{"id":4135,"date":"2014-02-27T21:32:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T20:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=4135"},"modified":"2014-10-09T18:25:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T17:25:38","slug":"human-accomplishment-charles-murray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2014\/02\/human-accomplishment-charles-murray\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Accomplishment (Charles Murray)"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/282085.Human_Accomplishment<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/gen.lib.rus.ec\/book\/index.php?md5=735E143F5E5C9A49FD1188DA457E8287&open=0<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This book was very interesting much of the time, somewhat interesting some of the time, and dumb at some time. However, the first part was much larger than the other two, so i think its a great book. The chapters where Murray speculates beyond the data are worst ones IMO.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chinese medicine, unlike Chinese science, was backed by abundant <\/span><\/p>\n

theory, but that theory is so alien to the Western understanding of physiology and pharmacology that Western scientists even today are only beginning <\/span><\/p>\n

to understand the degree to which Chinese medicine is coordinate with modern science.42 <\/span><\/p>\n

It worked, however, for a wide range of ailments. If you <\/span><\/p>\n

were going to be ill in 12C and were given a choice of living in Europe or <\/span><\/p>\n

China, there is no question about the right decision. Western medicine in <\/span><\/p>\n

12C had forgotten most of what had been known by the Greeks and <\/span><\/p>\n

Romans. Chinese physicians of 12C could alleviate pain more effectively <\/span><\/p>\n

than Westerners had ever been able to do \u2014acupuncture is a Chinese medical technique that Western physicians have learned to take seriously \u2014and <\/span><\/p>\n

could treat their patients effectively for a wide variety of serious diseases. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Murray is being way too nice to the chinese here. Their theories are crap and their treatment generally dont work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The second blind spot is the tendency to confuse that which has been <\/span><\/p>\n

achieved with that which must inevitably have been achieved. It is easy to <\/span><\/p>\n

assume that someone like Aristotle was not so much brilliant as fortunate <\/span><\/p>\n

in being born when he was. A number of basic truths were going to be <\/span><\/p>\n

figured out early in mankind\u2019s intellectual history, and Aristotle gave voice to <\/span><\/p>\n

some of them first. If he hadn\u2019t, someone else soon would have. But is that <\/span><\/p>\n

really true? Take as an example the discovery of formal logic in which <\/span><\/p>\n

Aristotle played such a crucial role. Nobody had discovered logic (that we <\/span><\/p>\n

know of ) in the civilizations of the preceding five millennia. Thinkers in the <\/span><\/p>\n

non-Western world had another two millennia after Aristotle to discover <\/span><\/p>\n

formal logic independently, but they didn\u2019t. Were we in the West \u201cbound\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

to discover logic because of some underlying aspect of Western culture? <\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe, but what we know for certain is that the invention of logic occurred <\/span><\/p>\n

in only one time and one place, that it was done by a handful of individuals, <\/span><\/p>\n

and that it changed the history of the world. Saying that a few ancient Greeks <\/span><\/p>\n

merely got there first isn\u2019t adequate acknowledgment of their leap of imagination and intellect. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Murray is wrong again: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Indian_logic<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But yes, many cultures never invented logic, or much else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lotka%27s_law<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I had been looking for this!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The earliest and most commonsensical explanation for the \u201csomething <\/span><\/p>\n

else\u201d is that the source of great accomplishment is multidimensional\u2014it does <\/span><\/p>\n

not appear just because a person is highly intelligent or highly creative or <\/span><\/p>\n

highly anything else. Several traits have to appear in combination. The <\/span><\/p>\n

pioneer of this view was British polymath Francis Galton in the late 1800s. <\/span><\/p>\n

Even though he had been instrumental in creating the modern concept of <\/span><\/p>\n

intelligence, Galton argued that intelligence alone was not enough to explain <\/span><\/p>\n

genius. Rather, he appealed to \u201cthe concrete triple event, of ability combined <\/span><\/p>\n

with zeal and with capacity for hard labour.\u201d13 Ninety years later, William <\/span><\/p>\n

Shockley specified how the individual components of human accomplishment, normally distributed, can in combination produce the type of hyperbolic distribution\u2014highly skewed right, with an elongated tail\u2014exemplified by the Lotka curve.14<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Galton <3<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Establishing the outer boundaries of the population is easy. Modern scholars <\/span><\/p>\n

have helpfully produced large and comprehensive biographical dictionaries <\/span><\/p>\n

with the avowed purpose of containing everyone who is worth mentioning <\/span><\/p>\n

in their particular field. For the sciences, an international consortium of <\/span><\/p>\n

scholars has been laboring for more than four decades on the Dictionary of <\/span><\/p>\n

Scientific Biography, now up to 18 volumes.1 In philosophy, we have the Encyclop\u00e9die Philosophique Universelle,2 only two volumes, but fat ones. For Western <\/span><\/p>\n

art, we may turn to the 17-volume Enciclopedia Universale dell\u2019Arte compiled <\/span><\/p>\n

by the Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale. At least one such encyclopedic reference work is among the sources for every inventory. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Old book. No wikipedia!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That the basic ideas were in the air for so long without being developed <\/span><\/p>\n

suggests how complex and mind-stretching the change was. Indeed, a major <\/span><\/p>\n

continuing issue in the history of science is the degree to which it is appropriate to talk of a scientific method as a body of principles and practice that <\/span><\/p>\n

has clear, bright lines distinguishing it from science practiced by other means. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is not a debate that I am about to adjudicate here. In claiming the scientific <\/span><\/p>\n

method as a meta-invention, or a collection of synergistic meta-inventions, I <\/span><\/p>\n

am associating myself with the position that, incremental as the process may <\/span><\/p>\n

have been, a fundamental change occurred in post-medieval Europe in the <\/span><\/p>\n

way human beings went about accumulating and verifying knowledge. The <\/span><\/p>\n

common-sense understanding of the phrase scientific method labels the aggregate of those changes. I use the phrase to embrace the concepts of hypothesis, falsification, and parsimony; the techniques of the experimental method; the application of mathematics to natural phenomena; and a system of intellectual copyright and dissemination.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

COPYRIGHT?! unfortunately, Murray does not expand on it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DID GALILEO MAKE UP HIS DATA? <\/span><\/p>\n

In De Motu ,Galileo reported that the lighter body falls faster at the <\/span><\/p>\n

beginning, then the heavier body catches up and arrives at the <\/span><\/p>\n

ground slightly before the lighter one. Since this should not be true <\/span><\/p>\n

of the objects that Galileo used, a wooden sphere and an iron one, if <\/span><\/p>\n

they are released simultaneously, it has been inferred that Galileo was <\/span><\/p>\n

either a poor observer or making up his data. But in replications of <\/span><\/p>\n

Galileo\u2019s procedure, it has been found that when a light wooden <\/span><\/p>\n

sphere and a heavy iron one are dropped by hand, the lighter <\/span><\/p>\n

wooden sphere does start out its journey a bit ahead\u2014a natural, if <\/span><\/p>\n

misleading, consequence of the need to clutch the heavier iron ball <\/span><\/p>\n

more firmly than the wooden one. This causes the iron ball to be <\/span><\/p>\n

released slightly after the wooden ball even though the experimenter has the impression that he is opening his hands at the same time. Then, because of the differential effects of air resistance on <\/span><\/p>\n

objects of different weight, the iron ball catches up with and passes <\/span><\/p>\n

the wooden ball, just as Galileo reported. There is a satisfying irony <\/span><\/p>\n

in this finding. The modern critics of Galileo were making the same <\/span><\/p>\n

mistake that the ancients made, criticizing results on the basis of <\/span><\/p>\n

what \u201cmust be true\u201d rather than going out and doing the work to<\/span><\/p>\n

find out what is true35<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

interesting story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In recognizing how thoroughly non-European science and technology <\/span><\/p>\n

have been explored, let\u2019s also give credit where credit is due: By and large, it <\/span><\/p>\n

has not been Asian or Arabic scholars, fighting for recognition against European indifference, who are responsible for piecing together the record of <\/span><\/p>\n

accomplishment by non-European cultures, but Europeans themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

Imperialists they may have been, but one of the by-products of that imperialism was a large cadre of Continental, British, and later American scholars, <\/span><\/p>\n

fascinated by the exotic civilizations of Arabia and East Asia, who set about <\/span><\/p>\n

uncovering evidence of their accomplishments that inheritors of those civilizations had themselves neglected. Joseph Needham\u2019s seven-volume history <\/span><\/p>\n

of Chinese science and technology is a case in point.[10] <\/span><\/p>\n

Another is George Sarton\u2019s Introduction to the History of Science, in five large volumes published <\/span><\/p>\n

from 1927\u20131948, all of which is devoted to science before the end of 14C, <\/span><\/p>\n

with the bulk of it devoted to the period when preeminence in science was <\/span><\/p>\n

to be found in the Arab world, India, and China. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The irony.. :)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/282085.Human_Accomplishment http:\/\/gen.lib.rus.ec\/book\/index.php?md5=735E143F5E5C9A49FD1188DA457E8287&open=0   This book was very interesting much of the time, somewhat interesting some of the time, and dumb at some time. However, the first part was much larger than the other two, so i think its a great book. The chapters where Murray speculates beyond the data are worst ones IMO.   – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2049,1107],"tags":[2008],"class_list":["post-4135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metascience","category-science","tag-murray","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4136,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135\/revisions\/4136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}