Top 100 Influential People

A discussion from the PhilOfHi list, October 1998

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It seems to me rather difficult if not downright impossible to construct any list like this and still remain value-neutral. The proliferation of these lists indicates to me spiritual malaise and intellectual bankruptcy. To cite another example from popular culture, “TV Guide” seems to be constantly assembling the top 50 or 25 or 100 of whatever genre or subgenre from television: favorite movies on TV, dramas, comedies, final episodes, etc. On a somewhat higher level (though not much higher), the Modern Library published a list of the top novels which engendered no end of disagreement. The discussion also focused on criteria for consideration. The entire exercise is a waste of time, designed to attract attention and nothing else, except perhaps sell newspapers/magazines. As to the question of whether or not philosophy of history has sequestered itself in the ivory tower: I believe that phil of hist moved to the ivory tower during the movement away from substantive philofhi to analytical philofhi. Unfortunately, whenever philofhi comes out of the tower, it is usually represented by hacks like Toynbee and Spengler. Are things changing? I wonder.

Glenn Sandberg
Rutgers University

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Dear Haines,

i understand you very well and agree with you in rejecting scientific intentions and significance of the Hart's list. But why must we focus on so rigidly? Hart has done what he could—gave us opportunity to pose questions and problems of significance (of people, events, etc) in History. And we, an academic community can and must pose and solve these problems just AS WE ARE THINKING ( i hope more philosophically properly than Hart thought)/ and while solving OUR PROBLEMS we maybe will not turn to the Hart's list at all.

i don’t think that you just neglect this new opportunity for posing and solving problems

best
nikolai

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Nikolai,

I quite agree that we should seize every opportunity, etc.

Anything might offer an opportunity to speculate on the historical process, of course, even the weather outdoors.

However, there's a difference, I think between something that might stimulate our thinking about history, and something that purports to say something about history. The weather outdoors certainly implies nothing about history, even though it might have stimulated some thoughts about history.

Well, I was suggesting that Hart's list is like the weather, except that it had sociological interest, rather than meteorlogical. Certainly it can stimulate thoughts about history, but I don’t know that the list should be seriously taken as a historical statement.

Haines

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Dear philofhi people: I agree with Nikolai that top 100 most influential people in history is not merely “pop” history. After all, there is probably a right answer or answers to the question. It seems to be just another question of evaluating causes in history, so why would it be out of bounds? Historians do that sort of thing all the time, and I don't think they are wasting our time. Social historians sometimes downplay the role of individuals in history, and there are some grounds to that position, but the question nevertheless still makes sense. Even if individuals have less influence than sometimes thought, there is still the question of who had more influence than others. Further, questions concerning the role of certain individuals can be easily translated into questions concerning their doctrines. So instead of ranking Muhammed or Jesus we would rank Islam or Christianity. One would have to be a rather stingy social historian to throw out both individuals and intellectual history.

By the way, since when are Toynbee and Spengler hacks? I know Spengler has his defenders on this list, and I am persuaded that their interest in him is not unwarranted. And my own view is that Toynbee was one of the great minds of the century. I have my criticisms of his work, but he certainly is no “hack.” If the disagreement is with substantive poh generally, I suppose there are still Popperians out there, but I think Nikolai's article in History and Theory pretty much handles his criticisms. (Indeed, one would have to have blinders on to not realize that we are in something of a “golden age” in substantive poh)

I agree that sometimes philosophers of history overextend themselves in prognostication, but I see no way to avoid it. How are we to do engage in rational political action without a theory of history that includes some account of the future?

Randy Groves, Associate Prof. of Humanities, Ferris State University

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Nikolai,

Yes, I understood your point, and I was not trying to be difficult. But I felt it was first necessary to combate the real danger that Hart's particular list could be taken too seriously.

As for the issues raised by lists of key persons or events per se, that does, as you insist, raise significant questions.

Someone already mentioned that a list of people probably implies the “great man” theory of history, and so let me look at another issue. Before one can begin to discuss the criteria by which to judge the importance of particular events in history, one first must confront the issue of whether history can be reduced to discrete events. While due to our mental limitations, we tend to represent an historical process in the manner of movie stills (an empiricist succession of descriptions with causal links inferred from the proximity of the changes revealed by these cross sections), it is quite another matter to take the further step of reifying this mental crutch by inquiring after the relative importance of each cross section.

I fear that lists of important events tend to be reductionist (em- piricist), and if so, it inevitably contaminates any subsequent inquiry as to criteria of historical signifance.

Sorry this was a bit opaque. Hope you could follow it.

Haines Brown

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Dear Nikolai.

I've got to respond on this subject since almost exactly 20 years ago (on 28 Oct. 1978—a significant day in my life) a full-page newspaper article on “The 100” triggered insights that led to my theory on history (still unpublished), greatly increased my interest in history (then still minimal), and, as a consequence, it was a contributing factor to my decision to immigrate to the US in my mid thirties, and to go back to school in my mid forties!

In his book, Michael Hart clearly states his criteria in forming the list, that attempts to assess a person's direct influence on world history—hence the prominence of Mohammed over Jesus, whose influence was indirect and not during his lifetime. (An interesting point that he makes is that Jesus' most original contribution—Love thy enemy—was never widely followed is “not even generally accepted: Most Christians consider the injunction… one which is not a reasonable guide to conduct in the actual world we live in”.)

There is no question that he gives exaggerated prominence to a series of scientist who advanced nuclear physics, that is clearly his personal bias, but of course nobody is perfect.

Another, probably unavoidable, shortcoming is that he did not manage to stand outside his own time, so to speak, concerning the influence of Marx and Lenin: in the second edition of his book, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he went to the other extreme, downgrading their importance (they dropped from the 11th and 15th positions to the 27th and the 84th respectively). I think that was a mistake: he should have accepted the fact that it is impossible to be as objective concerning recent or contemporary figures and events as when dealing with those at some time distance.

I was personally disappointed that he did not consider Hegel, but given the criteria that he chose he was probably right.

But what I would consider his major mistake, but again a very common one, was the importance that he placed on the recent times in relation to remote ones. I could mention as an example that Themistocles is not even in his 100 “honorable misses”: yet except for his immediate role at the crucial night before the battle of Salamis, he was the one that had the foresight and the political ability to stir the Athenians toward the construction of a strong navy; if the actions of one particular individual ever influenced the evolution of the Western Civilization as a whole, I can’t see who else that individual could be.

Concerning Hart's alleged “wild” Eurocentrism, it is clear to me that he was well aware of the danger of bias in this respect, and I think he made an effort to avoid it (successfully or not is another matter) including even in the beginning of the appendix statistics about the countries and continents of origin of the 100.

Greetings,

Eustace Frilingos

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See below not a philosophical but a rather strong practical criterion of evaluation…

both its strong and weak features concern its reflexive nature: a focus just on one aspect of reality: communication

nikolai

From: Brad DeLong, University of California—Berkeley delong@econ.Berkeley.edu

>The top ten are:
>Muhammad
>Newton
>Jesus
>Buddha
>Confucius
>St. Paul
>T'sai Lun (inventor of paper)
>Gutenberg
>Columbus
>Einstein

I can understand that someone who is not a Muslim might think Muhammad is placed too high, or that someone who is not a Christain might think that Jesus Christ and Paul of Tarsus are placed too high, or that someone who is not Buddhist might think that Buddha is placed too high, or that someone who is not from Greater China might think that Confucius is placed too high.

But what standing does anyone who uses the *internet* for G—'s sake—the latest flourish and development of a long line of communications technologies—to claim that the people who developed these technologies and their enabling theories (and high among them rank paper, printing, optics, and quantum theory) are overrated?

If you want to claim that T'sai Lun and Einstein are overrated, go communicate using smoke signals—use some medium that doesn’t rely either on paper or on alternately sending and blocking the motion of electrons through impure silicon…

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Haines

i've suggested to think not about the list but about philosophically plausible criteria for any lists of such (or other!) kind, feel the difference

cheers
nikolai

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Dear Haines,

to be sincere, i see behind your valuable ontological considerations one background task: how not to work.

you know that with such task in mind it is always possible to find sufficient and really serious barriers

my point is: how to find new ways for thinking

in any case your reflection desrves to be discussed in philofhi, especially if you add some constructive ideas (on ways and approaches) besides your doubts

best
nikolai

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Dear Haines,

i fully appreciate the very principle of uncovering hidden assumptions. at the same time i usually try not to focus only on personal, ideological, political-economic (also dependant of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) ones, in spite of that i realize that all they can be and usually are of large significance

i am more interested in strictly philosophical: ontological, value and epistemological assumptions

and here i see: well, assumptions of Hart may seem to us unplausible, but do we as philosophers have better ones? as for me i have not, at least i have not elaborated my conceptions to this problematique, then I ask my colleagues in philofhi: maybe some other people have ? but alas, nobody says anything clear and constructive. just you write me about more and more serious arguements why it would be wrong to think about and discuss the very problems

all this situation once again persuades me how right was Robert Carneiro when he has told me that postmodernism had an effect of Black Death for thought traditions in Europe and US

best
nikolai

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Replying to a message that is now a week old—apologies for the gap (this thread has been submerged by a tide of ‘historicism/ supernatural’ messages over the past week!)

> once more:
>
> 1) is it possible and reasonable at all to think of
> correct philosophical criteria for such top-lists?
>
> 2) if no: doesn't it mean that philosophy of history isolates itself
> in the ivory tower?
>
> 3) if yes: what can be the first sketch ideas for such criteria?
> what theory (and set) of values is in the basis of these criteria?
>

The problem seems similar to that of importance of causation that I am currently working on. ‘Which is the more important cause’ is of the same form as ‘who is the most important person’—since we are essentially concerned with those people's historical effects. I have been examining the question as it has been debated by analytic philosophers of history (mostly in the 1970s and 1980s). The best idea appears to be to use counterfactual reasoning—i.e. to ask the question ‘what would have happened had that cause been absent?’ The greater difference this would make, the more important the cause was.

Applying this to our problem of importance of individuals, the strategy would recommend asking ‘what would have happened had that person not been alive?’ Now, you may be sceptical about our ability to answer counterfactual questions like that. However, I have been looking at the truth conditions of counterfactuals fairly carefully, and would argue that we can in principle assign definite and objective truth values to counterfactual statements. Of course, in practice it will be a much harder business. Though not impossible—indeed, I would argue that some of the discussion that we've seen on this list concerning this question is actually counterfactual reasoning—‘if so and so hadn’t lived, we wouldn't have had paper, so ….’ Also, with a tighter method of evaluating counterfactuals, the practical task should also be easier.

I'd be quite prepared to go into more detail if anyone picks up (or challenges) me on this.

Mark Day
PhD student in philosophy
University of Sheffield, UK

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Dear Mark

thank you for sharing with us your promising ideas on counterfactuals,

i am sure that it would be useful for philofhi and intersting for many of us if you present also the general logic of your work, also the ontology, major applied models (conceptual schemes, theories) of your version of a thought experiment based on counterfactuals.

just one note on the point.

according to the modern hist.sociological viewpoint (Weber, Collins, Skocpol, Tilly, etc) the impact of a person in history (say, various historical processes, trends, transformations, etc) is based not (only and mainly) on his/her personal features but on encompassing structural features of social entity:

take centralized nation-state and disciplined armies— for Napoleon;

networks of preindustrial production, commerce, level of needs for wide communication, bureaocratic, religious-ideological activities in medieval China and Europe—for the inventors, modernizers of paper and printing;

definite political, economic, sociolultural and other structural patterns in Northern America since the first half of XIX for dissimination and realization of the democratic ideas of Jefferson (his predecessors and followers) etc

Mark, do you take into account these structural factors in your counterfactual considerations

if yes, give more details please

if no, what alternative ontology do you use?

best

nikolai

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Thanks for your reply, Nikolai. I've done my best to answer your questions …

> thank you for sharing with us your promising ideas on
> counterfactuals,
>
> i am sure that it would be useful for philofhi and intersting for
> many of us if you present also the general logic of your work, also
> the ontology, major applied models (conceptual schemes, theories) of
> your version of a thought experiment based on counterfactuals.

The overall logic of my investigation into the idea of causal importance (and, by extension, importance of historical figures) is that the most important cause is that whose absence would make the most difference. We must therefore construct two counterfactual situations (where we are ranking two causes). To answer whether, and how, this is to be done, we must look at the truth conditions of counterfactual statements. Contrary to what has often been suggested, it does make sense to allocate definite truth conditions to counterfactual statements. At present, I’m working with the idea that a counterfactual is an implied experiment—so we use our knowledge of law/ regularity along with the particular matters of fact to deduce the counterfactual consequent. This also shows why we do, in practice, have trouble assigning definite truth values to historical counterfactuals—due to the great multiplicity of regularities involved, and also our very limited knowledge of those regularities.

As to the ‘major applied models'—well, I'm a little weak at present there, I'm afraid. I could easily apply the model to hackneyed examples—such as the top 100 people, or the importance of the archduke Ferdinand's assassination in bringing about the first world war—but I haven't extended it further than that. I want to apply the model primarily to the period leading up the the French Revolution—since I know most about that, and because there is a wealth of historical writing to use and test. Note that there will be a tension in this respect between agreeing with historical practice and sticking to a coherant, neat model—but this tension is arguably similar to any analysis of concepts.

Other potential problems include analysing the role of ‘similarity of situations'—is it a problem if the concept of similarity turns out to be mind-dependent?

Am I too hasty to assume that history works according to regularities at all? Specifically, can we subsume explanations of individual's actions (and therefore counterfactuals concerning this) under the above general model of facts + laws/ regularities leading to consequent situation?

> just one note on the point.
>
> according to the modern hist.sociological
> viewpoint (Weber, Collins, Skocpol, Tilly, etc) the impact of a
> person in history (say, various historical processes, trends,
> transformations, etc) is based not (only and mainly) on his/her
> personal features but on encompassing structural features of social
> entity:
>
> take centralized nation-state and disciplined armies— for
> Napoleon;
>
> networks of preindustrial production, commerce, level
> of needs for wide communication, bureaocratic, religious-ideological
> activities in medieval China and Europe—for the inventors,
> modernizers of paper and printing;
>
> definite political, economic, sociolultural and other structural
> patterns in Northern America since the first half of XIX for
> dissimination and realization of the democratic ideas of Jefferson
> (his predecessors and followers) etc
>
> Mark, do you take into account these structural factors in your
> counterfactual considerations
>
> if yes, give more details please
>
> if no, what alternative ontology do you use?

I've got no doubt that an individual's historical impact is not limited to their personal features, but have a lot to do with other facts—call them ‘structural’. I don't think that I'm committed to denying that. This would lead to the conclusion that the same cause could have radically different degrees of importance at different times—but that is fine, since the ‘imaginary counterfactual experiment’ would come out different at different times, relying as it does not only on (presumably timeless) regularities, but also other relevant matters of fact, which do change.

Mark Day