Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950

Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 is a book published in 2003 by Charles Murray, most widely known as the co-author of The Bell Curve. It surveyed outstanding contributions to the arts and sciences from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century. The book attempts to quantify and explain human accomplishment 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. The book stated that "Whether measured in people or events, 97 percent of accomplishment in the scientific inventories occurred in Europe and North America".

Index scores

Murray ranks the leading 4,000 innovators in several fields of human accomplishment from 800 BC to 1950. In each field, Murray identifies a number of sources (leading encyclopedias, histories and surveys) providing information about the leading figures in the field. The rankings are made from information in these sources. A raw score is determined, based on how many sources mention and on how much space in each source is devoted to a person. 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 some individual categories.

Top Figures by Field

Combined Sciences

Figure	Index score
Isaac Newton	100
Galileo Galilei	89
Aristotle	78
Johannes Kepler	53
Antoine Lavoisier	51
René Descartes	51
Christiaan Huygens	49
Pierre-Simon Laplace	48
Albert Einstein	48
Michael Faraday	46
Louis Pasteur	46
Ptolemy	43
Robert Hooke	41
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz	40
Ernest Rutherford	40
Leonhard Euler	39
Charles Darwin	37
Jöns Jacob Berzelius	36
Euclid	36
James Clerk Maxwell	35

Astronomy

Figure	Index score
Galileo Galilei	100
Johannes Kepler	93
William Herschel	88
Pierre-Simon Laplace	79
Nicolaus Copernicus	75
Ptolemy	73
Tycho Brahe	68
Edmond Halley	57
Giovanni Domenico Cassini	53
Hipparchus	49
Walter Baade	47
Edwin Hubble	45
Friedrich Bessel	39
William Huggins	38
George Ellery Hale	37
Arthur Eddington	37
Ejnar Hertzsprung	35
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers	33
Gerard Kuiper	32
Johannes Hevelius	30

Biology

Figure	Index score
Charles Darwin	100
Aristotle	94
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck	88
Georges Cuvier	83
Thomas Hunt Morgan	75
Carl Linnaeus	59
William Harvey	51
Theodor Schwann	48
Stephen Hales	48
Jan Swammerdam	47
Marcello Malpighi	45
Claude Bernard	45
Hugo de Vries	44
Karl Ernst von Baer	43
John Ray	42
Ernst Haeckel	41
Lazzaro Spallanzani	38
Gregor Mendel	38
Pliny the Elder	37
Albrecht von Haller	37

Chemistry

Figure	Index score
Antoine Lavoisier	100
Jöns Jacob Berzelius	67
Carl Wilhelm Scheele	53
Joseph Priestley	49
Humphry Davy	46
Robert Boyle	42
John Dalton	38
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac	37
Joseph Black	33
William Ramsay	31
Justus Liebig	31
William Crookes	30
Claude Louis Berthollet	29
Linus Pauling	27
August Kekulé	27
Dmitry Mendeleyev	25
Jan Baptist van Helmont	25
Frederick Soddy	25
Martin Heinrich Klaproth	23
Robert Bunsen	22

Earth Sciences

Figure	Index score
Charles Lyell	100
James Hutton	77
William Smith	55
Georgius Agricola	51
Abraham Gottlob Werner	46
Roderick Murchison	40
Matthew Fontaine Maury	40
Louis Agassiz	37
Jean-Étienne Guettard	37
Carl Gustaf Mosander	37
Horace-Bénédict de Saussure	35
Nicolas Desmarest	33
Alfred Wegener	33
Alexandre Brongniart	31
Adam Sedgwick	31
Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin	29
Vilhelm Bjerknes	29
Eilhard Mitscherlich	29
Per Teodor Cleve	29
Maurice Ewing	26

Physics

Figure	Index score
Isaac Newton	100
Albert Einstein	100
Ernest Rutherford	88
Michael Faraday	86
Galileo Galilei	83
Henry Cavendish	57
Niels Bohr	52
J. J. Thomson	50
James Clerk Maxwell	50
Pierre Curie	47
Gustav Kirchhoff	43
Enrico Fermi	42
Werner Heisenberg	41
Marie Curie	41
Paul Dirac	40
James Prescott Joule	40
Christiaan Huygens	39
William Gilbert	37
Thomas Young	37
Robert Hooke	36

Mathematics

Figure	Index score
Leonhard Euler	100
Isaac Newton	89
Euclid	83
Carl Friedrich Gauß	81
Pierre de Fermat	72
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz	72
René Descartes	54
Georg Cantor	50
Blaise Pascal	47
Bernhard Riemann	47
David Hilbert	40
Jakob Bernoulli	40
Diophantus	39
Gerolamo Cardano	37
François Viète	36
Adrien-Marie Legendre	36
John Wallis	36
Augustin-Louis Cauchy	35
Fibonacci	34
Archimedes	33

Medicine

Figure	Index score
Louis Pasteur	100
Hippocrates	93
Robert Koch	90
Galen	74
Paracelsus	68
Paul Ehrlich	59
René Laennec	54
Elmer McCollum	49
Alexander Fleming	47
Ambroise Paré	46
Emil Adolf von Behring	44
Joseph Lister	43
Kitasato Shibasaburō	42
Thomas Sydenham	40
Andreas Vesalius	38
Gerhard Domagk	36
Alexis Carrel	36
Sigmund Freud	34
John Hunter	34
Ignaz Semmelweis	34

Technology

German inventor of the technology of printing with movable type in 1439. The first book so printed was the Gutenberg Bibel, one of the most beautifully executed printed books ever produced.

Figure	Index score
James Watt	100
Thomas Edison	100
Leonardo da Vinci	60
Christiaan Huygens	51
Archimedes	51
Guglielmo Marconi	50
Vitruvius	43
John Smeaton	37
Henry Bessemer	34
Thomas Newcomen	33
Charles Babbage	33
Carl Wilhelm Siemens	32
John Wilkinson	32
Benjamin Franklin	32
Charles Wheatstone	32
Alfred Nobel	32
Michael Faraday	31
Denis Papin	31
George Stephenson	30
Samuel Morse	30

Western Philosophy

Figure	Index score
Aristotle	100
Plato	87
Immanuel Kant	74
René Descartes	51
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel	46
Thomas Aquinas	39
John Locke	37
David Hume	36
Augustine	30
Baruch Spinoza	27
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz	27
Socrates	26
Arthur Schopenhauer	24
George Berkeley	21
Friedrich Nietzsche	20
Thomas Hobbes	19
Bertrand Russell	18
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	17
Plotinus	17
Johann Gottlieb Fichte	17

Western Music

Figure	Index score
Ludwig van Beethoven	100
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	100
Johann Sebastian Bach	87
Richard Wagner	80
Joseph Haydn	56
Georg Friedrich Händel	46
Igor Stravinsky	45
Claude Debussy	45
Franz Liszt	45
Franz Schubert	44
Robert Schumann	42
Hector Berlioz	41
Arnold Schoenberg	39
Johannes Brahms	35
Frédéric Chopin	32
Claudio Monteverdi	31
Giuseppe Verdi	30
Felix Mendelssohn	30
Carl Maria von Weber	27
Christoph Willibald Gluck	26

Western Art

Figure	Index score
Michelangelo	100
Pablo Picasso	77
Raphael	73
Leonardo da Vinci	61
Titian	60
Albrecht Dürer	56
Rembrandt	56
Giotto	54
Gian Lorenzo Bernini	53
Paul Cézanne	50
Peter Paul Rubens	49
Caravaggio	43
Diego Velázquez	43
Donatello	42
Jan van Eyck	42
Francisco Goya	41
Claude Monet	41
Masaccio	41
Vincent van Gogh	40
Paul Gauguin	38

Western Literature

Figure	Index score
William Shakespeare	100
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	81
Dante Alighieri	62
Virgil	55
Homer	54
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	48
Voltaire	47
Molière	43
Lord Byron	42
Leo Tolstoy	42
Fyodor Dostoyevsky	41
Petrarch	40
Victor Hugo	40
Friedrich Schiller	38
Giovanni Boccaccio	35
Horace	35
Euripides	35
Jean Racine	34
Walter Scott	33
Henrik Ibsen	32

Analysis

Murray collected many data for each innovator and did a statistical analysis. One result was that accomplishment has not been uniformly distributed. For example, during the Italian Renaissance, accomplishment was concentrated in Florence and Venice. In the British Isles, around London, the industrial north, and lowland Scotland. Murray argued that most innovation has been accomplished by men, not women, and Europeans, not other ethnic and cultural groups.

The book stated that "Whether measured in people or events, 97 percent of accomplishment in the scientific inventories occurred in Europe and North America".

Murray argued that one important explanations for the racial differences are race and intelligence differences. Women are affected by the requirements of motherhood, which are both physical and emotional. Another explanation is that men's IQ are more variable than women, meaning that there are more high IQ men than women. Men are also relatively better at mathematical and visual-spatial skills, which may be particularly important for science, while women are relatively better at verbal skills. Men also have on average somewhat larger brain size than women

There is a relationship between closeness to elite universities and human accomplishment (but not between non-elite universities and accomplishment). Furthermore, innovation is self–reinforcing: Where there has been innovation, likely more will occur.

The book argued that "Streams of accomplishment are fostered by political regimes that give de facto freedom of action to their potential artists and scholars". This means freedom of expression and innovation. It does not necessarily mean democracy, although totalitarianism suppressed innovation. War and civil unrest did not affect innovation.

Murray writes that Jews had "sparse representation in European arts and sciences through the beginning of the 19C", but within a century Jews were disproportionately represented (except in astronomy). This coincided with the access to universities and public offices for Jews.

The highest scoring woman in a category was Murasaki Shikibu among Japanese literature. The highest in western literature was Virginia Woolf. The highest in science was Marie Curie.

Decline

Murray argued that the world's per capita progress in the sciences and especially the arts have declined, usually starting sometimes in the nineteenth century. In part this is due to diminishing returns. In the final chapters he abandons empirical analysis, writing "I cannot supply quantitative measures", and the analysis is "less quantitative, more speculative, and definitely more opinionated." 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. The conservative Murray argued that there is an absence of this in the current secularist and nihilist society, which has caused the decline.

He also argued that one reason for the prominence of the West is that Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) influentially argued that human intelligence is a gift from God and using it to understand the world is pleasing to God.

The 2018 book At Our Wit’s End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for Our Future also stated that there had been a decline, bur argued that this was due to dysgenics. It suggested that the generation born around 1850 was the most gifted in history.

Interviews

Steve Sailer in an interview asked who was the most accomplished person who ever lived. Murray replied that this would be his subjective opinion, since the quantitative methodology used did not allow such comparisons across different domains. In his personal opinion, it was Aristotle, who more or less invented logic, which was of fundamental importance for later science. No other civilization ever came up with it independently. He also made huge contributions to ethics, political theory, methods of classification, and scientific observation. Murray also argued that the methods used have high reliability. There was also high validity, in the sense that the results of his objective method largely corresponded to common-sense expectations. He was surprised that Asian accomplishment was not higher. He argued, and had discussed thin extensively in the book, that the methods used was not biased against non-Western accomplishment.

Criticisms

The Tech Law journal in a review criticized the claim that there has been a decline. "In short, Murray's statistical methods are thorough and objective up to the point where he argues that innovation is on the decline. Then, he manipulates his data."

See also

• German inventors and discoverers
• Dysgenics: Declining innovation rates
• Other race differences: Creativity and innovation

External links

• Cato Institute Book Forum 1-hour lecture that Murray gave discussing his book Human Accomplishment, and some of the response to it.
• American Conservative - book review
• Q&A with Charles Murray on Human Accomplishment, Steve Sailer.
• book review in journal Evolutionary Psychology
• "Of human accomplishment", Denis Dutton
• Book Review: Human Accomplishment, by Charles Murray, Tech Law Journal
• Very Important People