FIFTEEN EXPLANATIONS I: PEACE AND PROSPERITYRead more at location 7507
Besides being worthy goals in themselves, peace and prosperity might reasonably be expected to promote accomplishment. War and civil unrest disrupt all sorts of human activities;Read more at location 7522
WAR AND CIVIL UNREST Streams of human accomplishment have not typically been disrupted by war and civil unrest.Read more at location 7527
total war can be brief—consider how few years it took Germany and Japan to recover from the devastation of World War II.Read more at location 7532
Nowhere was the disruption of daily life greater than in Athens itself, ravaged by both war and a plague in –430 that killed a third of the population. And yet this century and a half of war and devastation embraces the Periclean Age. Skipping over the merely significant figures and listing just the major ones, those were the years that saw Aeschylus, Pindar, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Herodotus, Protagoras, Euripides, Myron, Polykleitos, Lysippos, Phidias, Thucydides, Socrates, Democritus, Hippocrates, Polygnotus, Aristophanes, Zeuxis, Eudoxus, Praxiteles, Theophrastus, and, of course, Plato and Aristotle. Everyone in that list from Aristophanes to the end did his most important work in the darkest years of Athens’Read more at location 7540
Life in Renaissance Florence was not quite as harrowing as in Athens, but it was not tranquil. In the autumn of 1495, the Florentine Renaissance was about to enter its most sublime decades. Leonardo da Vinci, age 43, was beginning work on The Last Supper. Michelangelo, just turned 20, had already completed Madonna of the Stairs and was entering the period that would account for much of his finished sculpture. Raphael had turned 11 and was learning his craft from his father. Also that autumn, Florence had just ousted its ruler, was invaded by a French army under the command of Charles VIII, and was spared destruction only because it paid a large ransom. Florence would spend the next five years as a theocratic republic under the religious radical Savonarola, followed by his ouster and execution. The year 1495 is illustrative, not anomalous. Florence was in a chronic state of civil strife, invasion,Read more at location 7546
The Dutch golden age in the last two-thirds of 17C gathered strength in the middle of the Thirty Years’War and ended in 1648 with its treaty with Spain.Read more at location 7553
Of the most famous golden ages, only France’s La Belle Époque, dated in various ways between 1870 to 1914, was a time of peace.Read more at location 7557
Peace cannot explain the trajectory of human accomplishment because there hasn’t been enough peace for a good test. This doesn’t mean that some degree of war and civil unrest are good for human accomplishment, just that they haven’t consistently impeded it.Read more at location 7613
ECONOMIC WEALTH AND GROWTH Accomplishment in the arts and sciences is facilitated by growing national wealth, both through the additional money that can support the arts and sciences and through indirect spillover effects of economic vitality on cultural vitality.Read more at location 7617
SIXTEEN EXPLANATIONS II: MODELS, ELITE CITIES, AND FREEDOM OF ACTIONRead more at location 7898
Note: Altre cause: Prestigio di artisti e scienziati. etica e innovazione come predirre il n. di innovatori? guarda agi innovatori della generazione precedente il contagio e le città il ruolo della libertà Edit
The three explanations of human accomplishment I consider in this chapter are not as obvious as peace and prosperity,Read more at location 7901
MODELS Streams of accomplishment become self-reinforcing as new artists and scientists build on the models before them.Read more at location 7904
Raphael and Faraday provides inspiration for aspiring young artists and scientistsRead more at location 7907
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides appeared within a few decades of each other.Read more at location 7916
Genius is fostered by emulation, and it is now envy, now admiration, which enkindles imitation,Read more at location 7919
Dean Simonton attacked the question anew with an arsenal of quantitative techniquesRead more at location 7932
he demonstrated that the strongest predictors of creativity in a current generation are the number of creative persons and products in the two preceding generations.3Read more at location 7934
CRITICAL MASS: ELITE CITIES Streams of accomplishment are fostered by the existence of cities that serve as centers of human capital and supply audiences and patrons for the arts and sciences.Read more at location 7943
Cities are not only where the significant figures worked, but where they were born and raised. Cities as Nurturers of TalentRead more at location 7949
Talent and Critical Mass Why did some cities become the cradles of significant figures while others did not?Read more at location 8067
In a culture where the spark of creativity has been lit, the following are some of the combustible materials that elite cities possessed during the period from 1400–1950.[9] Cities attracted human capital.Read more at location 8070
Dean Simonton discusses this raw material in terms of cultural diversity.10 The literature on creative personalities consistently demonstrates the importance of relativism, complexity, diversity, and richness. Simonton notes that, historically, talented children who grew up in a rich, diverse cultural environment were more likely to develop than those who grew up in a culturally monolithic environment.[11]Read more at location 8079
FREEDOM OF ACTION Streams of accomplishment are fostered by political regimes that give de facto freedom of action to their potential artists and scholars.Read more at location 8103
Political freedom technically defined fails to explain anything about accomplishment in the arts and sciencesRead more at location 8108
most human accomplishment occurred under regimes that had almost no guaranteed political freedomsRead more at location 8110
Perhaps, given time, political freedom will prove to be a better environment for accomplishment than any other system,Read more at location 8111
Totalitarian states effectively quash human accomplishment in the arts and philosophy. They are only slightly less stifling in the sciences, and then because they create isolated enclaves within the totalitarian state that mimic to some degree the intellectual incentives and institutions of non-totalitarian states.Read more at location 8122
Soviet Union had produced no significant figures in the visual arts who had not made their reputations before the revolution. Only two composers (Kabalevsky and Shostakovich)Read more at location 8127
The significant figures among the writers who made their reputations after the Revolution do not have happy biographies.Read more at location 8129
Freedom of action in an autocracy or strong monarchy could be the result of liberties established by custom, or it could be the result of a tolerant ruler.Read more at location 8145
That the Balkans did not produce great art and science under the Ottomans is no mystery.Read more at location 8161
The results are that countries with a history of despotism show sharply reduced levels of accomplishment. Parliamentary monarchies and liberal democracies were generally more productive than tolerant autocracies.Read more at location 8171
