requires complicated arguments. Using biology to explain them requires simple ones. Parsimony suggests that at least part of the explanation must involve biological differences that give males an advantage in attaining these roles. Many of these differences are argued to cluster around male female differences in aggressiveness, broadly defined...It is men who go to the extremes, compete ruthlessly, and, in whatever field they take up, are going to achieve the best and the worst. The word testosterone comes to mind as a causal factor."
Murray considers whether accomplishment is declining, and I think it has when you figure in population and that the low hanging fruit has been collected. Far more ominous has been the loss of purpose and autonomy in the West since the early 20th century with existential nihilism and postmodernism. This book is an answer to those positions. Whether it is true all around I don't know, we may be making it so, that and whether there is a limit to it. It is possible that the peak of civilization is actually the result of past effort and masks long run internal decline.
Murray ends on a positive note, the Aristotelian principle: that people enjoy greater complexity in their free time when it is available, aka the hierarchy of needs. This means an impulse towards greater forms of entertainment, which I think has happened with cable television and the internet in some areas at least. When given the opportunity this can happen, but I think it depends on the quality of the people and deeper assumptions about life, purpose and autonomy. Such a progressive view of man may be unique to modern western civilization, a belief which may be delusional but is a source of greatness.
Murray utilizes William James pragmatic criterion of the truth of propositions according to their possibility of verification/falsification. For measures of taste, Murray utilizes David Hume's essay Of the Standard of Taste. Though taste is a subjective experience, it relates to objects of experience. Those who have more experience, familiarity with something are in better place to judge its nature and worth.
"True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those we cannot"-James
"It must be allowed that there are certain qualities in objects which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings"-Hume
The time span Murray works off is is 800 BC to 1950 AD given the scant survival or historical records. Murray choose 1950 as the end date because of "epoch-centrism", the tendency to be biased towards the time we live in due to lack of distance.
The method Murray uses to identify human excellence is to take significant figures and events which appear in at least 50% of qualified sources like encyclopedias. These qualified sources are for arts and philosophy persons, for science it includes inventions in addition to events. In this Murray follows Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, who attempted a measure of eminence in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius. The representation of accomplishment is the Lotko curve, which is basically the right side of a bell curve for three standard deviations. Achievement is expected to be more skewed than normal distribution.
The big takeaway is that 97% of accomplishments, defined as significant events and figures in the arts & sciences featured in at least half of qualified sources, belong to Western Europe and North America. This is largely four countries: Britain (southern England in particular), France, Germany, and northern Italy, the United States catching up in the 20th century. The great qualification however is that the overwhelming majority of these accomplishments occurred after 1400. Before that the contributions were more even. The disparity is greatest in the sciences relative to literature which is language specific.
Murray outlines the reasons for this at the end of the book, which ideologically are purpose and autonomy, which the modern West has had in abundance. The renaissance and reformation were no doubt responsible for this Faustian epoch. The West really benefitted from the recovery of ancient texts after the crusades in the Middle East and via Moor Spain, but put them to good use. I think the fact that the Mongols and/or Muslims did not conquer Europe or were driven out was a big factor, whereas it took far longer for Russia and Eastern Europe to fight them off and become truly independent.
Streams of human progress have not typically been disrupted by war and civil unrest, aside from literal destruction like the Mongol sack of Baghdad. Accomplishments in the arts and sciences are facilitated by growing national wealth, both through the additional money that can support the arts and sciences and through indirect spillover efforts of economic vitality on cultural vitality. Wealth from the new world corrupted the Spanish after the 17th century to the 20th when accomplishment diminished (save for Goya), compared to the Dutch whose accomplishment declined over time gradually. It's what people do with the wealth that matters.
Murray counters feminist and multiculturalist arguments about underrepresentation of women and non-whites, as if we applied the looser standards evenly, we would find even more accomplishments for “white men” that would dwindle whatever potential boost is given. That and the disparity has continued over the past century. Also not included are teachers, translators or those women who got there first, for doing something already done; no political activists, family of the famous, or researchers.
"No fair using the naked eye to search for European accomplishments and a microscope to search for non-European ones."
"Whatever mechanism one uses to try to augment the non European contribution in both the arts and sciences will backfire if the same selection rules are applied to Europe"
"the pool of mistakenly omitted men is at least as large as the pool of mistakenly omitted women."
"Using social construction to explain why human societies have been universally constructed according to these sex differences in role and attainment requires complicated arguments. Using biology to explain them requires simple ones. Parsimony suggests that at least part of the explanation must involve biological differences that give males an advantage in attaining these roles. Many of these differences are argued to cluster around male female differences in aggressiveness, broadly defined...It is men who go to the extremes, compete ruthlessly, and, in whatever field they take up, are going to achieve the best and the worst. The word testosterone comes to mind as a causal factor."
Murray considers whether accomplishment is declining, and I think it has when you figure in population and that the low hanging fruit has been collected. Far more ominous has been the loss of purpose and autonomy in the West since the early 20th century with existential nihilism and postmodernism. This book is an answer to those positions. Whether it is true all around I don't know, we may be making it so, that and whether there is a limit to it. It is possible that the peak of civilization is actually the result of past effort and masks long run internal decline.
Murray ends on a positive note, the Aristotelian principle: that people enjoy greater complexity in their free time when it is available, aka the hierarchy of needs. This means an impulse towards greater forms of entertainment, which I think has happened with cable television and the internet in some areas at least. When given the opportunity this can happen, but I think it depends on the quality of the people and deeper assumptions about life, purpose and autonomy. Such a progressive view of man may be unique to modern western civilization, a belief which may be delusional but is a source of greatness.
February 1, 2010
This is no light reading or a pop history book. It is, at times, very much like reading a college text book. Along with anecdotes Murray fills the book with statistics, references, theories, and in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis.
But over the top of all of this is a wonderful story of Human Accomplishment, when accomplishment happened, and why it happened. Murray approaches the writing of Human Accomplishment much like one the writing of a resume. What, in our history are we most proud of. What have we, as a species, accomplished that fundamentally advanced us as a species.
Murray looks as Human Accomplishment starting at 800 bc and going up to 1950. He picks -800 as that is when records begin to be most reliable. He does talk about accomplishments prior to -800 but does not include them in his statistical analysis.
A few items I learned from the book were:
A] How precious genius really is and how incredibly difficult it is to accomplish anything noteworthy. By noteworthy I mean discovering or creating something that people will be talking about hundreds if not thousands of years later. Murray talks about how great accomplishments are distributed on a Lotka Curve rather than a Bell Curve.
B] How awesome Europe is. The explosion of ideas, discoveries, creations, etc. that came out of Europe starting around 1200 and going through 1950 stands apart from the rest of the world. No where else and at no other time did one small part of the world produce so much genius. In fact, the story is even more impressive when Murray explains how 70% of the accomplishments coming out of Europe were concentrated within four countries, Germany, England, France, and Italy. These four countries are largely responsible for the way the world is today.
C] How the Catholic Church gets a bit of a bum wrap. Since I was young I have been told that faith and science are not compatible. I would hear stories of how the Catholic church would round up scientists who produced work that challenged the church's teachings. A favorite story is that of Galileo. While there is no doubt this happened they are only a very small part of the story. The church, most notably articulated by Thomas Aquinas argued that human intellect was a gift from God and that to glorify God one should use ones intellect to uncover the mysteries of God and to create beautiful works of art. The adoption of this way of thinking permeated a whole continent and was one of the leading factors of the European genius explosion. The church very much created an environment where scientific and artistic discovery could take place on an astonishing scale. While some previous cultures most notably the Greeks and Romans and to a lesser extent Egyptians and Chinese did have cultures that promoted discovery it was not on the same level as what happened in Europe around 1200.
D] The world is currently experiencing a decline in significant discoveries. While we are in a glorious age where new inventions seem to happen on a daily basis these inventions are based upon previously discovered truths. The discovery of new ways of thinking and new truths has been declining for the last 200 years.
All in all I recommend this book. It is an academic and at times challenging read. It is very thorough and well researched. Murray does a good job at stating his arguments and backing up those arguments with a mountain of data. However, if you so choose to read the book you will gain a greater appreciation of the rarity of genius and have a much greater understanding of world accomplishment.
But over the top of all of this is a wonderful story of Human Accomplishment, when accomplishment happened, and why it happened. Murray approaches the writing of Human Accomplishment much like one the writing of a resume. What, in our history are we most proud of. What have we, as a species, accomplished that fundamentally advanced us as a species.
Murray looks as Human Accomplishment starting at 800 bc and going up to 1950. He picks -800 as that is when records begin to be most reliable. He does talk about accomplishments prior to -800 but does not include them in his statistical analysis.
A few items I learned from the book were:
A] How precious genius really is and how incredibly difficult it is to accomplish anything noteworthy. By noteworthy I mean discovering or creating something that people will be talking about hundreds if not thousands of years later. Murray talks about how great accomplishments are distributed on a Lotka Curve rather than a Bell Curve.
B] How awesome Europe is. The explosion of ideas, discoveries, creations, etc. that came out of Europe starting around 1200 and going through 1950 stands apart from the rest of the world. No where else and at no other time did one small part of the world produce so much genius. In fact, the story is even more impressive when Murray explains how 70% of the accomplishments coming out of Europe were concentrated within four countries, Germany, England, France, and Italy. These four countries are largely responsible for the way the world is today.
C] How the Catholic Church gets a bit of a bum wrap. Since I was young I have been told that faith and science are not compatible. I would hear stories of how the Catholic church would round up scientists who produced work that challenged the church's teachings. A favorite story is that of Galileo. While there is no doubt this happened they are only a very small part of the story. The church, most notably articulated by Thomas Aquinas argued that human intellect was a gift from God and that to glorify God one should use ones intellect to uncover the mysteries of God and to create beautiful works of art. The adoption of this way of thinking permeated a whole continent and was one of the leading factors of the European genius explosion. The church very much created an environment where scientific and artistic discovery could take place on an astonishing scale. While some previous cultures most notably the Greeks and Romans and to a lesser extent Egyptians and Chinese did have cultures that promoted discovery it was not on the same level as what happened in Europe around 1200.
D] The world is currently experiencing a decline in significant discoveries. While we are in a glorious age where new inventions seem to happen on a daily basis these inventions are based upon previously discovered truths. The discovery of new ways of thinking and new truths has been declining for the last 200 years.
All in all I recommend this book. It is an academic and at times challenging read. It is very thorough and well researched. Murray does a good job at stating his arguments and backing up those arguments with a mountain of data. However, if you so choose to read the book you will gain a greater appreciation of the rarity of genius and have a much greater understanding of world accomplishment.
May 4, 2021
Interesting in parts, but hardly original (anyone can produce a few glorified lists), although Murray clearly put in a lot of effort and he’s right that genius and exceptional achievement are rare and should be prized. Sadly plagued by a clear political and Eurocentric bias (discussed below), and dubious views on art and aesthetics.
Firstly, the Eurocentrism: Murray relies exclusively on Western sources which aren’t going to be independent of one another to produce his lists of the most significant figures and events in the history of science (and its various fields). Certainly, he and they acknowledge some of ‘the works of the great Arabic scholar-scientists… of Indian mathematics… [and] of Chinese naturalists and astronomers’, but they also ignore a lot too. He claims that he was ‘unable to find evidence that inventories of scientific… accomplishment drawn from reputable sources in any non-Western culture would look much different from the inventories we will be working with’, but provides no description of how he came to this conclusion, so why should we believe him?
He also says that the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, corresponds to his findings. But regardless of whether its editorial staff includes experts from ‘universities around the world’, they are still likely to be heavily influenced by Eurocentric biases because of the texts they are likely to have read. Ultimately, Murray says ‘it is incumbent on those who continue to allege Eurocentrism to specify the names and contributions of important… scientists and mathematicians who have been left out’. He also, ironically, says that the new events and figures must be, or have been responsible for, “firsts”. As he says elsewhere, ‘the act of discovery – being first – is the requisite for getting into an inventory’.
Well, here are just a few examples for Murray, some of which demonstrate that the Western individuals he includes in his lists should be replaced or joined by non-Westerners who got there earlier or who mirrored their accomplishments:
Firstly, Fibonacci is not only included in Murray’s scientific or mathematical inventories, he’s even in his list of the ‘top 20’ figures in mathematics. Yet, one of his main accomplishments – the introduction of the Hindu-Arabic arithmetical system to Europe – was entirely derivative. The other – the “Fibonacci” sequence – had been known about in India for more than a thousand years, first described by the grammarian and mathematician Pingala (who fails to make the list) in the 3rd Century BCE.
Similarly, it’s debatable whether Pythagoras made any original contributions to mathematics but he is still included in the roster – the “Pythagorean” theorem and “Pythagorean” triples were described in the Indian ‘Sulba Sutras’ (along with geometric proofs) before Pythagoras, and may well have influenced him or his school.
Secondly, Galen and Hippocrates are included in the list of the ‘top 20’ figures in medicine, despite Murray himself acknowledging that most of their medical pronouncements were completely false. At the very least, then, the ancient Indian surgeon Sushruta, sometimes labelled the ‘father of surgery’, should join them in the top 20 despite holding some incorrect views about medicine. He was likely the first to perform cataract surgery and plastic surgery, to describe leprosy, and to remove bladder stones by lateral lithotomy. The Greeks and the Chinese travelled to India to see these surgeries performed, and the Arabs later transmitted some of this knowledge to Europe, where it was drawn upon in Italy in particular.
Thirdly, there are others who may not belong in the top 20, but certainly belong in the inventories ahead of the very minor Western figures that populate some of the lists. While the great Persian physician and polymath Al-Razi comfortably makes the inventory, Al-Zahrawi, arguably the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, does not, despite pioneering the use of a number of surgical instruments and techniques and making a number of important medical discoveries, including the provision of the earliest known description of hemophilia and its hereditary nature. Meanwhile Westerners like Edris Rice-Wray are included for conducting run-of-the-mill randomised control trials of medical treatments already discovered by others.
Fourth, while al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyam, al-Battani and other Islamic mathematicians are included in Murray’s mathematical inventory (and should be in the top 20 in the case of al-Khwarizmi), pioneers like the Persian mathematicians al-Tusi (the founder of trigonometry as a discipline in its own right, and who likely influenced Copernicus’s development of the Heliocentric model) and al-Kashi (who discovered the cosine rule) are not.
And while Aryabhata, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara II are included in the lists (and should be higher up), other classical and mediaeval Indian mathematicians like Madhava (who came close to discovering calculus and was the first to develop infinite series approximations for the trigonometric functions and pi) are not. Meanwhile, Westerners like Adelard of Bath make the mathematical inventory, despite Adelard’s only major contribution to mathematics being to (re-)transmit Greek, Indian and Islamic mathematics into Europe.
Indeed, throughout the book, there is a Eurocentric bias in the examples Murray chooses (especially when listing his ‘significant’ events in various fields, which ignore groundbreaking non-Western contributions in astronomy, mathematics and medicine, some of which are discussed above) and the case studies he discusses.
Finally, his views on art and aesthetics are dubious: he claims that the fact that the views of experts in wine tasting or music will broadly converge has significance. On the contrary, their views are not independent of each other at all, because their judgments are very often based on the same frameworks and principles (pertaining to how a ‘good’ piece of music sounds or is constructed, for instance) that they inherited or learned from their predecessors.
Firstly, the Eurocentrism: Murray relies exclusively on Western sources which aren’t going to be independent of one another to produce his lists of the most significant figures and events in the history of science (and its various fields). Certainly, he and they acknowledge some of ‘the works of the great Arabic scholar-scientists… of Indian mathematics… [and] of Chinese naturalists and astronomers’, but they also ignore a lot too. He claims that he was ‘unable to find evidence that inventories of scientific… accomplishment drawn from reputable sources in any non-Western culture would look much different from the inventories we will be working with’, but provides no description of how he came to this conclusion, so why should we believe him?
He also says that the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, corresponds to his findings. But regardless of whether its editorial staff includes experts from ‘universities around the world’, they are still likely to be heavily influenced by Eurocentric biases because of the texts they are likely to have read. Ultimately, Murray says ‘it is incumbent on those who continue to allege Eurocentrism to specify the names and contributions of important… scientists and mathematicians who have been left out’. He also, ironically, says that the new events and figures must be, or have been responsible for, “firsts”. As he says elsewhere, ‘the act of discovery – being first – is the requisite for getting into an inventory’.
Well, here are just a few examples for Murray, some of which demonstrate that the Western individuals he includes in his lists should be replaced or joined by non-Westerners who got there earlier or who mirrored their accomplishments:
Firstly, Fibonacci is not only included in Murray’s scientific or mathematical inventories, he’s even in his list of the ‘top 20’ figures in mathematics. Yet, one of his main accomplishments – the introduction of the Hindu-Arabic arithmetical system to Europe – was entirely derivative. The other – the “Fibonacci” sequence – had been known about in India for more than a thousand years, first described by the grammarian and mathematician Pingala (who fails to make the list) in the 3rd Century BCE.
Similarly, it’s debatable whether Pythagoras made any original contributions to mathematics but he is still included in the roster – the “Pythagorean” theorem and “Pythagorean” triples were described in the Indian ‘Sulba Sutras’ (along with geometric proofs) before Pythagoras, and may well have influenced him or his school.
Secondly, Galen and Hippocrates are included in the list of the ‘top 20’ figures in medicine, despite Murray himself acknowledging that most of their medical pronouncements were completely false. At the very least, then, the ancient Indian surgeon Sushruta, sometimes labelled the ‘father of surgery’, should join them in the top 20 despite holding some incorrect views about medicine. He was likely the first to perform cataract surgery and plastic surgery, to describe leprosy, and to remove bladder stones by lateral lithotomy. The Greeks and the Chinese travelled to India to see these surgeries performed, and the Arabs later transmitted some of this knowledge to Europe, where it was drawn upon in Italy in particular.
Thirdly, there are others who may not belong in the top 20, but certainly belong in the inventories ahead of the very minor Western figures that populate some of the lists. While the great Persian physician and polymath Al-Razi comfortably makes the inventory, Al-Zahrawi, arguably the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, does not, despite pioneering the use of a number of surgical instruments and techniques and making a number of important medical discoveries, including the provision of the earliest known description of hemophilia and its hereditary nature. Meanwhile Westerners like Edris Rice-Wray are included for conducting run-of-the-mill randomised control trials of medical treatments already discovered by others.
Fourth, while al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyam, al-Battani and other Islamic mathematicians are included in Murray’s mathematical inventory (and should be in the top 20 in the case of al-Khwarizmi), pioneers like the Persian mathematicians al-Tusi (the founder of trigonometry as a discipline in its own right, and who likely influenced Copernicus’s development of the Heliocentric model) and al-Kashi (who discovered the cosine rule) are not.
And while Aryabhata, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara II are included in the lists (and should be higher up), other classical and mediaeval Indian mathematicians like Madhava (who came close to discovering calculus and was the first to develop infinite series approximations for the trigonometric functions and pi) are not. Meanwhile, Westerners like Adelard of Bath make the mathematical inventory, despite Adelard’s only major contribution to mathematics being to (re-)transmit Greek, Indian and Islamic mathematics into Europe.
Indeed, throughout the book, there is a Eurocentric bias in the examples Murray chooses (especially when listing his ‘significant’ events in various fields, which ignore groundbreaking non-Western contributions in astronomy, mathematics and medicine, some of which are discussed above) and the case studies he discusses.
Finally, his views on art and aesthetics are dubious: he claims that the fact that the views of experts in wine tasting or music will broadly converge has significance. On the contrary, their views are not independent of each other at all, because their judgments are very often based on the same frameworks and principles (pertaining to how a ‘good’ piece of music sounds or is constructed, for instance) that they inherited or learned from their predecessors.
October 18, 2011
Charles Murray surveys a very large topic and provides both direction and structure for it. The immensity of his work is difficult to appreciate for he ranks the leading 4,000 innovators in several fields of human accomplishment from 800 BC to 1950. The categories of human accomplishment where significant figures are ranked in the book are as follows: Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Physics, Mathematics, Medicine, Technology, Combined Sciences, Chinese Philosophy, Indian Philosophy, Western Philosophy, Western Music, Chinese Painting, Japanese Art, Western Art, Arabic Literature, Chinese Literature, Indian Literature, Japanese Literature, and Western Literature.
In reviewing the accomplishments in these categories he argued, based on Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, that innovation is increased by beliefs that life has a purpose and that the function of life is to fulfill that purpose; by beliefs about transcendental goods and a sense of goodness, truth and beauty; and by beliefs that individuals can act efficaciously as individuals, and a culture that enables them to do so. I found that he answered my questions as they arose during my reading and he dealt effectively with issues like the prominence of the West, the predominance of men, and others. The most satisfying sections for me were his discussion of the importance of Aristotle and his summation. The result of Murray's efforts is a worthy assay of human excellence throughout history.
In reviewing the accomplishments in these categories he argued, based on Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, that innovation is increased by beliefs that life has a purpose and that the function of life is to fulfill that purpose; by beliefs about transcendental goods and a sense of goodness, truth and beauty; and by beliefs that individuals can act efficaciously as individuals, and a culture that enables them to do so. I found that he answered my questions as they arose during my reading and he dealt effectively with issues like the prominence of the West, the predominance of men, and others. The most satisfying sections for me were his discussion of the importance of Aristotle and his summation. The result of Murray's efforts is a worthy assay of human excellence throughout history.
October 9, 2017
The sheer effort calls for a high rating but combined with the fact that this book was dense but at the same time incredibly well written and taught me not just some interesting facts about random-effects negative binomial regression models but also about the history of mankind and why it played out the way it did makes this a clear 5 star-candidate. Absolutely recommended to everyone.
November 13, 2014
A subversive book which purports to rank the top 20 men and women (mostly men) in the arts and sciences on the basis of historiometry. Awash with Bell curves, Lotka curves, and arbitrary methodology, it fascinates but does not convince: one imagines oneself drawing a silly graph on the blackboard and quoting J. Evans Pritchard.
Read
May 28, 2022Este livro vale pelas listas de personalidades que apresenta em cada área do conhecimento, recolhidas a partir do conhecimento existente e da criação de índices de valorização assentes em referências, citações e um conjunto de itens definidos pelo autor. Naturalmente, estes índices são questionáveis, não se podendo olhar para estes rankings de pessoas como verdades. A agravar tudo isto, temos o viés do autor, reconhecido internacionalmente pela falta de ética no ataque às questões de raça e género.
Contudo, estas listas podem ajudar quem procura conhecer mais cada área, ou quem busca modelos e orientação.
Ciências
1. Isaac Newton
2. Galileo Galilei
3. Aristóteles
4. Johannes Kepler
5. Antoine Lavoisier
Filosofia
1. Aristóteles
2. Platão
3. Immanuel Kant
4. Rene Descartes
5. Georg Hegel
Literatura
1. William Shakespeare
2. Johann Goethe
3. Dante Alighieri
4. Virgil
5. Homero
Contudo, estas listas podem ajudar quem procura conhecer mais cada área, ou quem busca modelos e orientação.
Ciências
1. Isaac Newton
2. Galileo Galilei
3. Aristóteles
4. Johannes Kepler
5. Antoine Lavoisier
Filosofia
1. Aristóteles
2. Platão
3. Immanuel Kant
4. Rene Descartes
5. Georg Hegel
Literatura
1. William Shakespeare
2. Johann Goethe
3. Dante Alighieri
4. Virgil
5. Homero
October 28, 2023
Essentially this is a text book. There is a ton of data and information to process. That being said this book is deep and profound. Very glad to have read it as it has given me a clearer perspective on life and art.
July 10, 2009
A quantitative look at human achievement in art and science from 700 BC until 1950. Murray ranks "significant figures" -- culled from reference books -- in various fields on a 1-100 scale. The method is more accurate than you might think, and the lists are fun to peruse.
Murray's conclusions are both interesting (art flourishes when there is a widely known and believed conception of "the beautiful") and quantitatively supported (achievement breeds achievement), but, with one exception, what is interesting is not quantitative, and what is quantitative is not interesting.
The exception is his contention, for which he musters an impressive amount of evidence, that the rate of accomplishment has been declining steadily since the middle of the 19th century, especially in art but in science as well. Murray attributes this largely to nihilism. He may not be right but surely the question is well worth considering.
Murray's conclusions are both interesting (art flourishes when there is a widely known and believed conception of "the beautiful") and quantitatively supported (achievement breeds achievement), but, with one exception, what is interesting is not quantitative, and what is quantitative is not interesting.
The exception is his contention, for which he musters an impressive amount of evidence, that the rate of accomplishment has been declining steadily since the middle of the 19th century, especially in art but in science as well. Murray attributes this largely to nihilism. He may not be right but surely the question is well worth considering.
Read
August 7, 2013'Can we trust these data? The scholars upon whom Murray relies have their personal and professional biases, but, ultimately, their need to create coherent narratives explaining who influenced whom means that their books aren’t primarily based on their own opinions but rather on those of their subjects. For example, the best single confirmation of Beethoven’s greatness might be Brahms’s explanation of why he spent decades fussing before finally unveiling his First Symphony: “You have no idea how it feels for someone like me to hear behind him the tramp of a giant like Beethoven.”'
Read the full review, "Culture's Bell Curve," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Read the full review, "Culture's Bell Curve," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
September 4, 2013
Fantastic book compiling and rating important thinkers and scientists in various domains of knowledge, from astronomy, biology, physics, philosophy, Western art, Western music, etc. The data was obtained by way of surveying textbooks and noting the space allocated to each thinker (which some readers criticize). What is obtained is an aggregate opinion on the contributions of these thinkers to the domains. Various maps are added showing the area where these thinkers worked, revealing a predominance in London and Paris. Murray also addresses many anticipated critics in the book. Worth flipping through for all, and purchasing if you like what the data summarizes.
March 20, 2021
I did enjoy this work. It represents an incredible amount of study and research. He reaches conclusions I would have reached. Freedom and autonomy are important. As are vision and the belief in one's own efficaciousness. Furthermore, the pursuit of excellence and pleasure in its achievement as Aristotle discussed are all considered important. I do have several critical comments. One, his collection of inventories does not wholly eliminate faddish bias. And two, he places a great deal of significance on religion. He does comment on my belief that these have been adolescent times.
Currently reading
April 21, 2007This book is really interesting but also mostly dry because the author has to get through a bunch of statistics and charts every chapter or so before talking about the fun stuff.
He has compiled a series of indices of signifigant contributors in the fields of sciences and the arts since 800 BC and tells us how he did that and what he thinks the data mean. The statistical analisys is horribly boring and the discussion of who the major figures in the fields are and why is really fun to read.
He has compiled a series of indices of signifigant contributors in the fields of sciences and the arts since 800 BC and tells us how he did that and what he thinks the data mean. The statistical analisys is horribly boring and the discussion of who the major figures in the fields are and why is really fun to read.
Read
December 29, 2014Had hoped the book would focus on what made these people excellent.
Instead, much ado about the statistics - which gives the book credibility - but not nearly as interesting.
Hope this improves in the pages to come...
Instead, much ado about the statistics - which gives the book credibility - but not nearly as interesting.
Hope this improves in the pages to come...
April 14, 2020
My comprehensive, 10+ man-hour review can be found on my (advertisement-free) Github site: https://ethanmorse.github.io/knowledge/books/human_accomplishment/human_accomplishment.html. Below is the introduction section, compelling you to read this book.
There are reasons to read this book and not to read this book. First, the not-reason. From the title, Human Accomplishment details the successes of humans from 800 BCE to 1950—2750 years of achievement by the top-tier of homo sapiens. Statistically speaking, the average person will neither contribute nor perform anything absolutely significant to society. (They may contribute some relatively significant, but nothing absolute.) This book serves as a stark reminder of this fact. Some are uncomfortable with this and prefer to live thinking that they have or eventually will have a profound impact on the world, which is perfectly fine. Don't read this book nor this review. Done.
Now, the more compelling to-reason from another perspective. From the title, Human Accomplishment details the successes of humans from 800 BCE to 1950—2750 years of achievement by the top-tier of homo sapiens. Conveniently compiled in a single 668-page book (which includes the main body chapter, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index), Murray objectively (more on the use of this term later) lays out the crowning moments of the human race in science and the arts. No need to go through volumes of text wondering if your favorite author is considered among the best ever (hint: they're probably not). Instead, consult this book and find out who the best ever are among sciences, philosophy, art, technology, and literature.
Do not let Murray's reputation from his book The Bell Curve dissuade you from reading this book. While there are some topics that will no doubt draw criticisms from some readers (e.g., the lack of women among the significant figures), Murray defends his position both qualitatively and quantitatively and invites the reader to challenge him with a rebuttal of their own.
There are reasons to read this book and not to read this book. First, the not-reason. From the title, Human Accomplishment details the successes of humans from 800 BCE to 1950—2750 years of achievement by the top-tier of homo sapiens. Statistically speaking, the average person will neither contribute nor perform anything absolutely significant to society. (They may contribute some relatively significant, but nothing absolute.) This book serves as a stark reminder of this fact. Some are uncomfortable with this and prefer to live thinking that they have or eventually will have a profound impact on the world, which is perfectly fine. Don't read this book nor this review. Done.
Now, the more compelling to-reason from another perspective. From the title, Human Accomplishment details the successes of humans from 800 BCE to 1950—2750 years of achievement by the top-tier of homo sapiens. Conveniently compiled in a single 668-page book (which includes the main body chapter, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index), Murray objectively (more on the use of this term later) lays out the crowning moments of the human race in science and the arts. No need to go through volumes of text wondering if your favorite author is considered among the best ever (hint: they're probably not). Instead, consult this book and find out who the best ever are among sciences, philosophy, art, technology, and literature.
Do not let Murray's reputation from his book The Bell Curve dissuade you from reading this book. While there are some topics that will no doubt draw criticisms from some readers (e.g., the lack of women among the significant figures), Murray defends his position both qualitatively and quantitatively and invites the reader to challenge him with a rebuttal of their own.
Read
May 16, 2020This is a remarkable book. Murray sets out to catalog the major figures in the arts and sciences, and, in the case of the sciences, the major discoveries. He succeeds and his methodology is sufficiently rigorous that I have no doubt in his conclusions. His conclusion is a bit depressing: we are in a low-point for cultural achievement, but I tend to agree with him, and it seems only time and better ideas will bring us out of it. On a more positive note, I would love to see a set of books that covered the major accomplishments in the sciences (I think good treatments already exist for art and music) by profiling the major figures and showing how their discoveries came about. It would probably be best to split it into physics/chemistry, biology/medicine, and technology.
April 18, 2018
He always has a lot of ideas to share, and I am afraid that I am unable to determine the validity of many of them. He always has the same disclaimer that equality and human value should not be dependent on exceptionalism or intelligence. I can get behind that. He, once again, makes a case that exceptionalism is extremely rare and beautiful, and that we all benefit from these special contributions to the human experience. I can't argue with that either. Interesting read..... maybe? Definitely not ideas you want to share at work.
March 18, 2019
A wonderful exposition of the scope of the best of human accomplishment through recorded history. It is not easy reading; the statistics are daunting but explained very well. It is revolutionary in that Dr. Murray calls a spade a spade. In this milieu of PC bullshit that alone is subversive. Read this book to understand we have done as a species and what we are capable of if the right conditions exist. It calls for a reordering of the values that the Left is so fond of.
December 3, 2021
Another great Murray's accomplishment. As always, this man makes his case consistently and clearly. I guess one peculiar aspect of this book: he completely omits declining intelligence of European population as a (very important!!!) factor of declining human accomplishment. For the man who has done so much for mainstreaming of intelligence research, it is inexcusable. However, it is entirely possible that in 2003 we didn't have enough convincing evidence for this claim. In this case, being a prudent researcher, Murray did nothing wrong.
April 11, 2020
This is a better book to browse the highlights - the results - rather than to read straight through. This cuts the length by at least half and makes it more enjoyable. You can skip the parts on Murray's methodology unless 1) it interests you or 2) you disagree with the conclusions and want to see what backs them up. 3½ stars, rounded up to 4 stars.
August 27, 2019
An attempt to quantify and measure human accomplishment in a completely data-driven, dispassionate way. I have to be honest that I don't enjoy math enough to really understand the methodology. The author was one of the co-authors of The Bell Curve, for what that's worth.
June 9, 2018
Pseudoscientist.
April 30, 2021
Progressives and the woke would ban and burn this wonderful history of western civilization.
July 17, 2021
I learnt that greatness as defined by history is a very rare achievement and that ultimately the great works in the arts and sciences are but glimpses into The Great One.
December 7, 2021
De Blanke Man Triompheert zoals gewoonlijk
May 15, 2021
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
I've been a Charles Murray fan since I read his In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government[image error] more than a few years back. But somehow I skipped over this one (from 2003), so I decided to fill in that particular gap.
Murray's goal here is a little audacious: a study of human progress and excellence in the arts and sciences throughout history. He travels up and down the historical timeline, and throughout the entire world. He locates the significant individuals, discoveries, and ideas in a large number of fields, and describes how they were distributed not only in time and space, but also how things broke out in terms of sex, race, and ethnicity. In short, it's a real tour de force.
Murray's results won't cheer dogmatic feminists, cultural relativists, or antisemites. Historically, no other area can hold a candle, achievement-wise, to Western Europe. (And not all parts of Western Europe: northern Italy, France, and southeast England dominate.) Similarly, Jews are over-represented, despite experiencing simultaneous appalling bigotry. And (sorry, ladies) the highest levels of excellence are pretty much male-dominated.
For us America lovers: Murray notes that we're not really all that special either. Sorry.
Murray spends almost as much time describing his methodology as explicating his results. He painstakingly describes his efforts to avoid any sort of chauvinism. (Which, by the way, makes the Publisher's Weekly kneejerk review on the Amazon page look deliberately obtuse: la, la, la, I can't hear you!)
Even the little side trips are interesting. Example: Early in the book, Murray spends some time discussing the "Antikythera Mechanism", a sophisticated calculation device dated sometime between 150 and 100 BC; its design demonstrates a previously unsuspected sophistication in both astronomy and mechanical engineering for that era. Murray uses this (and other examples) to point out that there are large unknown areas and mysteries in the history of accomplishment.
Soberingly, Murray finishes up with by investigating whether achievement may be in a long-term historical decline. He answers with a firm "maybe."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews