Michael H Hart clearly wasn't much of a Christian: he attributes the spread of Athanasian Trinitarianism to Constantine I, who died 36 years before Athanasius himself (those where the years in which Athanasius did the bulk of his work), and doesn't include poor Athanasius in the list (for example, in place of Mahavira, founder of a religion with little impact even in its homeland); and then he blames Justinian I for the split with the Monophysites. Justinian who was a terrible person on whom all the evils of the world could be blamed, but that one: his wife Theodora was a Monophysite sympathizer who actually supported the spread of the heresy, doing much to prepare the ground for the arrival of Islam. So let's also place Theodora there, in place of that idiot Malthus.
Laying aside for the sake of argument the salvation history accomplishments and claims of deity of Jesus, consider the sheer number on the list who were devoted followers of Jesus. Even with no consideration given to others who were born into Christian families and societies and thus influenced by Jesus but who rejected him and his teachings, it’s hard not to rank Jesus number one. If given partial credit for the accomplishments of those who were his devoted followers I fail to see how Jesus isn’t number one.
Notice I wrote “devoted followers.” Not included those who simply identified as Christian because of birth or culture, although even many of those were influenced by Jesus’ teachings.
Every person on the list is the product of an “accident of birth” to some extent or another. If Newton had been born 200 years earlier he would have been hard pressed to make his discoveries while evading burning at the stake for embracing Arianism.
Oh- I interpreted "devoted followers" and anyone who continued to practice Christianity. I would need to see the list of which of these were actually, in their hearts, devoted followers and how that influenced them to know
But did the Christianity matter? What if Christianity had never become the state religion of Rome and never spread throughout Europe and religions were mostly pagan barbarian mixed with Roman/Greek. Would we not have our modern world? Would we never have had the enlightenment or science or the industrial revolution? If not, what about Christianity made the difference? Was it the informal super state rule of the catholic church or something about the difference in philosophy between Christianity and paganism? As I ask the question I realize/assume this what-if has probably been gamed a zillion times
> Would we not have our modern world? Would we never have had the enlightenment or science or the industrial revolution?
Probably not. See the way Indian, or Chinese, civilization went.
> If not, what about Christianity made the difference?
I'd say the emphasis on breaking down of class barriers. Thus only in the West could a high status intellectual investigate the activities of a mere craftsman without suffering a major status hit.
I read a convincing blog post once arguing that the industrial revolution could have started nowhere but the British Isle because of the need to pump water out of mines and the proximity of coal (and a few other things). So I would not blame a lack of industrialization on lack of Christianity. The industrial revolution didn't start in Italy either. The rest? Did Christianty break down class barriers more than Buddhism and Hinduism> I honestly do not know
Left-wing “Private Eye” writer Paul Foot once declared that the 1917 revolution in Russia had been the most important event in the history of the world. His colleague Christopher Booker replied, “1917 years after what, Paul?”
The list doesn’t include the Arab inventors of algebra. But overall the Christian society produced way more. See my argument above for not ranking the list.
All of our junior high world history texts had to take a position on their own version of the 100. I’ll bet such textbooks’ great men vary wildly depending on where the authors and students live. How many women were among the 100?
I would put Tyndale and his well-timed English Bible on the list, and whoever first led Islam out of Arabia. For many of the scientists and inventors, someone else would have gotten there eventually, I hope, so the actual person is less important than the step forward he made. I'd replace Jefferson with Franklin. Who wouldn't have Purchased Louisiana? World War I was a clusterf--too many to blame, but without it, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, the decline of the West, and the Great American Empire would be a lot less likely.
How much credit does JFK really deserve for getting the U.S. to the moon? Isn't Werner Von Braun more important to space exploration than a President who died six years before the moon landing?
This is the problem with all of the invention/scientific discovery oriented ones. We like to credit a single person for each but that's almost never the case. The list would better in my estimation if the invention/discovery/theory were listed first followed by someone plausibly to credit. With the example of paper, I wonder- did one guy invent it and then it spread everywhere, or was it reinvented multiple times before finally catching on? When it was invented in China, weren't people in the west using alternatives like papyrus and animal skins?
I think that Edward de Vere's identity as Shakespeare is still unproven and contested. I think the authorship of some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare is arguable but they seem to have been two distinct people.
> Personally, that strikes me as tedious. I would just as soon rule out the question of Napoleon’s Mom by fiat and move on.
Which neatly sums up why you are not a rationalist- or, for that matter, particularly rational. If you would dismiss a philosophical question by fiat because it seems "tedious", you are quite simply not attempting truth-seeking. Which is, of course, the central purpose of rationalism.
> Something that strikes me as amusing about the different mental orientations of myself versus the great majority of Scott's commenters is that when I'm told there exists a ranked list of something or other, my initial tendency is an overpowering urge to go look at the list and try to detect patterns in the examples. Who is at the top? Who is at the bottom? Why?
That is precisely what you just explicitly admitted to *not* wanting to do. Scott want to get at the why- hence the exploration of particular examples and alternative propositions, as opposed to the simple counting you seem to scorn his readers for avoiding- whereas you prefer to simply declare certain possibilities ineligible by fiat without further thought.
The irony of the above quoted paragraph in the context of your professed incuriosity about the underlying principles at play is striking.
> I love counting how many names in plausible Top 100 lists fall into different categories, such as right-hander vs. left-hander.
On the other hand, I would agree that this distinguishes you from the majority of Scott's readers, who tend to focus on more interesting and illuminative aspects of the question- such as the extent to which giving birth to and raising a person confers their importance upon you, and by extension what 'importance' means.
Right, I'm by nature and nurture an empiricist rather than a member of the "rationalist" cult. I'd rather use my time, say, looking for interesting cases of Somebody's Mom: e.g., Katharine of Aragon was an important historical figure in the Reformation coming to England, and her mom, Queen Isabella, was an even more important figure in history.
So, I'd be interested in questions like how many moms became important historical figures in their own right?
Not many proportionately.
But how did the few moms who became famous for non-mom roles tend to perform?
Pretty well.
That seems more interesting than Scott's generic Napoleon's Mom abstract question.
But KoA was only important for NOT producing a surviving son and for being Charles V's aunt, which made it harder to get rid of her--the big step Henry wouldn't have taken even for the sexy Boleyn chick (the important Mom) if he already had his legitimate male heir. Mary was legally a bastard until late in his reign--he wouldn't have done that to a son. Tyndale and Henry were more important.
I didn't say anything about gossip, nor does the quotation- although that is of course one form of talking about people.
But yes, by valuing knowledge primarily insofar as it is useful, you do again meaningfully distinguish yourself from rationalists and philosophers. I'm just not sure it reflects on you or them the way you intended.
Funny how truth seeking rationalists end up promoting solidly leftist positions such as prostitution, pornography, shoddy drugs and spin their wheels on questions where the answer is based on metaphysical assumptions (as atheism is) which determine what counts as evidence, without realizing the circular trap they're in. Real geniuses over there.
If you think it's "funny" how frequently truth-seeking rationalists end up promoting positions you don't like, perhaps that should tell you something about your positions, rather than the rationalists.
I hadn’t considered it before, but there seem to be some points of comparison between Islamophiles and Oxfordians who hold that de Vere wrote Shakespeare. Both are “people of the book” who esteem a text (the Koran or the Complete Works) and indeed divorce it from its historical surroundings. One of the attractions of Christianity is that it has four equally esteemed texts on its founder’s life and sayings with the differences between them inviting fruitful interpretation and discouraging fundamentalism. In contrast Oxfordians seem unsure exactly when or why their prophet with no working knowledge of the stage would have had his plays revealed to him.
The funniest evidence that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, a theatrical impresario businessman, is when, right after Hamlet's staggering "quintessence of dust" soliloquy, a peak of English artistic prose, he goes on a long rant about the stupid fad lately among London theater audiences for plays starring child actors, which is ruining the revenue of adult troupes, like, say, Shakespeare's. It's tonally way off from Hamlet as a great work of art, but, evidently, Shakespeare felt extremely strongly on the topic, especially in his pocketbook.
For me, what really does it is that there's no other similar instance of a secret author hiring a real person to be a front for their work. Not even nowadays, when such things would be substantially easier, on account of the inventions of emails and electronic payment. Surely, if this could've happened once, it would happen again, and there'd be way better evidence for it.
But no. Somehow, Edward de Vere, whom by every contemporary account gives the impression of clinical psychopathy, gave a random actor dozens of his full-length plays for production, so many of which that new material was available for use even a decade after his death, and for which he never received a penny in return despite the extensive work it would've taken to handwrite every one of these high-quality works, because reasons. To the point where the Duke died in poverty in an unmarked grave while the Bard's funerary monument was carved immediately after his death, and remains in place at Stratford's Holy Trinity Church to this day.
It's just preposterous. No real person would ever have behaved this way. Least of all an author, who are by nature both deeply egotistical and ravenous over compensation for their efforts. And you'd think if Oxford could cover up every trace of his being Shakespeare that he would've done a much better job at covering up his penchant for raping young boys.
LOL Sadly Phil Donahue was not on this list. As an aside the long-time daytime talk-show show died yesterday at 88. Oprah pretty much stole his act and did it better, and since Oprah has more Pokémon points than Phil does, she became the queen of the genre, despite Phil have bona fide liberal credentials. However, he ruled the root for a long time.
Instead of ranking them it might be better to list them by the year they were born. It would cut down on who’s most influential since even a highly influential figure like Mohammed was in turn influenced by those who came before him.
Anyone who thinks William Shakespeare was Edward de Vere is not deserving of my time! 😡😡
My only argument would be against including John F. Kennedy, although I understand it's his contribution to space exploration rather than his politics. I suggest Edward Teller in his place.
It illustrates further problems in Hart's list in that if he can be taken in by such blatant pseudo-history as Oxfordianism, how easy must it be for him to fall for similar such nonsense.
Beyond all the other things that disprove it, the idea that any author would use a real person as a front for their work, rather than just use a pseudonym like Voltaire or Orwell, is just completely preposterous. Especially when said frontman was making oodles of cash off those plays while said "writer" died in poverty. Hence why no other writer in all of history has ever employed a remotely similar arrangement, and hence why we know where William Shakespeare's buried and still have no fucking clue where is buried Edward de Vere.
De Vere was also a really gross and depraved guy. He was a pederastic serial rapist who really should've been executed. Plenty of great artists are bad people. We don't need to add to the lot a bad person who didn't even achieve said great art:
Michael H Hart clearly wasn't much of a Christian: he attributes the spread of Athanasian Trinitarianism to Constantine I, who died 36 years before Athanasius himself (those where the years in which Athanasius did the bulk of his work), and doesn't include poor Athanasius in the list (for example, in place of Mahavira, founder of a religion with little impact even in its homeland); and then he blames Justinian I for the split with the Monophysites. Justinian who was a terrible person on whom all the evils of the world could be blamed, but that one: his wife Theodora was a Monophysite sympathizer who actually supported the spread of the heresy, doing much to prepare the ground for the arrival of Islam. So let's also place Theodora there, in place of that idiot Malthus.
> "Michael H Hart clearly wasn't much of a Christian"
Inasmuch as he's Jewish, yeah, I guess not.
But fair points otherwise.
Laying aside for the sake of argument the salvation history accomplishments and claims of deity of Jesus, consider the sheer number on the list who were devoted followers of Jesus. Even with no consideration given to others who were born into Christian families and societies and thus influenced by Jesus but who rejected him and his teachings, it’s hard not to rank Jesus number one. If given partial credit for the accomplishments of those who were his devoted followers I fail to see how Jesus isn’t number one.
Why would we give Jesus partial credit for that? Almost all of them were Christian's by accident of birth.
Notice I wrote “devoted followers.” Not included those who simply identified as Christian because of birth or culture, although even many of those were influenced by Jesus’ teachings.
Every person on the list is the product of an “accident of birth” to some extent or another. If Newton had been born 200 years earlier he would have been hard pressed to make his discoveries while evading burning at the stake for embracing Arianism.
Oh- I interpreted "devoted followers" and anyone who continued to practice Christianity. I would need to see the list of which of these were actually, in their hearts, devoted followers and how that influenced them to know
It was more the particular society, which was heavily influenced by Christianity.
But did the Christianity matter? What if Christianity had never become the state religion of Rome and never spread throughout Europe and religions were mostly pagan barbarian mixed with Roman/Greek. Would we not have our modern world? Would we never have had the enlightenment or science or the industrial revolution? If not, what about Christianity made the difference? Was it the informal super state rule of the catholic church or something about the difference in philosophy between Christianity and paganism? As I ask the question I realize/assume this what-if has probably been gamed a zillion times
> Would we not have our modern world? Would we never have had the enlightenment or science or the industrial revolution?
Probably not. See the way Indian, or Chinese, civilization went.
> If not, what about Christianity made the difference?
I'd say the emphasis on breaking down of class barriers. Thus only in the West could a high status intellectual investigate the activities of a mere craftsman without suffering a major status hit.
I read a convincing blog post once arguing that the industrial revolution could have started nowhere but the British Isle because of the need to pump water out of mines and the proximity of coal (and a few other things). So I would not blame a lack of industrialization on lack of Christianity. The industrial revolution didn't start in Italy either. The rest? Did Christianty break down class barriers more than Buddhism and Hinduism> I honestly do not know
Hinduism has a fully fledged caste system.
Buddhism isn't quite as bad as Hinduism, but it doesn't really do much.
Also another problem with Buddhism is its emphasis on the physical world being an illusion and thus not worth investigating.
Left-wing “Private Eye” writer Paul Foot once declared that the 1917 revolution in Russia had been the most important event in the history of the world. His colleague Christopher Booker replied, “1917 years after what, Paul?”
Excellent!
The list doesn’t include the Arab inventors of algebra. But overall the Christian society produced way more. See my argument above for not ranking the list.
BTW, the inventors of Algebra were Persian, not Arab.
All of our junior high world history texts had to take a position on their own version of the 100. I’ll bet such textbooks’ great men vary wildly depending on where the authors and students live. How many women were among the 100?
I would put Tyndale and his well-timed English Bible on the list, and whoever first led Islam out of Arabia. For many of the scientists and inventors, someone else would have gotten there eventually, I hope, so the actual person is less important than the step forward he made. I'd replace Jefferson with Franklin. Who wouldn't have Purchased Louisiana? World War I was a clusterf--too many to blame, but without it, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, the decline of the West, and the Great American Empire would be a lot less likely.
How much credit does JFK really deserve for getting the U.S. to the moon? Isn't Werner Von Braun more important to space exploration than a President who died six years before the moon landing?
This is the problem with all of the invention/scientific discovery oriented ones. We like to credit a single person for each but that's almost never the case. The list would better in my estimation if the invention/discovery/theory were listed first followed by someone plausibly to credit. With the example of paper, I wonder- did one guy invent it and then it spread everywhere, or was it reinvented multiple times before finally catching on? When it was invented in China, weren't people in the west using alternatives like papyrus and animal skins?
I think that Edward de Vere's identity as Shakespeare is still unproven and contested. I think the authorship of some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare is arguable but they seem to have been two distinct people.
Absolutely! It's become a cheap parlor trick to suggest alternative authors (Francis Bacon, Robert Marlowe, etc.). Yawn....
> Personally, that strikes me as tedious. I would just as soon rule out the question of Napoleon’s Mom by fiat and move on.
Which neatly sums up why you are not a rationalist- or, for that matter, particularly rational. If you would dismiss a philosophical question by fiat because it seems "tedious", you are quite simply not attempting truth-seeking. Which is, of course, the central purpose of rationalism.
> Something that strikes me as amusing about the different mental orientations of myself versus the great majority of Scott's commenters is that when I'm told there exists a ranked list of something or other, my initial tendency is an overpowering urge to go look at the list and try to detect patterns in the examples. Who is at the top? Who is at the bottom? Why?
That is precisely what you just explicitly admitted to *not* wanting to do. Scott want to get at the why- hence the exploration of particular examples and alternative propositions, as opposed to the simple counting you seem to scorn his readers for avoiding- whereas you prefer to simply declare certain possibilities ineligible by fiat without further thought.
The irony of the above quoted paragraph in the context of your professed incuriosity about the underlying principles at play is striking.
> I love counting how many names in plausible Top 100 lists fall into different categories, such as right-hander vs. left-hander.
On the other hand, I would agree that this distinguishes you from the majority of Scott's readers, who tend to focus on more interesting and illuminative aspects of the question- such as the extent to which giving birth to and raising a person confers their importance upon you, and by extension what 'importance' means.
Right, I'm by nature and nurture an empiricist rather than a member of the "rationalist" cult. I'd rather use my time, say, looking for interesting cases of Somebody's Mom: e.g., Katharine of Aragon was an important historical figure in the Reformation coming to England, and her mom, Queen Isabella, was an even more important figure in history.
So, I'd be interested in questions like how many moms became important historical figures in their own right?
Not many proportionately.
But how did the few moms who became famous for non-mom roles tend to perform?
Pretty well.
That seems more interesting than Scott's generic Napoleon's Mom abstract question.
But KoA was only important for NOT producing a surviving son and for being Charles V's aunt, which made it harder to get rid of her--the big step Henry wouldn't have taken even for the sexy Boleyn chick (the important Mom) if he already had his legitimate male heir. Mary was legally a bastard until late in his reign--he wouldn't have done that to a son. Tyndale and Henry were more important.
As in the famous quote: great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
You are positioning yourself in the last of these camps, and proudly contrasting it with the first.
Nah, noticing new knowledge about patterns among people is the opposite of gossip, and more useful than arguing about the Napoleon's Mom conundrum.
I didn't say anything about gossip, nor does the quotation- although that is of course one form of talking about people.
But yes, by valuing knowledge primarily insofar as it is useful, you do again meaningfully distinguish yourself from rationalists and philosophers. I'm just not sure it reflects on you or them the way you intended.
Funny how truth seeking rationalists end up promoting solidly leftist positions such as prostitution, pornography, shoddy drugs and spin their wheels on questions where the answer is based on metaphysical assumptions (as atheism is) which determine what counts as evidence, without realizing the circular trap they're in. Real geniuses over there.
If you think it's "funny" how frequently truth-seeking rationalists end up promoting positions you don't like, perhaps that should tell you something about your positions, rather than the rationalists.
Understanding Human History by Michael H. Hart:
https://lesacreduprintemps19.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/hart_-_understanding_human_history-1.pdf
Apparently, we haven’t learned much…
Fraud list. Where’s George Floyd???
😂😂
I don't think Gorbachev really counts as Russian Orthodox. His mother had him baptized as an infant, but there's no indication he ever practiced that religion. When it was reported that he had prayed at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi and that he might have become a Christian, he insisted he was still an atheist (https://web.archive.org/web/20080511153411/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-out_there_gorbachev_rodriguez_23mar24%2C1%2C4698255.story).
No Rothchilds? But where would we be as a society without our precious personal income tax and fiat currency?
I hadn’t considered it before, but there seem to be some points of comparison between Islamophiles and Oxfordians who hold that de Vere wrote Shakespeare. Both are “people of the book” who esteem a text (the Koran or the Complete Works) and indeed divorce it from its historical surroundings. One of the attractions of Christianity is that it has four equally esteemed texts on its founder’s life and sayings with the differences between them inviting fruitful interpretation and discouraging fundamentalism. In contrast Oxfordians seem unsure exactly when or why their prophet with no working knowledge of the stage would have had his plays revealed to him.
The funniest evidence that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, a theatrical impresario businessman, is when, right after Hamlet's staggering "quintessence of dust" soliloquy, a peak of English artistic prose, he goes on a long rant about the stupid fad lately among London theater audiences for plays starring child actors, which is ruining the revenue of adult troupes, like, say, Shakespeare's. It's tonally way off from Hamlet as a great work of art, but, evidently, Shakespeare felt extremely strongly on the topic, especially in his pocketbook.
For me, what really does it is that there's no other similar instance of a secret author hiring a real person to be a front for their work. Not even nowadays, when such things would be substantially easier, on account of the inventions of emails and electronic payment. Surely, if this could've happened once, it would happen again, and there'd be way better evidence for it.
But no. Somehow, Edward de Vere, whom by every contemporary account gives the impression of clinical psychopathy, gave a random actor dozens of his full-length plays for production, so many of which that new material was available for use even a decade after his death, and for which he never received a penny in return despite the extensive work it would've taken to handwrite every one of these high-quality works, because reasons. To the point where the Duke died in poverty in an unmarked grave while the Bard's funerary monument was carved immediately after his death, and remains in place at Stratford's Holy Trinity Church to this day.
It's just preposterous. No real person would ever have behaved this way. Least of all an author, who are by nature both deeply egotistical and ravenous over compensation for their efforts. And you'd think if Oxford could cover up every trace of his being Shakespeare that he would've done a much better job at covering up his penchant for raping young boys.
LOL Sadly Phil Donahue was not on this list. As an aside the long-time daytime talk-show show died yesterday at 88. Oprah pretty much stole his act and did it better, and since Oprah has more Pokémon points than Phil does, she became the queen of the genre, despite Phil have bona fide liberal credentials. However, he ruled the root for a long time.
Where's Abraham on that list, without whom neither Jesus nor Muhammad could have existed?
Instead of ranking them it might be better to list them by the year they were born. It would cut down on who’s most influential since even a highly influential figure like Mohammed was in turn influenced by those who came before him.
Anyone who thinks William Shakespeare was Edward de Vere is not deserving of my time! 😡😡
My only argument would be against including John F. Kennedy, although I understand it's his contribution to space exploration rather than his politics. I suggest Edward Teller in his place.
It illustrates further problems in Hart's list in that if he can be taken in by such blatant pseudo-history as Oxfordianism, how easy must it be for him to fall for similar such nonsense.
Beyond all the other things that disprove it, the idea that any author would use a real person as a front for their work, rather than just use a pseudonym like Voltaire or Orwell, is just completely preposterous. Especially when said frontman was making oodles of cash off those plays while said "writer" died in poverty. Hence why no other writer in all of history has ever employed a remotely similar arrangement, and hence why we know where William Shakespeare's buried and still have no fucking clue where is buried Edward de Vere.
De Vere was also a really gross and depraved guy. He was a pederastic serial rapist who really should've been executed. Plenty of great artists are bad people. We don't need to add to the lot a bad person who didn't even achieve said great art:
https://www.amazon.com/Monstrous-Adversary-Liverpool-English-Studies/dp/0853236887/