How Ideas & Knowledge Spread
What leads to fame? Why should a person be famous? Gregory Pincus co-invented the pill, which has surely revolutionized the world, and yet nobody knows him. In fact, he’s had a greater impact on the world today than many famous people we all recognize as famous, so why does he not have fame?
I was looking at Hart’s list of the 100 most influential people in history, and divided them into 7 basic categories – religious leaders & founders, philosophers, explorers/conquerors, politicians/conquerors, scientists/inventors/mathematicians, artists/writers/poets, and industrialists/entrepreneurs (this category didn’t arise until the industrial revolution, making it perhaps somewhat artificial). Do some occupations/areas of human endeavor have a greater claim to fame and influence than others? Is this unfair? Is there some hierarchy? What about occupations that don’t fall into these categories (cops and firefighters, for example)? I suppose a chef could be famous in their own time from being on a cooking show, and we could even categorize them under “artists” for their contributions to cuisine, but they definitely won’t win immortal fame through this, not like the others. Even a famous, fancy fashion designer wouldn’t be able to get into history’s hall of fame. (This question also falls under Thinkers & Doers.)
Think of the disappearance of knowledge through the generations. It’s really very funny. Think of a time when your parents mentioned some famous actress or singer from their time. No matter how wonderful this person may have been, and even if this person was actually more talented than the greatest actors and singers of your own time (objectively speaking, and this is very important), in one generation they’ve become nothing. Did you really care about this person at all when your parent was talking about this person? Did you give a hoot at all? I sure didn’t. And it gets worse; even the famous events of a person’s lifetime will be forgotten by the next generation born just a decade later. Sometimes I wonder how people managed to forget even where they came from – I’m talking from way, way back, like where their first ancestors came from and why they started migrating across the continents. This is really important stuff – it would tell us how we’re all related and where we fall together in each other’s histories, but somehow this extremely important info was never passed down through the generations. It’s even been lost in the extensive oral histories of some cultures. We always talk about how we’re gaining more and more knowledge with the progression of civilization, but what about all the knowledge that’s been lost? How did that happen?
Then you have the reverse happening – some really dumb, trivial stuff gets passed down, like the American folk hero Johnny Appleseed. Was this guy really important to history? No. One day I was wondering if there was really something important about this guy to warrant him being taught to us in 1st grade, and I found out that his claim to fame really was just planting apple seeds all over the country. (I thought perhaps his contribution to history may have become twisted with the passage of time, just like with what happened to Santa Clause, and had to make sure. Well, it turns out his story wasn’t twisted very much.) Planting apple orchards isn’t history making. You could make the argument that he was the first “naturalist”, but really, that honor goes to Thoreau. So what the heck happened here? Or do people not know what’s important and what’s not important? I once watched this really crazy video clip on the internet about some English/Scottish whathaveyou sheepherder who entertains himself by trying to herd his sheep into picture formations in the dark with lights attached to their fleeces. Then he takes a picture of the formation with a camera. (Though it seems he was trying to create art, the results were not stunning at all.) He and his family spend a lot of time doing this. I can’t think of a bigger waste of time. Heck, I think drinking booze is a better use of time. So maybe simple people who didn’t know they don’t have to be bored with life (I presume that the only reason they kept talking about Johnny Appleseed was because they were bored and had nothing better to do), kept talking about him and so this really unimportant piece of information was passed down to me, only to take up space in my brain that really could have been filled with something else.
I was looking at Hart’s list of the 100 most influential people in history, and divided them into 7 basic categories – religious leaders & founders, philosophers, explorers/conquerors, politicians/conquerors, scientists/inventors/mathematicians, artists/writers/poets, and industrialists/entrepreneurs (this category didn’t arise until the industrial revolution, making it perhaps somewhat artificial). Do some occupations/areas of human endeavor have a greater claim to fame and influence than others? Is this unfair? Is there some hierarchy? What about occupations that don’t fall into these categories (cops and firefighters, for example)? I suppose a chef could be famous in their own time from being on a cooking show, and we could even categorize them under “artists” for their contributions to cuisine, but they definitely won’t win immortal fame through this, not like the others. Even a famous, fancy fashion designer wouldn’t be able to get into history’s hall of fame. (This question also falls under Thinkers & Doers.)
Think of the disappearance of knowledge through the generations. It’s really very funny. Think of a time when your parents mentioned some famous actress or singer from their time. No matter how wonderful this person may have been, and even if this person was actually more talented than the greatest actors and singers of your own time (objectively speaking, and this is very important), in one generation they’ve become nothing. Did you really care about this person at all when your parent was talking about this person? Did you give a hoot at all? I sure didn’t. And it gets worse; even the famous events of a person’s lifetime will be forgotten by the next generation born just a decade later. Sometimes I wonder how people managed to forget even where they came from – I’m talking from way, way back, like where their first ancestors came from and why they started migrating across the continents. This is really important stuff – it would tell us how we’re all related and where we fall together in each other’s histories, but somehow this extremely important info was never passed down through the generations. It’s even been lost in the extensive oral histories of some cultures. We always talk about how we’re gaining more and more knowledge with the progression of civilization, but what about all the knowledge that’s been lost? How did that happen?
Then you have the reverse happening – some really dumb, trivial stuff gets passed down, like the American folk hero Johnny Appleseed. Was this guy really important to history? No. One day I was wondering if there was really something important about this guy to warrant him being taught to us in 1st grade, and I found out that his claim to fame really was just planting apple seeds all over the country. (I thought perhaps his contribution to history may have become twisted with the passage of time, just like with what happened to Santa Clause, and had to make sure. Well, it turns out his story wasn’t twisted very much.) Planting apple orchards isn’t history making. You could make the argument that he was the first “naturalist”, but really, that honor goes to Thoreau. So what the heck happened here? Or do people not know what’s important and what’s not important? I once watched this really crazy video clip on the internet about some English/Scottish whathaveyou sheepherder who entertains himself by trying to herd his sheep into picture formations in the dark with lights attached to their fleeces. Then he takes a picture of the formation with a camera. (Though it seems he was trying to create art, the results were not stunning at all.) He and his family spend a lot of time doing this. I can’t think of a bigger waste of time. Heck, I think drinking booze is a better use of time. So maybe simple people who didn’t know they don’t have to be bored with life (I presume that the only reason they kept talking about Johnny Appleseed was because they were bored and had nothing better to do), kept talking about him and so this really unimportant piece of information was passed down to me, only to take up space in my brain that really could have been filled with something else.