The fact is that across most fields, a statistically-impossible number of those regarded as the greatest practitioners were among the very first practitioners.
Statistically impossible… based on what?
There are numbers; I have provided some in the case of Shakespeare, and you yourself have provided more. If you bothered to compute the odds you would find them astronomical.
Based on what am I computing these odds? What sort of absurd model assigns equal possibility to being Newton in Newton’s lifetime and right now?
That’s amazing discriminatory power, and it doesn’t happen by accident.
I agree that it doesn’t happen by accident. And I think there’s many alternate explanations besides the one you seem to hew to.
Have you considered that greatness may simply come and go with periods of particular ferment? Look at the plots over time in Human Accomplishment: clumpiness is common, but other than that, there’s no particular rhyme or reason. Arab literature clumps at a different time from Chinese painting which clumps at different times than Western Philosophy, and so on. All of this massively violates a naive model ‘everyone has an equal chance to be Newton, therefore isn’t it really suspicious that Newton was so early on’; am I supposed to believe that 1000 years later, Arab poetry is still biased by random canonizations? And the same bias hit Japanese literature for a different clump of writers? And hit a later still clump of English writers?
(This is reminding me of anthropic reasoning. ‘We get these absurd consequences from SSA/SIA! Clearly the Great Filter is near and we are doomed to die in the next 50 years!’ ‘Or maybe your theories of anthropics are filled with holes and problems, and you’ve nicely demonstrated their absurdities.’)
You listed the top-regarded practitioners in fields I didn’t mention, and they followed the same pattern.
Yes… So what’s simpler, that in all fields there are conspiracies to canonize random early participants, or that early participants really are not identical to later participants?
I’m not sure if this is the same as periods of particular ferment, but I’ve wondered if what makes great eras is that there happen to be enough highly capable people in proximity so that they can play off each other.
Proximity is surely important (why else do we have universities rather than, say, professors distributed across the country being mailed checks every month?) and may be part of the reason that cities are so important and have superlinear returns to population and explain why Murray does indeed find that major figures all tend heavily to live in or work near cities, but cities have high populations through time, not just space. Paris for centuries has had large populations, but there are still clusters of major French figures. So I don’t see how cities explain the temporal clustering of major figures.
I’m not just talking about ordinary city proximity, I’m talking about getting a handful of very sparkly people (and possibly a larger number of moderately sparkly people) with the right combination of talents and personalities to inspire each other. And possibly the ability to generate enough interesting stuff to get the attention of gatekeepers.
Statistically impossible… based on what?
Based on what am I computing these odds? What sort of absurd model assigns equal possibility to being Newton in Newton’s lifetime and right now?
I agree that it doesn’t happen by accident. And I think there’s many alternate explanations besides the one you seem to hew to.
Have you considered that greatness may simply come and go with periods of particular ferment? Look at the plots over time in Human Accomplishment: clumpiness is common, but other than that, there’s no particular rhyme or reason. Arab literature clumps at a different time from Chinese painting which clumps at different times than Western Philosophy, and so on. All of this massively violates a naive model ‘everyone has an equal chance to be Newton, therefore isn’t it really suspicious that Newton was so early on’; am I supposed to believe that 1000 years later, Arab poetry is still biased by random canonizations? And the same bias hit Japanese literature for a different clump of writers? And hit a later still clump of English writers?
(This is reminding me of anthropic reasoning. ‘We get these absurd consequences from SSA/SIA! Clearly the Great Filter is near and we are doomed to die in the next 50 years!’ ‘Or maybe your theories of anthropics are filled with holes and problems, and you’ve nicely demonstrated their absurdities.’)
Yes… So what’s simpler, that in all fields there are conspiracies to canonize random early participants, or that early participants really are not identical to later participants?
I’m not sure if this is the same as periods of particular ferment, but I’ve wondered if what makes great eras is that there happen to be enough highly capable people in proximity so that they can play off each other.
Proximity is surely important (why else do we have universities rather than, say, professors distributed across the country being mailed checks every month?) and may be part of the reason that cities are so important and have superlinear returns to population and explain why Murray does indeed find that major figures all tend heavily to live in or work near cities, but cities have high populations through time, not just space. Paris for centuries has had large populations, but there are still clusters of major French figures. So I don’t see how cities explain the temporal clustering of major figures.
I’m not just talking about ordinary city proximity, I’m talking about getting a handful of very sparkly people (and possibly a larger number of moderately sparkly people) with the right combination of talents and personalities to inspire each other. And possibly the ability to generate enough interesting stuff to get the attention of gatekeepers.