Post by galvez on Jan 3, 2004 12:28:49 GMT -5
There are some problems with Charles Murray's book Human Accomplishment which I thought I would elaborate a little about.
1. Charles Murray believes that the "excellence" of scientists and the greatness of artists can be measured by averaging out the amount out attention they are given by authoritative sources. However, scientific achievement is both complementary and competitive. These two elements are crucial, and so it's a bit asinine to say that A is greater than B when A borrowed material to a great extent from B in order to formulate his theories. There is thus a certain level of subjectivity involved when scientists and contributors of culture are ranked, because of the two elements just noted. Now, it's still foolish to compare Isaac Newton or Galileo to an obscure scientist who made a minor contribution that helped him along the way, but when we talk about giants there is no comparison -- there will never be complete consensus, and even Murray admits that rankings could easily have been altered based on his usage of authoritative sources. He even "fudged" data a little when he subjectively felt two men both deserved to be ranked number 1, when one was statistically a bit higher than the other.
This is particularly true of philosophers: Murray ranks Aristotle as the top philosopher of all time, while the great philosophers have tended to see Plato as the most influential. If not for Socrates, Plato might not have been the great philosopher that he was, and if not for Plato (and Socrates before him) Aristotle may not have been a great a thinker as he turned out to be. Comparing Socrates with Plato and Aristotle as if they are baseball players with specific batting averages thus becomes a bit stupid: they are all great with their own contributions -- like apples and oranges in a healthy diet -- and it should be left at that.
2. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out in his review of the book, by Murray's own methodology Karl Marx would rank as the top social scientist or among the top if he were to have included social science among the inventories. In other words, experts aren't always right, and the amount of attention they give to a person need not reflect on his intrinsic greatness.
3. The arts cannot be quantified. This point is nicely illustrated in Dead Poet's Society by Mr. Keating when he tells his students at Welton High to rip out the pages of a book purporting to provide methods to "measure" the objective greatness of a poem. When you quantify the arts, you get foolish results such as Pablo Picasso ranking number 2, above the Renaissance giants with the exception of Michelangelo.
4. There is a neocon agenda in the book. The author claims that human accomplishment in the USSR was poor, yet it's funny that the USSR got the first man into outer space. A nation (or empire) simply cannot send a man to outer space without having a scientific backbone with men of the highest caliber. The book turns into a somewhat subjective rant against "totalitarianism" without providing irrefutable proof that geniuses have not flourished in great numbers under totalitarian rule. Even with Hitler there were many physicists and philosophers (I won't bother getting into names) supportive of the National Socialist state. Cultural and political bias might be playing a role in suppressing the attention that certain scientists and cultural contributors receive from sources of the Western liberal democracies.
5. Cultural bias is unavoidable no matter how you slice it. The Japanese will tend to focus most on the Japanese, the Chinese on the Chinese, the Arabs on the Arabs, and within Europe there is nationalism influencing the amount of attention given to cultural and scientific figures. Selecting sources from different countries in order to try to be objective is hardly a remedy -- assuming that attention even equals eminence or greatness, which is doubtful.
6. There is a religious agenda in the book. Charles Murray gets into how the loss of religion is sapping the energy -- or purpose, as he puts it -- out of the modern culture. While the arts have tended to be influenced by religion, religion is clearly no direct boon to science and was arguably a hindrance from the very beginning of times. The last part of the book -- with predictable jargon introduced by Murray -- is less quantitative and more speculative or based on opinion: the gist is that the West is in decline due to the nihilism and purposelessness within the culture at large and as reflected in the modern contributors of culture. Basically, it's some quasi-high-brow Bible-thumping which should have no place in a "scientific" book.
The final verdict: avoid this book at all costs. It's good to read for the historical aspect, as it gives a good history of the major achievements over time. That's the only real value of the book, in addition to some convincing arguments along the way about what facilitates culture and what hampers it. But the bad far outweighs the good, and Murray's attempts to measure genius come out as amateurish and feeble.
1. Charles Murray believes that the "excellence" of scientists and the greatness of artists can be measured by averaging out the amount out attention they are given by authoritative sources. However, scientific achievement is both complementary and competitive. These two elements are crucial, and so it's a bit asinine to say that A is greater than B when A borrowed material to a great extent from B in order to formulate his theories. There is thus a certain level of subjectivity involved when scientists and contributors of culture are ranked, because of the two elements just noted. Now, it's still foolish to compare Isaac Newton or Galileo to an obscure scientist who made a minor contribution that helped him along the way, but when we talk about giants there is no comparison -- there will never be complete consensus, and even Murray admits that rankings could easily have been altered based on his usage of authoritative sources. He even "fudged" data a little when he subjectively felt two men both deserved to be ranked number 1, when one was statistically a bit higher than the other.
This is particularly true of philosophers: Murray ranks Aristotle as the top philosopher of all time, while the great philosophers have tended to see Plato as the most influential. If not for Socrates, Plato might not have been the great philosopher that he was, and if not for Plato (and Socrates before him) Aristotle may not have been a great a thinker as he turned out to be. Comparing Socrates with Plato and Aristotle as if they are baseball players with specific batting averages thus becomes a bit stupid: they are all great with their own contributions -- like apples and oranges in a healthy diet -- and it should be left at that.
2. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out in his review of the book, by Murray's own methodology Karl Marx would rank as the top social scientist or among the top if he were to have included social science among the inventories. In other words, experts aren't always right, and the amount of attention they give to a person need not reflect on his intrinsic greatness.
3. The arts cannot be quantified. This point is nicely illustrated in Dead Poet's Society by Mr. Keating when he tells his students at Welton High to rip out the pages of a book purporting to provide methods to "measure" the objective greatness of a poem. When you quantify the arts, you get foolish results such as Pablo Picasso ranking number 2, above the Renaissance giants with the exception of Michelangelo.
4. There is a neocon agenda in the book. The author claims that human accomplishment in the USSR was poor, yet it's funny that the USSR got the first man into outer space. A nation (or empire) simply cannot send a man to outer space without having a scientific backbone with men of the highest caliber. The book turns into a somewhat subjective rant against "totalitarianism" without providing irrefutable proof that geniuses have not flourished in great numbers under totalitarian rule. Even with Hitler there were many physicists and philosophers (I won't bother getting into names) supportive of the National Socialist state. Cultural and political bias might be playing a role in suppressing the attention that certain scientists and cultural contributors receive from sources of the Western liberal democracies.
5. Cultural bias is unavoidable no matter how you slice it. The Japanese will tend to focus most on the Japanese, the Chinese on the Chinese, the Arabs on the Arabs, and within Europe there is nationalism influencing the amount of attention given to cultural and scientific figures. Selecting sources from different countries in order to try to be objective is hardly a remedy -- assuming that attention even equals eminence or greatness, which is doubtful.
6. There is a religious agenda in the book. Charles Murray gets into how the loss of religion is sapping the energy -- or purpose, as he puts it -- out of the modern culture. While the arts have tended to be influenced by religion, religion is clearly no direct boon to science and was arguably a hindrance from the very beginning of times. The last part of the book -- with predictable jargon introduced by Murray -- is less quantitative and more speculative or based on opinion: the gist is that the West is in decline due to the nihilism and purposelessness within the culture at large and as reflected in the modern contributors of culture. Basically, it's some quasi-high-brow Bible-thumping which should have no place in a "scientific" book.
The final verdict: avoid this book at all costs. It's good to read for the historical aspect, as it gives a good history of the major achievements over time. That's the only real value of the book, in addition to some convincing arguments along the way about what facilitates culture and what hampers it. But the bad far outweighs the good, and Murray's attempts to measure genius come out as amateurish and feeble.
