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Is there any data on this? Seems to make sense but I don’t think the greatest intellectuals of the past centuries say Newton, Mozart, Einstein, were avidly inte
by sktrdie 7y ago
Is there any data on this? Seems to make sense but I don’t think the greatest intellectuals of the past centuries say Newton, Mozart, Einstein, were avidly interested in traveling. And even if they were, they could only reach a very small fraction of what we can reach nowadays with planes.
- watwut 7y agoEinstein was not enlightenment intellectual. He lived well after that period and was more of physicist. He did travel from Germany to united states, through not for fun.
- morelisp 7y agoIn addition to mistiming Einstein, I have never heard Mozart described as an intellectual. Newton was infamously provincial; even when forced out of Cambridge he just went back to his childhood home (this is also one reason Leibniz's approach dominated continental mathematics). Probably the exception that proves the rule.
- jayeshsalvi 7y agoI agree. The article smells of confirmation bias.
- woodandsteel 7y agoI disagree with you. One of the unusual, perhaps unique features of Western civilization is the great hunger for direct knowledge of other societies and other parts of the natural world outside the West. Think for instance of Herodotus.
- cafard 7y agoIf I remember correctly, Immanuel Kant never got very far from East Prussia.