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

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



Download 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 Charles Murray ebook pdf
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Language: English
Page: 692
ISBN: 0060929642, 9780060929640

From Publishers Weekly

Co-author with the late Richard Herrnstein of the neo-racialist book The Bell Curve, Murray returns with a mammoth solo investigation that is less likely to spur controversy than provoke a simple "so what?" The book attempts to demonstrate, through the use of basic statistical methods such as regression analysis, that Europeans have overwhelmingly dominated accomplishment in the arts and sciences since about 1400. To this end, he has assembled a laundry list of people and events from various reference texts, and generated numerous graphs and rankings of genius figures: is Beethoven "more important" than Bach? Leonardo Da Vinci than Michelangelo? A major problem with this approach-beyond equating "importance" with the number of times an artist or work is referenced in texts-is that the reference texts used as data sources do not themselves seem free of cultural bias or chauvinism: without asking "important to whom," the Western-centric data are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another problem is that other, less affluent cultures may have had many plundered or lost works, or may not have a tradition of naming writers and other luminaries-or keeping track of and promoting their works through secondary material. Further, plenty of attention is lavished on forms such as painting but comparatively little to architecture or to non-Western forms of music. The book's cursory treatment of Africa (outside of Egypt) also leaves more to be desired. Murray claims to have corrected for these factors, and finds that Western culture still dominates "accomplishment" either way. The chapters describing achievement at the book's beginning are, at many points, well-written and informative, but they end up clouded with the latter part of the book's numerical hubris and grand pronouncements.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From

Achievements that require mental and spiritual effort are the highest forms of human endeavor, Murray says. He has scanned the most reputable biographical dictionaries and histories of the arts, philosophy, and sciences to find who and what, during 800 B.C.-1950, are mentioned in them. He came up with 4,139 persons and a list of events and ponders 20 persons in each of nine scientific, three philosophic, and nine artistic fields who were most extensively covered in the resources. More than 80 percent are "dead white males," and Murray carefully examines why. The greatest achievements of India, China, Japan, and Islam occurred well before the West took off during the Renaissance, and each of those cultures valued duty, family, and consensus, whereas the West prefers individualism, the sine qua non of scientific debate and discovery. Further, the scientific method was a set of Western "meta-inventions" (Murray's term) that arose, fortunately, simultaneously with the ratification of Thomism, with its dual emphasis on faith and reason, by the most important cultural force in the West, the Roman Catholic Church. Of overarching importance to great achievements in any culture, Murray argues, are the sense that life has purpose and belief in ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness. This book probably won't get Murray in as much hot water as The Bell Curve (1994) did. Then again, with its speculations that the rate of great achievements has slowed since 1800 and that the arts are in a very bad way, maybe it will. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



MORE EBOOKS:
Download Qualitative Research and Social Change: European Contexts pdf
ATM Interworking in Broadband Wireless Applications download pdf
Download Finite Rank Torsion Free Abelian Groups and Rings pdf







Tags: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 ebook pdf djvu epub
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 download pdf epub djvu
Download Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 free ebook pdf
Read Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 online book
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 cheap ebook for kindle and nook
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 download book
Charles Murray ebooks
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 download pdf rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent