The Macro Connections group at the MIT Media Lab has come up with a project called Pantheon (pantheon.media.mit.edu). César Hidalgo, the principal investigator, and his associates are collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data on cultural popularity and production throughout history. As they point out, Pantheon will perforce remain incomplete. Among other things, they use the World Wide Web to rank individuals by the number of mentions in sources such as Wikipedia. Pageviews also matter in the ranking. At the moment, at least, philosophers lead the roost. Aristotle and Plato are first and second. Socrates is fourth. Confucius is seventh and Pythagoras is tenth. Religious figures come next. Jesus is third. Moses and Muhammad are twelfth and thirteenth. Generals and politicians are close behind. Alexander the Great is fifth. Julius Caesar is eighth. Hitler is fourteenth. Artists come next. Leonardo da Vinci is sixth. Homer is ninth. Mozart is fifteenth. And scientists come last. Archimedes is eleventh. That sums up the first fifteen positions in the ranking. Fully aware that it may change over time, I am quite pleased by Pantheon’s present ranking. In particular, I am over the moon with the leading rôle of philosophers. In my mind, there is a glimmer of hope for the human species still.

Addendum I (August 11, 2016)

A bit more than a couple of years later, the first thirteen positions in the Pantheon remain unchanged. However, Hitler is now fifteenth and Mozart sixteenth. And Abraham is now fourteenth, but I do not recall what was his position when this piece was penned. Chances are that he was sixteenth back then. Anyhow, a religious figure is muscling in and squeezing out a general or politician and an artist. In short, nothing much has changed in the meanwhile. But I would not be surprised if religious figures would have an upper hand in the years to come. The tougher it gets around the world, the higher up will they climb in the Pantheon. Or so I reckon.

Addendum II (January 25, 2020)

So many years later, the ranking has changed appreciably. To my chagrin, philosophers are now doing rather poorly. Aristotle has moved from first to fourteenth, Plato from second to tenth, and Socrates from fourth to seventeenth place. Religious figures are doing much better, though. Muhammad has moved from thirteenth to first place, and Jesus from third to second. Only Moses has moved from twelfth to twenty-ninth place. Generals and politicians have also moved forward. Genghis Khan is now fourth, Alexander the Great seventh, and Napoleon eighth. Most important, Hitler has moved from fourteenth to ninth place. Interestingly in this context, Julius Cesar is eighteenth, and Donald Trump is nineteenth in the ranking. Artists are close behind. Leonardo da Vinci is third, Beethoven is sixth, and Mozart is eleventh. Surprisingly, Homer has moved from ninth to forty-sixth place. Scientists are also doing reasonably well. Newton is fifth, Einstein is fifteenth, and Galilei is sixteenth. But Pythagoras has moved from tenth to fifty-third place. All in all, religious figures, as well as generals and politicians, have moved forward as of late. Judging by the current ranking by the MIT Media Lab, they appear to have a bright future. Lo and behold, the forty-fifth American president is squarely among them at this juncture.

Addendum III (March 18, 2022)

Over the years, MIT’s Pantheon has made leaps and bounds (pantheon.world.data). Pantheon 1.0 (2013-2018) started under supervision of Professor César Hidalgo. Pantheon 2.0 (2019-present) was developed by Datawheel (www.datawheel.us), mainly by Alex Simoes with support of Marcio Porto, while the data collection script was created by Cristian Jara-Figueroa at MIT’s Collective Learning Group and under supervision by Professor César Hidalgo. Returning to the ranking of individuals, it is changing all the while. Muhammad is still first, but Jesus is now twelfth. Genghis Khan is second, Alexander the Great sixth, Napoleon eighth, Julius Cesar ninth, Hitler is thirteenth, and Donald Trump seventeenth. Leonardo da Vinci is still third, Beethoven is fifth, Mozart is tenth, Bach is eighteenth, and Michelangelo is twentieth. Among scientists, Newton is forth, Galilei is fourteenth, and Einstein is nineteenth. Alas, philosophers are doing pretty badly as of late. Aristotle is seventh, Plato is eleventh, and Socrates is sixteenth. And so on, and so forth. Even though it is always a joy to visit this particular website, reporting on the current ranking is gradually losing its luster. Obviously enough, humans love famous people. Although their tastes change over time, changes are not that great. The World Wide Web is a mature institution already. Amen.