Human excellence throughout the ages has been attributed to everything from luck to sweat. Author Charles Murray puts the “excellence” issue to task by producing (with paper and ink supplied by HarperCollins) a book about the greatest marvels (and the nature of the marvels) of humankind called: Human Accomplishment.
If you didn’t catch Charles Murray on C-SPAN touting Human Accomplishment, you might see him in Libertarian mode over at the American Enterprise Institute as he is a scholar there. Murray also is a W.H. Brady Scholar, and an alumni of both Harvard and M.I.T. Mr. Murray writes news articles ad libitum, and has written other books such as Losing Ground, The Underclass Revisited, Income Inequality and IQ, and also was a copilot in a book that raised an ire-storm a few years back: The Bell Curve.
Human Accomplishment is a four act work, broken down into sections of collection, identification, plotting, and finally orientation of accomplishment research. Using statistics as a translation tool, the reader begins to unveil the mystery of achievement from the focused period of year 800 before Christ to 1950 anno Domini. The art and science subjects that are researched in this book are: “Astronomy,” “Biology,” “Chemistry,” “Earth Sciences,” “Physics,” “Mathematics,” “Medicine,” “Technology,” “Combined Sciences,” “Western Music,” “Philosophy” (both Western and extra-regional), “Literature” (ditto), “Art” (ditto), and “Chinese Painting.” As well as describing who got picked and why, the book explains the trend of accomplishment over the millennia, it divulges what could cause/or not cause the fluctuations, hints at what some elements for success could be, and concludes with what that information implies in our current time.
In context of history this book elevates the illuminating question that in regards to the current situation of human achievement, can understanding of past situations where accomplishment flourished give us the ability to replicate an environment where more achievements can prosper?
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Books Editor Pat Cummings (aka DrPat) picked this for an Editors' Pick of the Week. Go find out why HERE.
Thank you.