Human Accomplishment

Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 BC to 1950 is a book by Charles Murray surveying outstanding contributions to the arts and sciences from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century. The book represents the first attempt to quantify the accomplishment of individuals and countries worldwide in the fields of arts and sciences by calculating the amount of space allocated to them in reference works, an area of research sometimes referred to as historiometry. Murray found that nearly all scientific progress, and all important scientific and artistic ideas, were made by white Europeans or their descendants (such as white Americans, Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders).

Charles Murray is a controversial American political scientist most widely known as the co-author (with Richard Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve in 1994, exploring the role of intelligence in American life, and for his influential work on welfare reform. HarperCollins published the 668-page book in 2003. This article contains information about the book's content according to a review by Denis Dutton, a philosophy teacher at the University of Canterbury and founder of the Arts & Letters Daily website.

According to Dutton, Murray demonstrates that world progress in the arts and sciences had declined, especially since around 1800. This is true, says Dutton, despite the fact that "wealth, cities and their cultural endowments, communication, and political freedom have...improved in recent centuries."

Furthermore, in his review, Dutton cites four conditions that Murray writes are necessary for people's work to reach their full potential of excellence. Achievement is best stimulated in a culture

1. "...in which the most talented people believe that life has a purpose and that the function of life is to fulfill that purpose." Moreover, Murray writes: "Human beings have been most magnificently productive and reached their highest cultural peaks in the times and places where humans have thought most deeply about their place in the universe and been most convinced they have one."
2. that "encourages the belief that individuals can act efficaciously as individuals."
3. where organizing structures are rich and old. Dutton, in his review, does not directly define an organizing structure, but he does say it can include "theories, styles, and techniques...such as the spectroscope in physics or the grand piano in music".
4. where people have "a well-articulated vision of, and use of, the transcendental good relevant to that domain." Such a good, according to Dutton, can include truth, morality, or beauty.

Murray explains his assertion that the West produced almost all scientific progress by reference to Christianity's - i.e. the thomist - emphasis on human intelligence as a gift from God.

Index scores

Murray ranks the greats in several fields of human accomplishment from 800 BC to 1950. In each field Murray identifies a number of sources providing information about the leading figures in the field. The rankings are made from information in these sources. First the number of sources is cut down by requiring that a large set of the leading figures in the field is included. Secondly the number of mathematicians is cut down by requiring that leading figures occurs in at least half the sources.

Then a raw score is determined based on how much attention they get. Then these raw scores are normalized so that the lowest score is 1 and the highest score is 100. The resulting scores are called "Index Scores".

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. The omission of several relative categories, including a broader Chinese art category or an Indian art category, are due to a lack of identifiable figures as most of the work is anonymous.

The following are some examples of the rankings found for individual categories.

Mathematics	Index score
Euler	100
Newton	89
Euclid	83
Gauss	81
Fermat	72
Leibniz	72
Descartes	54
Cantor	50
Pascal	47
Riemann	47
Hilbert	40
Bernoulli	40
Diophantus	39
Cardano	37
Viete	36
Legendre	36
John Wallis	36
Cauchy	35
Fibonacci	34
Archimedes	33

Western philosophy	Index score
Aristotle	100
Plato	87
Kant	74
Descartes	51
Hegel	46
Aquinas	39
John Locke	37
Hume	36
Augustine	30
Spinoza	27
Leibniz	27
Socrates	26
Schopenhauer	24
Berkeley	21
Nietzsche	20
Hobbes	19
Russell	18
Rousseau	17
Plotinus	17
Fichte	17

Physics	Index score
Newton	100
Einstein	100
Rutherford	88
Faraday	86
Galileo	83
Cavendish	57
Bohr	52
J.J. Thomson	50
Maxwell	50
P. Curie	47
Kirchhoff	43
Fermi	42
Heisenberg	41
M. Curie	41
Dirac	40
Joule	40
Huygens	39
Gilbert	37
T. Young	37
Hooke	36

Western music	Index score
Beethoven	100
Mozart	100
Johann Sebastian Bach	87
Wagner	80
Haydn	56
Handel	46
Stravinsky	45
Debussy	45
Liszt	45
Schubert	44
Schumann	42
Berlioz	41
Schoenberg	39
Brahms	35
Chopin	32
Monteverdi	31
Verdi	30
Mendelssohn	30
Weber	27
Gluck	26

Chinese literature	Index score
Du Fu	100
Li Bai	87
Bo Juyi (Bai Juyi)	86
Su Dungpo (Su Shi)	83
Han Yu	80
Qu Yuan	78
Sima Qian	68
Tao Cian (Tao Qian)	68
Ouyang Xiu	61
Yuan Zhen	49
Guan Hanqing	45
Sima Xiangru	41
Liu Xongyuan (Liu Zongyuan)	40
Ban Gu	37
Wang Wi (Wang Wei)	35
Luo Guanzhong	34
Ma Zhiyuan	34
Wang Shifu	34
Song Yu	33
Cao Xueqin	32

Western art	Index score
Michelangelo	100
Picasso	77
Raphael	73
Leonardo	61
Titian	60
Dürer	56
Rembrandt	56
Giotto	54
Bernini	53
Cézanne	50
Rubens	49
Caravaggio	43
Velázquez	43
Donatello	42
Van Eyck	42
Goya	41
Monet	41
Masaccio	41
Van Gogh	40
Gauguin	38

Combined sciences	Index score
Newton	100
Galileo	89
Aristotle	78
Kepler	53
Lavoisier	51
Descartes	51
Huygens	49
Laplace	48
Einstein	48
Faraday	46
Pasteur	46
Ptolemy	43
Hooke	41
Leibniz	40
Rutherford	40
Euler	39
Darwin	37
Berzelius	36
Euclid	36
Maxwell	35

Western literature	Index score
Shakespeare	100
Goethe	81
Dante	62
Virgil	55
Homer	54
Rousseau	48
Voltaire	47
Molière	43
Byron	42
Tolstoy	42
Dostoevsky	41
Petrarch	40
Hugo	40
Schiller	38
Boccaccio	35
Horace	35
Euripides	35
Racine	34
Scott	33
Ibsen	32

Technology	Index score
Watt	100
Edison	100
Leonardo da Vinci	60
Huygens	51
Archimedes	51
Marconi	50
Vitruvius	43
John Smeaton	37
Bessemer	34
Newcomen	33
Babbage	33
Siemens	32
Wilkinson	32
Franklin	32
Wheatstone	32
Nobel	32
Faraday	31
Papin	31
Stephenson	30
Morse	30

External links

*

• Cato Institute Book Forum (RealVideo) (RealAudio), 1-hour lecture that Murray gave discussing his book Human Accomplishment, and some of the response to it.
• In Pursuit of Excellence (RealAudio), one-hour interview with Michael Goldfarb on WBUR.
• American Conservative - book review
• Q&A with Charles Murray on Human Accomplishment, Steve Sailer.
• book review in journal Evolutionary Psychology

References

• "Of human accomplishment", an article by Denis Dutton