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Francis Galton, one of the pioneers of historiometry.

Historiometry is the historical study of human progress or individual personal characteristics, using statistics to analyze references to famous people, their statements, behavior and discoveries in relatively neutral texts. Historiometry combines techniques from cliometrics, which studies the history of economics and from psychometrics, the psychological study of an individual's personality and abilities.

Origins

Historiometry started in the early 19th century with studies on the relationship between age and achievement by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet in the careers of prominent French and English playwrights ^[1][2] but it was Sir Francis Galton, a pioneering English eugenist who popularized historiometry in his 1869 work, Hereditary Genius.^[3] It was further developed by Frederick Adams Woods (who coined the term historiometry^[4][5]) in the beginning of the 20th century ^[6]. Also psychologist Paul E. Meehl published several papers on historiometry later in his career, mainly in the area of medical history, although it is usually referred to as cliometric metatheory by him ^[7][8].

Current research

Prominent current historiometry researchers include Dean Keith Simonton and Charles Murray.

Historiometry is defined by Dean Keith Simonton as: a quantitative method of statistical analysis for retrospective data. In Simonton's work the raw data comes from psychometric assessment of famous personalities, often already deceased, in an attempt to assess creativity, genius and talent development.^[9]

Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment is the most extensive compilation of this approach to quantify the impact of individuals on technology, science and the arts. It tracks the most important achievements across time, and for the different peoples of the world, and provides a thorough discussion of the methodology used, together with an assessment of its reliability and accuracy.^[10]

Examples of research

Since histiometry deals with subjective personal traits as creativity, charisma or openness most studies deal with the comparison of scientists, artists or politicians. The famous study (Human Accomplishment) by Charles Murray classifies, for example, Einstein and Newton as the most important physicists and Michelangelo as the top ranking western artist ^[10]. As another example, several studies have compared charisma and even the IQ of presidents and presidential candidates of the United States of America ^[11][12]. The latter study classifies John Quincy Adams as the cleverest US president, with an estimated IQ between 165 to 175 ^[13].

Critique

Since historiometry is based on indirect information like historic documents and relies heavily on statistics, the results of these studies are questioned by some researchers, mainly because of concerns about overinterpretation of the estimated results ^[14][15].

The previously mentioned study of the intellectual capacity of US presidents, a study by Dean Keith Simonton, attracted a lot of media attention and critique mainly because it classified the current US president, G.W. Bush, as second to last of all US presidents since 1900 ^[13][16]. The IQ of G.W. Bush was estimated as between 111.1 and 138.5, with an average of 125 ^[12], exceeding only that of president Warren Harding, who is regarded as a failed president ^[13], with an average IQ of 124. Although controversial and imprecise (due to gaps in available data), the approach used by Simonton to generate his results was regarded "reasonable" by fellow resarchers ^[17]. In the media, the study was sometimes compared with the U.S. Presidents IQ hoax, a hoax that circulated via email in mid-2001, which suggested that G.W. Bush had the lowest IQ of all US presidents.^[18]

See also

• Catharine Cox
• Charles Murray
• Cliometrics
• Francis Galton
• Human Accomplishment
• Psychometrics
• Quantitative history

References

External links

• History and Mathematics