Great Man theory Concepts

The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism

by Adrian Wooldridge · 7 Apr 2026 · 342pp · 129,097 words

which has its own characteristics.’ Far from being free, individuals who fail to attach themselves to society risk anomie and suicide. Max Weber undermined the great man theory of history by locating ‘charisma’ not in the qualities of leaders but in the needs of their followers. The most consequential critic of the idea

Think Complexity

by Allen B. Downey · 23 Feb 2012 · 247pp · 43,430 words

systems are critical, that suggests that major historical events may be fundamentally unpredictable and unexplainable. Example 9-9. Read about the Great Man theory of history at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory. What implication does self-organized criticality have for this theory? Chapter 10. Agent-Based Models Thomas Schelling In 1971, Thomas Schelling

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, What’s a Graph? undirected graph, What’s a Graph? GraphWorld, Representing Graphs grassroots, A New Kind of Engineering gravitation, A New Kind of Science Great Man theory, SOC, Causation, and Prediction grid, Game of Life, Percolation, Sand Piles Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, A New Kind of Engineering H Hacken, Wolfgang, The Axes of

10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less

by Garett Jones · 4 Feb 2020 · 303pp · 75,192 words

same rate as democracies on average. But they use that fact as a starting point, not an ending point. They wanted to test the traditional “great man” theory of history—that things really change (on average) when a nation’s leader changes. To look for an answer, they investigate times when a political

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–91; independence of regulators, 88–91; judiciary vs. government regulators, 82–83, 88, 90–91; of telecommunications, 65, 80–82, 85–88, 89 grandfathering, 114 “great man” theory of history, 25–26 Greek sovereign debt, 133, 165 Grilli, Vittorio: on independent central banks, 49 gun owners’ rights, 64–65 Gurri, Martin: on Arab

Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street

by Peter L. Bernstein · 19 Jun 2005 · 425pp · 122,223 words

. He explained to Cook the vacuousness of the traditional methods of portfolio management, which, he pointed out, were little more than “. . . a variation of the Great Man theory. A Great Man picks stocks that go up. You keep him until his picks don’t work any more and you search for another Great

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jacket in a banking environment that was far more conservative than Wells Fargo’s. Like McQuown, Vertin was totally opposed to the dominance of the Great Man theory in the world of professional investing. His own metaphor is perhaps more colorful than McQuown’s. He conjures up a medicine man who tries to

One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility

by Zack Furness and Zachary Mooradian Furness · 28 Mar 2010 · 532pp · 155,470 words

in, 135; drivers in, 130–131; pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in, 268n117. See also England Greater new york automobile Show and “bike-by” protest, 62 Great Man theory, 199 Green, Harriet, 245n74 Green Hummer project, 94–96 Gridlock, 208–209 Groom, Tom, 34 Grootveld, robert Jasper, 55, 242n50 Grossberg, lawrence, 168 Guerilla Girls

Chaos: Making a New Science

by James Gleick · 18 Oct 2011 · 396pp · 112,748 words

did sometimes think he was a little crazy—a Jewish mystic amid the rationalists, a Gaullist where most scientists were Communists. They joked about his Great Man theory of history, his fixation on Goethe, his obsession with old books. He had hundreds of original editions of works by scientists, some dating back to

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

by William J. Bernstein · 26 Apr 2002 · 407pp · 114,478 words

no longer ignore the avalanche of data documenting the failure of supposed expert money managers. Up until that point, money management was based on the Great Man theory: find the Great Man who could pick stocks and hire him. When he loses his touch, go out looking for the next Great Man. But

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, 172–173 Fisher’s gaffe, 43 Graham on, 157–158 impact of, 5–6 manias, history of, 145–148 societal stability and DR, 64–65 Great Man theory, 95–96 Greenspan, Alan, 246 Gross domestic product (GDP) and technological diffusion, 132–134 Growth stocks (“good” companies) asset allocation, 247, 248–255, 251–253

Emergence

by Steven Johnson · 329pp · 88,954 words

leaving behind their pheromone footprints. Histories of intellectual development—the origin and spread of new ideas—usually come in two types of packages: either the “great man” theory, where a single genius has a eureka moment in the lab or the library and the world is immediately transformed; or the “paradigm shift” theory

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, 86, 91, 97–98, 99, 103–4, 120, 123, 164, 179, 245n, 261n Gore, Al, 67 gorillas, 202 gradient detection, 76, 98 Grateful Dead, 148 “great man” theory, 64 Greece, ancient, 111, 147 Growth and Form (Thompson), 236n Guernica (Picasso), 23 guild system, 21, 101–2, 104–7, 124, 125, 148 Gutenberg Galaxy

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver · 12 Aug 2024 · 848pp · 227,015 words

the motivation of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, with their interest in technologies like space exploration. Some of them subscribe to a version of the Great Man Theory—that because of the shortcomings of the Village, they must take the future into their own hands. Whether or not this can be described as

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?,” Devex, November 27, 2018, devex.com/news/sponsored/can-this-movement-get-more-donors-to-maximize-their-impact-90903. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Great Man Theory: Will Oremus, “Analysis: Elon Musk and Tech’s ‘Great Man’ Fallacy,” The Washington Post, April 27, 2022, washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/27/jack-dorsey

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existential risk and, 21, 456, 457 bednets, 479 defined, 352, 484 earning to give and, 341–42 futurism and, 379–80 government spending and, 360n Great Man Theory and, 344 impact of, 357–58 impartiality and, 358–59, 366–67, 377 independence and, 358 overfitting/underfitting and, 361, 361, 362–68 poker and

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, Paul, 150–51 Gonsalves, Markus, 113 GPT, 486 See also large language models GPU, 486 Graham, Paul, 405, 406, 413, 539n grand-world problem, 486 Great Man Theory, 344 Greenberg, Spencer, 400 ground truth, 486 group selection, 429n GTO (game theory optimal) strategies (poker), 47, 62, 63, 65–67, 71–72, 485–86

The Clockwork Universe: Saac Newto, Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern WorldI

by Edward Dolnick · 8 Feb 2011 · 439pp · 104,154 words

at all. A mathematician is great or he is nothing.” That is a romantic view and probably overstated, but mathematicians take a perverse pride in great-man theories, and they tend to see such doctrines as simple facts. The result is that mathematicians’ egos are both strong and brittle, like ceramics. Where they