| Over the weekend Randy Barnett tells us that several readers wrote him about Orson Welles's famous line that the Swiss, with their five hundred years of democracy and peace, invented nothing more than the cuckoo clock.
I beg to differ: Euler, arguably the greatest mathematician ever, was Swiss. Rousseau, one of the most important political philosophers, a theorist of education, a brilliant autobiographer, and a best-selling novelist, came from Geneva. In the arts the Swiss have given us Giacometti, Klee, Hodler, and Bocklin, the latter two still underrated in the United States. Or how about Le Corbusier? Paul Hindemith, one of the most important twentieth century composers, was of Swiss-German background, though born in Germany. The city of Basel attracted Burckhardt, Nietzsche, and other luminaries; Einstein worked in Bern. In the sciences, the Swiss are number one for Nobel Prizes per capita. OK, maybe the Swiss do not have the record of the Italians, Welles's point of comparison. But peace and prosperity are unlikely to be the culprits. Switzerland has been wealthy only recently, and for most of its history it has not been very urbanized. In the nineteenth century it was one of the poorest parts of Europe. These features made it harder for Swiss creativity to get off the ground. And by the way, if you hadn't already guessed, the Swiss did not invent the cuckoo clock. -- Posted by Tyler Cowen to The Volokh Conspiracy at 11/3/2003 10:32:48 AM Powered by Blogger Pro |
