Whatever your interest in history, most of what you have learned will be strongly influenced by your language and your cultural background. The historical figures who feature strongly in Chinese schools will differ dramatically from those that feature in US schools, or Indian schools or Russian ones.
This kind of bias is also reflected in the various language editions of Wikipedia. For example, it’s not surprising to find that the Chinese language version contains more links to Chiang Kai-shek, who once led the Republic of China, than the German language edition.
That raises an interesting prospect. Perhaps the network of links between the Wikipedia articles about historical figures provides an objective way to assess their importance. So a person such as Napoleon who is highly ranked in many different language editions would be more influential than, say Park Chung-hee, the South Korean president and general who was assassinated in 1979, who is top-ranked in only the Korean language edition.
Today, Young-Ho Eom at the University of Toulouse in France and a few pals publish just such a list. These guys have used network theory to rank historical figures by importance in each one of 24 different language editions of Wikipedia. They then compare the lists to see which figures span different cultures, allowing them to calculate the most influential.
What’s more, by looking at the birth dates of these figures, the team are able to tease apart the way different cultures have interacted in the past and how the influence of different cultures has waxed and waned throughout history.
This list throws up some surprises. Depending on the ranking algorithm these guys use, the most influential figure in human history is either Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist who developed the modern naming scheme for plants and animals, followed by Jesus; or Adolf Hitler followed by Michael Jackson.
by Physics arXiv Blog, Medium | Read more:
This kind of bias is also reflected in the various language editions of Wikipedia. For example, it’s not surprising to find that the Chinese language version contains more links to Chiang Kai-shek, who once led the Republic of China, than the German language edition.That raises an interesting prospect. Perhaps the network of links between the Wikipedia articles about historical figures provides an objective way to assess their importance. So a person such as Napoleon who is highly ranked in many different language editions would be more influential than, say Park Chung-hee, the South Korean president and general who was assassinated in 1979, who is top-ranked in only the Korean language edition.
Today, Young-Ho Eom at the University of Toulouse in France and a few pals publish just such a list. These guys have used network theory to rank historical figures by importance in each one of 24 different language editions of Wikipedia. They then compare the lists to see which figures span different cultures, allowing them to calculate the most influential.
What’s more, by looking at the birth dates of these figures, the team are able to tease apart the way different cultures have interacted in the past and how the influence of different cultures has waxed and waned throughout history.
This list throws up some surprises. Depending on the ranking algorithm these guys use, the most influential figure in human history is either Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist who developed the modern naming scheme for plants and animals, followed by Jesus; or Adolf Hitler followed by Michael Jackson.
by Physics arXiv Blog, Medium | Read more:
Image: Linnaeus uncredited
