Where are they now?
There are approximately 6 billion people alive today on the planet.
That is more than have lived and died in total since humanity first evolved.
While that is a worrying thought for the ecological burden we are putting on our planet, to me it inspires a somewhat different line of thought:
Consider all the people throughout history who have made such a mark on the world that we remember their names today (for good or bad): Moses, Alexander the Great, Plato, The Buddha, Julius Ceasar, Nero, Confucius, Genghis Khan, Gallileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Van Gogh, Mozart, Einstein, Ghandi, Hitler, Martin Luther King etc etc.
Unless one believes strongly in pre-destiny or fate, then the occurance of historically noteworthy people is essentially a random event, with a certain statistical probability of happening within a large enough population size.
So based on that, and on the fact that the living population today is greater than the sum of all people who have ever lived, statistically speaking, there should be as many figures of historical significance living today as there have been throughout the whole of history.
So... Where are they now?
Are you sitting next to a Mozart? an Einstein? a Stalin?
Did you drive passed a Rembrandt? a Kepler? a Nero?
And how would you know?
2 comments:
I'm not sure I agree with your assumptions here. Why would the number of "notable" people be proportional to the number of people altogther?
It could instead (or as well) be related to: land mass occupied; "clumpiness" of population density; general popular unrest; etc.
Thoughts?
OK, that's a good point.
What I was getting at in the original post, was that I believe that being a "notable" person is not just about being in the Right Place at the Right Time; you also need to have the Right Stuff (whatever that is).
i.e. I feel that the occurrence of a "notable" person must be related to certain characteristics of the person. And that unless you believe in pre-destiny, or some other "guiding" force, then the occurrence of individuals with the Right Stuff is a random event, and therefore the number of such people present at anyone time is proportional (though not necessarily linearly) to the population size.
However, you are absolutely right that this is a huge assumption, and a gross over-simplification. Even at this hypothetical level.
Certainly external / environmental factors will have an effect on the occurrence of "notable" people.
However I felt those factors were likely to be fairly random too (again, unless you believe in pre-destiny), or directly or indirectly related to population size itself.
Either way, what you end up with is a more complex function that describes the probability of a notable person cropping up, which is still related to population size, as one of its contributing factors, and would likely be proportional if all other factors remain constant.
TBH, I considered putting this in the original post, but felt it was too subtle a point to make.
Though it does potentially explain the lack of "notables" in society today as being due to the state of the world today - not sure if that is good or bad, but in general I dislike solutions to problems which depend on us "living in special times" - that is a very anthropo-centric view of the Universe, and one which has not served us well in the past.
At least, that was my thinking when I was typing the original post. Your comment has made me consider whether another model may be more accurate, in which after a certain threshold level, the occurrence of notable people becomes inversely proportional to population size.
This could occur if, say, it is not just about having the Right Stuff, but how much more of the Right Stuff you have than your colleagues or contemporaries.
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