The fact is that across most fields, a statistically-impossible number of those regarded as the greatest practitioners were among the very first practitioners. 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. You acquire dozens of bits of information about who are regarded as the greatest X from dividing all people from all arts into two classes, early and not early. That’s amazing discriminatory power, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a testable hypothesis, and you tested it: You listed the top-regarded practitioners in fields I didn’t mention, and they followed the same pattern.
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.
It may be worth noting that there’s a fair bit of evidence that over the long-term, only some literary wors get a lot of attention, and this does not seem to be closely correlated with what at a specific time is widely read or considered great literature. Much of what we consider great works of literature from the 19th century were not as widely regarded as they are today, while other works have fallen by the wayside. Similar examples show up elsewhere and elsewhen. For example, The Tale of Genji was written in the middle of the Heian era when a lot of different literary experimentation was going on, and it took time for it to be recognized.
It may make sense therefore to use a test of time as a way of determining literary merit. This isn’t ideal: it is possible that once a work is sufficiently well-done, the actual level of acclaim more closely resembles a random walk. I’m not sure how to test that hypothesis.
For example, The Tale of Genji was written in the middle of the Heian era when a lot of different literary experimentation was going on, and it took time for it to be recognized.
Really? My impression had been that Genji was recognized almost immediately as one of the great works of Heian literature, based on the profusion of manuscripts prepared in Shikibu’s time, the countless imitators, the testimony of the Sarashina Nikki, the commentaries prepared not too long afterwards, and in particular, the very high regard of Fujiwara no Teika, one of the most important literary figures for centuries (I may be biased, since I wrote the Wikipedia entry on Teika), who worked on the manuscript.
I don’t think Teika’s work is great evidence since that’s about 150 years after Genji is written. The rest of your arguments though I think are strong: there’s way too much contemporaneous recognition of Genji to use it as an example of what I wanted it to do.
I was hoping I’d have some example from non-Western literature, I may now need to update to this sort of thing being a Western phenomenon.
How much movement of literary judgement would you consider unsurprising? Do you have a source quantifying the movement of judgement of 19th century work?
Regarding, the first question:I’m not sure. Regarding the second, I don’t unfortunately have a good source for this. I My impression on this is from talking to multiple lit professors and teachers who have mentioned this phenomenon.
The fact is that across most fields, a statistically-impossible number of those regarded as the greatest practitioners were among the very first practitioners. 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. You acquire dozens of bits of information about who are regarded as the greatest X from dividing all people from all arts into two classes, early and not early. That’s amazing discriminatory power, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a testable hypothesis, and you tested it: You listed the top-regarded practitioners in fields I didn’t mention, and they followed the same pattern.
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.
It may be worth noting that there’s a fair bit of evidence that over the long-term, only some literary wors get a lot of attention, and this does not seem to be closely correlated with what at a specific time is widely read or considered great literature. Much of what we consider great works of literature from the 19th century were not as widely regarded as they are today, while other works have fallen by the wayside. Similar examples show up elsewhere and elsewhen. For example, The Tale of Genji was written in the middle of the Heian era when a lot of different literary experimentation was going on, and it took time for it to be recognized.
It may make sense therefore to use a test of time as a way of determining literary merit. This isn’t ideal: it is possible that once a work is sufficiently well-done, the actual level of acclaim more closely resembles a random walk. I’m not sure how to test that hypothesis.
Really? My impression had been that Genji was recognized almost immediately as one of the great works of Heian literature, based on the profusion of manuscripts prepared in Shikibu’s time, the countless imitators, the testimony of the Sarashina Nikki, the commentaries prepared not too long afterwards, and in particular, the very high regard of Fujiwara no Teika, one of the most important literary figures for centuries (I may be biased, since I wrote the Wikipedia entry on Teika), who worked on the manuscript.
I don’t think Teika’s work is great evidence since that’s about 150 years after Genji is written. The rest of your arguments though I think are strong: there’s way too much contemporaneous recognition of Genji to use it as an example of what I wanted it to do.
I was hoping I’d have some example from non-Western literature, I may now need to update to this sort of thing being a Western phenomenon.
How much movement of literary judgement would you consider unsurprising? Do you have a source quantifying the movement of judgement of 19th century work?
Regarding, the first question:I’m not sure. Regarding the second, I don’t unfortunately have a good source for this. I My impression on this is from talking to multiple lit professors and teachers who have mentioned this phenomenon.