Hungarian/Martian/Manhattan theory

[cambraceres]

Does anyone have any ideas about how such an accident could occur at the best possible time?

I don't believe the martian bit, but c'mon, talent should be way more dispersed no?

I'm talking about the arrival of Von Neumann, Wigner, Szilard, etc.

It seems silly but it is past strange that a linguistic and cultural island could so quickly produce such intrepid genius

[Darryl_P]

If you regard international Jewry as a single organism and consider that Hungary was exceptionally Jew-friendly from 1867 to WWI, then the fact that some great Jewish minds came from Hungary should not seem like such an accident, especially considering that the greater your mind, the more likely you will be to emigrate before trouble strikes.

[cambraceres]

I really didn't think of it as a Jewish question, that's interesting. I like your answer but still cannot reconcile the extreme progress made by this exceedingly small facet of society.

The Germans had much to help them in their scientific endeavors, and therefore it seems reasonable for them to have such overarching skill. The Hungarians in my mind defy explanation.

Cambraceres

[Darryl_P]

I live in Hungary and I can tell you that the consensus among the religious right here (10-60% of the population, depending on where you draw the line) is that being Hungarian does not depend on what passport you are holding, but rather on your ancestry going back tens of generations. According to this defintion, none of those three great minds count as Hungarian, because their families were only present here for 2 or 3 generations before them. In fact, going down their family trees they moved around quite a lot (as most Jews have, mostly because of persecution), so when examining it on an extended timeline, there's really no better category than "Jewish" to place them in, since that was the common denominator over that time period.

The correlation between being Jewish and having high intelligence should not come as a surprise because of various studies which assign as much as 14 IQ points on average as the difference between Ashkenazi Jews and the rest of the world's population.

[Fly]

It has nothing to do with Hungarians and everything to do with Jews.

[chrisnice]

How did Western PA produce so many great NFL quaterbacks. Dan Marino, joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Jim Kelly and Joe Namath.

[Borodog]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains it in passing in the introduction to Democracy: The God that Failed (he mentions specifically Austria, but recall that Austria and Hungary were united in the Dual Monarchy):

[ QUOTE ]
Meanwhile, Habsburg-Austria and the proto-typical pre-democratic Austrian experience assumed no more than historical interest. To be sure, it was not that Austria had not achieved any recognition. Even democratic intellectuals and artists from any field of intellectual and cultural endeavor could not ignore the enormous level of productivity of Austro-Hungarian and in particular Viennese culture. Indeed, the list of great names associated with late nineteenth and early twentieth century Vienna is seemingly endless.[5] However, rarely has this enormous intellectual and cultural productivity been brought in a systematic connection with the pre-democratic tradition of the Habsburg monarchy. Instead, if it has not been considered a mere coincidence, the productivity of Austrian-Viennese culture has been presented "politically correctly" as proof of the positive synergistic effects of a multi-ethnic society and of multi-culturalism.
<font color="white"> . </font>
[5] The list includes Ludwig Boltzmann, Franz Brentano, Rudolph Carnap, Edmund Husserl, Ernst Mach, Alexius Meinong, Karl Popper, Moritz Schlick, and Ludwig Wittgenstein among philosophers; Kurt Goedel, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, and Richard von Mises among mathematicians; Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Gottfried von Haberler, Friedrich von Hayek, Carl Menger, Fritz Machlup, Ludwig von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern, Joseph Schumpeter, and Friedrich von Wieser among economists; Rudolph von Jhering, Hans Kelsen, Anton Menger, and Lorenz von Stein among lawyers and legal theorists, Alfred Adler, Joseph Breuer, Karl Buehler, and Sigmund Freud among psychologists; Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Egon Friedell, Heinrich Friedjung, Paul Lazarsfeld, Gustav Ratzenhofer, and Alfred Schuetz among historians and sociologists; Hermann Broch, Franz Grillparzer, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Karl Kraus, Fritz Mauthner, Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler, Georg Trakl, Otto Weininger, and Stefan Zweig among writers and literary critics; Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, and Egon Schiele among artists and architects; and Alban Berg, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Franz Lehar, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Johann Strauss, Anton von Webern, and Hugo Wolf among composers.

[/ QUOTE ]

In other words, Hoppe attributes the great intellectual productivity to the general level of prosperity of Austria-Hungary under monarchy, which allowed "intellectual capital", if you will, to accumulate and be applied to a great many endeavors.

[cambraceres]

See that's why I post here, rational answers, and even on topic!

Thanks for the understanding kind sages.

Cambraceres

[pzhon]

Hungary seems small. It currently has about 10 million people within its borders. However, it used to be much larger, and there are many more people who can identify themselves as Hungarian. There are currently large Hungarian-speaking populations in Slovakia and Romania, for example, and who would else would speak Hungarian? (senki sem...) One modern Hungarian politician stated, "There are 50 million Hungarians." That wasn't a diplomatic statement, and it might not have been accurate, but the borders of the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were larger.

[mindflayer]

Just for that..

on how to have an accident at a good time??

Watch any episode of Seinfeld.
A great one comes to mind.. the bus boy episode.

George and Jerry are out at dinner..
George gets the bus boy fired;
Later George and Kramer go to visit him.
They leave the door to the appartment open and the bus boy's cat runs away.
There is an explosion in the restaraunt where the bus boy used to work that kills the replacement bus boy....etc.