The lists remarkably confirm Charles Murray's contention in Human Accomplishment that 80% of all significant figures (including in the arts) came from a "European core", as shown here outlined in red:
Europeans and Americans did all of this without the importation of all those smart risk-takers from China and India. If it is objected that other Europeans and Americans named the units, hence compromising its objectivity, in reply it can be said that it could be no other way. Europeans and Americans invented the sciences in which these measurements are used. Also, as far as I know, none of the scientists on these lists were Jewish.
Also, as far as I know, none of the scientists on these lists were Jewish.
ReplyDeleteWow, now that is the truly amazing part. It's not like there aren't a zillion stunningly accomplished Jews working in the hard sciences: Einstein, Salk, Oppenheimer, & Feynman, just off the top of my head. Wonder why none of them make the above list.
It wouldn't have occurred to me to draw the line down the middle of any country. Seems like it's hard enough to determine which country (singular) someone is from, if they had parents from different countries, or grew, were educated, and worked in different countries.
ReplyDeleteDetermining what town or region (singular) someone is from would seem yet more difficult, i.e., if someone was born and partly educated in Bayonne, and was partly educated and worked in Paris, would he be counted as inside or outside the core?
Oh well, it's an interesting map anyway.
Wow. Brilliant post.
ReplyDeleteMy hunch about the question posed above re;the Jews is this. Science is a construct of European Man. There are a disproportionate number of brilliant Jews who can excel in the European endeavor when opportunity allows. This doesn't change the primary "European-ness" of science.
Not of lot of hard science was done in the shtetl, and most of these figure are from an age prior to the integration of Jews into the wider European culture.
Just my two cents' worth.
It's not like there aren't a zillion stunningly accomplished Jews working in the hard sciences: Einstein, Salk, Oppenheimer, & Feynman, just off the top of my head. Wonder why none of them make the above list.
ReplyDeleteJews are very recent arrivals to the sciences - the figures you mention are all from the 20th century, too late to get much stuff named after them.
Jews have made many contributions to science, yes, but only AFTER modern science had been created by European Gentiles. It is unlikely whether Jews themselves could have made this breakthrough since there was stronger opposition to secular science and Greek natural philosophy in the Jewish communities than in many of the Christian ones. As I have said before, both the philo-Semites and the anti-Semites exaggerate Jewish importance. Western science would have existed without Jews, although the progress might have been slower in some branches, especially in the case of Albert Einstein. Likewise, most of the problems of the modern West would have existed without Jews, although Jews may have contributed disproportionately to their numbers in certain cases.
ReplyDeleteI would be very interested in seeing a post trying to update Murray's work for the past 60 years, from 1950 to 2010. Which scientists, musicians, writers and artists will be remembered from our era in the future? Which movies, a category Murray excluded?
My mention of the lack of Jews on the list was not to denigrate the important contributions of Jewish scientists, it was rather to serve as a counterweight of sorts to the argument that Jews have been indispensable to Western science. Last anon here makes the important point that Jews were late arrivals to science - they weren't even politically emancipated until the 19th century. I just want to emphasize that Euros / whites didn't do too shabby on their own, basically inventing modern science, and that if our elites weren't so dead set on importing cheap, compliant replacements, we wouldn't suffer from a lack of talented scientists.
ReplyDeleteDennis: I agree. We did quite well on our own. Frankly, the single most important thing that average national IQ does not explain is why the scientific contribution of northeast Asians over the past 500 plus years has been so modest. The only ones from that region who have performed anywhere close to what they should be doing judged by to their mean IQ are the Japanese; the Chinese and the Koreans have been lagging.
ReplyDeleteThis does in no way imply that this situation has to remain the same for the coming five hundred years. If the West continues its current decline and disintegration then it is perfectly conceivable that Asians, especially northeast Asians, could outright dominate the sciences. This depends upon whether or not we recover. Already today, while not exactly dominant, the Asian scientific contribution is clearly larger than it was a century ago.
Celsius was outside the "European Core" (Sweden), but coming up with the Celsius/centigrade temperature scale wasn't that brilliant, though it had a certain elegant simplicity to it.
ReplyDeleteOne could argue that Michelson (the first American to win a Nobel in physics) deserved to have a measurement unit named after him.
There was a time when we Greeks didn't need foreign scientists either. When northwestern Europeans were living in caves we were inventing geometry. Today we don't have it in us anymore. Maybe you don't have it in you anymore either.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not like it’s a well kept secret that Europeans have contributed immensely to science and technology. When comparing Africa and Europe it becomes very, very apparent that Europeans are millions of miles ahead of Africans in this field. That’s also how it’s going to be in the future.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that White Gentiles are perfectly capable of doing science without Jews. Perhaps Jews help a bit, but the facts show that the Gentiles can do it without Jews.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a fallacy to reason that excellent scientists are heavily disproportionately Jewish and therefore Jews are somehow responsible for scientific advancement.
Also, it would be silly to reason that excellent Gentile scientists must have been influenced by Jews living nearby.
I agree with your general idea, but, to be fair, we live in a far more technological society.
ReplyDeleteWe need far more STEM workers than we did when these guys were around. We probably have JUST ENOUGH capable people coming out of college every year, but so many are either attracted to other fields or aren't attracted enough to STEM fields (partly due to the influx of H-1Bs and other foreigners).
More incentives and more outreach (amongst white males, god forbid!) are needed. But I still think we'll need limited amounts of foreign STEM workers to supplement native born ones. Preferably these would be from European countries (ostensibly they fit in better), but if need be, I'll take some from Asia.
When northwestern Europeans were living in caves we were inventing geometry.
ReplyDeleteThe archaic period in Greece is about two millennia after Stonehenge.
What exactly were Greeks building two thousand years before their archaic period?
Yes, my reaction above was touchy, but I am getting tired of the "living in caves" quip. I guess it's better than the "crawling around in caves" version, anyway.
ReplyDeleteYour touchiness is a sign of a people in recent decline. When you have been in decline for millennia, as we have, you realize it's pointless. No one stays on top forever. But northwestern Europeans and Americans will be remembered for their great contributions, as we have been.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I wouldn't write the Anglo-Saxons off, as some of your respondees seem to delight in doing.
ReplyDeleteI travel the Far East a lot, and I am more impressed by Asian diligence, co-operativity, hierarchicalism and obedience than by their creativity. Nice people, civilized, very quick on the uptake, incredibly hard working, quite rich, clearly on the up and up, and good luck to them, etc; but new ideas? Not, I think, in the culture. At least not yet. Nature or nurture?
Anon.
But northwestern Europeans and Americans will be remembered for their great contributions, as we have been.
ReplyDeleteRemembered by who?
"It wouldn't have occurred to me to draw the line down the middle of any country."
ReplyDeleteThe Rhine goes right down the middle of the Murray Box. In general, access to water transportation seemed key to human accomplishment over the last 800 years or so.
kritisk, with current trends Europeans won't exist in 150 years. From Earth's population there are only about 420,000,000 European women alive and about two thirds of them are infertile. So, to make the calculations easy there are 140 million fertile European women. With current fertility rates(which won't change with the things you support, by the way) the situation per generations will be like this:
ReplyDelete1)105 million
2)~79 million
3)~60 million
4)~44 million
5)~33 million
This will be in five generations with higher fertility rates(1.5) than the average European descent age. In the same time, with the things you support the others who move to Europe will have all the interest to kick the Europeans to the curb considering the Europeans will be outnumbered by a massive ratio in the young population. A non-exclusive territory + falling fertility rates = guaranteed extinction.
So in 100-150 years, young Europeans will be under 1% of the world's population, which is guaranteed extinction. So we won't dominate anything in the future - at least if the things you support will keep being around and luckily they won't.
Archimedes is right. I would say that Northwestern European peoples (both in the US and their native countries) have been undergoing dysgenics for the past few centuries. The era described in Gregory Clark's 'Farewell to Alms' passed away a long time ago. Traits such as IQ and executive function have been selected against and we all know it only takes a few generations to produce significant differences trait distribution. NW Europeans today are quite different behaviorally and intellectually to those that existed, say, 300 years ago (even when you account for cultural effects). Selection for the genetic variants to produce a number of relatively high achievers does not have to be confined to Europe; it can happen anywhere.
ReplyDeleteDennis, there are so many problems with your analysis of the aforementioned lists that I don't have the time or the energy to list them all. But, just for starters don't you think that most scientific discoveries or breakthroughs are the result of previous thinking? So, what about previous civilizations like the Egyptians? Should we consider their scientific breakthroughs the result of their unique genetic gifts? Or, is the better explanation one that considers the environment and social connections/ties as the crucial ingredients for the emergence of scientific breathroughs. Not much different from the same type of environmental circumstances that currently lead to the domination of Jamicans in sprinting and Asians in table tennis. And, really a much better example of this phenomena is the Renaissance that birthed many great social, political, and scientific breathroughs.
ReplyDeleteMy point is this, what you consider to be founded in genetics or some type of racial realism is in fact probably the result of cultural influences. Much like the Renaissance was not a genetic movement, but a cultural one.
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Rebelliousvanilla: A grim enough picture, even without considering that Hollywood is positively exhorting our young women to breed with the black and the brown.
ReplyDeleteT. Fitzgerald: Not several centuries. Several decades. The West spent its vitality in the Great War, as rivers of our best blood filled the trenches. And for what?
Ever since, we have, step by step, lost our collective will to rise above the muck.
So, what about previous civilizations like the Egyptians? Should we consider their scientific breakthroughs the result of their unique genetic gifts?
ReplyDeleteSurely Egyptian civilization resulted from their unique mix of genes and their social arrangements, both of which are dead and gone.
Where is Bergman, the Swedish chemist (elective affinities)?
ReplyDeleteRV,
ReplyDeleteThe key word here is ‘current trends’. Trends come and go. What is the norm today doesn’t necessarily have to be the norm tomorrow. Up until the early 70’s the average woman in Norway gave birth to approximately 3,0 children. That number has dropped since, but now it’s on the rise again.
The numbers went up after the war because people felt optimistic about the future. In the 70’s people focused more on ‘nation building’ and the birth rates dropped as a result of that.
But who’s to say that the birth rates won’t go up again in the future? Unless you possess a crystal ball and are able to look into the future it’s just going to be inaccurate guessing.
Research done in Norway also indicates that non-western women born in Norway have the same birth rates as ethnic Norwegian women. Non-western women that arrive in Norway later in life do however have a higher birth rate than ethnic Norwegian women and this has to be addressed.
But as I mentioned earlier Norwegian women’s birth rates have gone up in the last few years, and this is a result of more women having children later in life, and more women using IVF treatment which often results in multiple births.
kritisk, it's fairly simple. Things don't just happen. And as a woman, I can make you a list of things that can make me reconsider my desire to have kids.
ReplyDeleteAnon, it's not Hollywood. What makes white women have sex with other men are white men. I keep trying to explain to men that women don't really choose who they shag. Men choose the hierarchy and women just rush to the top. And it's not just that, it's that white men act like a defeated group.
The American core, origin of 90% of significant American figures, per Murray.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteT. Fitzgerald: Not several centuries. Several decades. The West spent its vitality in the Great War, as rivers of our best blood filled the trenches. And for what?
That is certainly true for Europe. Particularly for Germany and Russia (which suffered enormously from Stalin purges on top of bearing the brunt of human losses in WW2)
But what about US? -US didnt have any serious losses in 20th century. There was no war casualties of any consequence, nor internal purges. So what happened to US then?
Rebelliousvanilla: Tell us more about the kids vs. no kids calculation as perceived by today's young women. It would seem to me that all of the societal forces today are arrayed against the fertility of middle-class and above white women, with the effect being stronger the higher one is on the socio-economic and educational/IQ scales.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm not disagreeing with your point about today's wimpy white males, but isn't that a perception that is created by Hollywood to some extent? The portrayal of swarthy males in the media is, shall we say, romantic rather than naturalistic, with with African American military commanders, Presidents, police chiefs, rocket scientists, etc., substantially overrepresented vis-a-vis their proportions of the actual black population.
Anon.: I think that your chart gives too much sway to the influence of the New England congregationalists-theirs is only one, albeit perhaps the most important one, of four British-based cultures that formed the native rootstock of America. For more on this see David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed.
Max: I was responding to T. Fitzgerald's post about dysgenic tendencies in the West. I agree with you that the 20th century wars didn't cause enough deaths among U.S. males to be demographically significant-I see the essential weakness of contemporary America as more cultural than demographic. By contrast, the white Euro birthrate is lower than that of white Americans, while Europe has a large presence of unassimilable Muslims who are extraordinarily fecund. They have a moral and cultural problem, too, but also a greater demographic one than ours.
The point of the U.S. map is to show the genetic continuity. The Puritans of New England descend from the Puritans of SE England who are the descendants of Germanic tribes who also migrated to N. Italy.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, it depends on the kind of woman and her culture, but on an instinctual level, all of us want kids. When we decide against it, there are a lot of things to factor in: the economics of it, the man to have it with and so on. Young women today don't understand their biological clock, for example. They think they can slut it around until her early 30s, when she feels her clock beginning to tick and she realizes that she needs to find a man and settle down. But again, all the good men are either already married or not willing to marry a past her prime woman. By good, I mean better than her, since women are hypergamous. So it takes her a few years to settle with someone who she isn't fully pleased with and maybe squeeze a kid out. I suppose this is the dynamic. With me, it's different. I just want a country that will offer me two things:
ReplyDelete1)a place for my children to be among their own and not be invaded by foreigners
2)the financial ability to give them a good life
So far I didn't find such a country. Anyway, also, a lot of women realize they've been suckered with the career thing, but they can't admit they've been wrong. Probably the only women who don't are those who actually achieve something career wise and not end as someone's paper pusher.
I agree with you that the societal forces are against high IQ, middle class white women having kids. In order to have a middle class life, you need two incomes. For example, in my country with two incomes you can barely offer a kid the proper things, let alone have more than one. This is due to each worker maintaining quite a bunch of public workers and retirees. In the US, adjusted by inflation, you would have had $10,000 per year deductions per child for each working man. This would have been enough to have the woman stay home, which would have given extra deductions. With the way things are, you MUST have two incomes.
And no, it's not a projection of Hollywood. Today's white men are whimps, sadly. A man wouldn't put up with raising another man's kids, white men don't seem to care. I was shocked when I was watching this show with this really good looking guy being ok with it. A man wouldn't put up with his women getting boinked by men from other places. Heck, European men pay up foreigners to stay on welfare and rape their daughters. These things bother me on an instinctual level, it's not the crap that I see on TV.
And the white birth rate in the US isn't bigger than the one in Europe. The overall birth rate in the US is 2.1 for all the people in it and whites have the lowest birth rates. In the same time, the US had a bigger baby boom generation which increases the demographic lag.
Heinrich Hertz' mother was of Jewish extraction although he was of the Lutheran persuasion. He would be considered "Jewish" because of the matrilineal tradition of implied Jewishness. The nazis removed all traces of Hertz because of this.
ReplyDeleteThat list represents just a small subset of Charles Murray's significant figures. He actually shows that Jews have contributed immensely to European/American accomplishment, and also explains why they're not present during most of the time periods covered.
ReplyDeleteThe sparse representation of Jews during the flowering of the European arts and sciences is not hard to explain. They were systematically excluded, both by legal restrictions on the occupations they could enter and by savage social discrimination. Then came legal emancipation, beginning in the late 1700’s in a few countries and completed in Western Europe by the 1870’s, and with it one of the most extraordinary stories of any ethnic group at any point in human history.
As soon as Jewish children born under legal emancipation had time to grow to adulthood, they started appearing in the first ranks of the arts and sciences. During the four decades from 1830 to 1870, when the first Jews to live under emancipation reached their forties, 16 significant Jewish figures appear. In the next four decades, from 1870 to 1910, the number jumps to 40. During the next four decades, 1910–1950, despite the contemporaneous devastation of European Jewry, the number of significant figures almost triples, to 114.
To get a sense of the density of accomplishment these numbers represent, I will focus on 1870 onward, after legal emancipation had been achieved throughout Central and Western Europe. How does the actual number of significant figures compare to what would be expected given the Jewish proportion of the European and North American population? From 1870 to 1950, Jewish representation in literature was four times the number one would expect. In music, five times. In the visual arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chemistry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathematics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen times.
Disproportionate Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences continues to this day. My inventories end with 1950, but many other measures are available, of which the best known is the Nobel Prize. In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population. You do the math.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/jewish-genius-10855
The Jews (and Protestants)have not contributed anything to the pictoral, sculptural,musical or artichectural arts because it's against their religion not because they were "savagely discriminated against". Thou shalt not worship idols etc. The Catholics believe God became Man and therefore elevated this material world and they undestood the difference between the representation of God or a saint and the real God.
ReplyDeleteI notice a paucity of Scandinavian scientists in the list ; this makes me wonder if there is such a thing as Nordic superiority.