Comparative Greats

In my post yesterday, Consequence, acceleration and velocity, I spoke of the advantage early contributors have in terms of consequence versus those making equal contributions much later.

Pursuing this thought, I got curious, in terms of consequence (discussed by many people, durable over time, diverse audiences), how do two of the most famous economists compare to one another, Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Because Marx's ideas were hijacked by brutish totalitarians, it is easy to forget that he was an economist who made numerous contributions to the field.

Google Ngram Viewer allows you to look at the relative frequency of word and phrase usage by year over time among the 5 million books Google has digitized up to 2008. As long as a title is not also a common phrase, you can compare the degree that book is being discussed by other authors and thinkers. So I started out comparing how often people are discussing the two classics associated respectively with Smith and Marx, The Wealth of Nations and Das Kapital. (Click on the picture to enlarge).



Interesting. Both books are cited a lot (at the 1x10E-5 level)since the thirties. Shockingly to me, for half that time, Marx's work was more discussed than Smith. 1968 was the high mark for Marx and the second lowest mark for Smith. But since then, Smith has come back into his own, overtaking Marx in the dank year of 1977. Since then Smith has held pretty steady, with Marx plunging towards the dustbin of history. In 2008 his work is referenced at less than half the rate of Smith.

But then I got to thinking. So that is how they compare to one another, how about to other consequential and innovative thinkers. So I started adding works to get some sort of benchmark of comparative consequence. Following are the comparisons, sequentially adding, Atlas Shrugged, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Origin of Species, the Iliad, To Kill a Mockingbird. The choices are basically random based on being classics but wanting to look at serious economics versus literary economics (Atlas Shrugged), classics in scientific fields and literary classics ancient and modern.



OK. Atlas Shrugged is consequential but not in the same league as either Das Kapital or Wealth of Nations.



The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: right up there with Smith and outstripping Marx. Kudos Kuhn.



Same with Darwin's Origin of Species.



The old blind Greek guy still has a voice - in good company with the other greats and looking down at the Marx-come-lately.



Even such a contemporaneous literary star as Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird has entered the pantheon.

Neat stuff.