This list takes a look at 10 specific products of the human intellect. Some are astounding because of the speed with which they were produced. All of them are astounding because of their monumental difficulties and influence. Follow-up lists are certainly welcome.
1. Principia Mathematica (Isaac Newton)
In 1685 and 1686, Sir Isaac Newton wrote a book of some 450 pages in Latin, which did the following: founded all of classical mechanics (excluding relativistic mechanics; see #2); discovered the Law of Universal Gravitation; discovered and developed integral and differential calculus; generalized the Binomial Theorem; developed a method (Newton’s Method) for the approximation of the roots of a function; helped systemize the power series; demonstrated the first analytical determination (based on Boyle’s law) of the speed of sound in air; inferred the oblateness of the spheroidal figure of Earth (meaning that Earth is a sphere “pushed down on both poles” thus “fattening” its Equator); accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon’s gravitational attraction on Earth’s oblateness; theorized the determination of the orbits of comets; founded the gravitational study of the irregularities in the orbit and rotation of the moon.
2. Theory of Relativity (Albert Einstein)
For Einstein’s legendary discovery to be explained here, the lister would have to understand it, and then be able to translate all the mathematics into something easily approachable, and do all that quickly. So instead, let us consider the basics of what is involved in Einstein’s conception.
Special relativity, which Einstein worked out in 1905, is a theory of the structure of space-time, that space and time are two qualities of the same entity, and space-time is like a fabric that can be distorted, in the same way that a sheet of rubber is distorted by the weights of objects of different masses placed on it.
3. Symphonies 39, 40, and 41 (Wolfgang A. Mozart)
Everyone knows that Mozart worked very quickly on his music. He was such a natural genius at it, that he didn’t even make corrections to some of his scores: the final copies of some works were identical to the first drafts. Near the end of his life, when he was very sick, he was making notes and corrections on all his current endeavors, especially his Requiem. But in 1788, 3 years earlier, he was in the peak of health, and riding the pinnacle of his creative powers.
Wagner’s compositional method was mentioned earlier, and for contrast, consider that Mozart, in his prime, did not sketch out his works, going through successive drafts. He composed first drafts of orchestral works in full orchestral score, deciding which instruments played when at the same time he composed the music itself. This is an extremely rare practice, as attested to by almost every other major composer throughout history. The standard practice is to compose the themes and developments in double-stave piano score, and then orchestrate it.
4. Symphony 8 (Gustav Mahler)
Mahler composed the most titanic of his symphonies, which is saying a great deal, in less than a single month, from late June to mid-August 1906, in Maiernigg, Austria, on the south shore of Lake Worth, in a tiny hut of the villa he had built to enjoy the scenery. During that time, he was only seen exiting his hut to go jump into the lake and swim for a while, before disappearing inside again.
His 8th Symphony has been nicknamed “the Symphony of a Thousand,” but it does not require 1,000 people to be performed. 1,000 and more have been used before, and it doesn’t hurt the music. The first movement is a massive double fugue set to the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, a 9th Century hymn by Rabanus Maurus. This single movement lasts about 23 minutes, huge by Classical standards. The second movement is about 53 minutes long, as long as Beethoven’s entire 3rd Symphony. It is a setting of the closing scenes of Goethe’s Faust, complete with characters, a sort of oratorio. It depicts Faust’s soul being rescued by Eternal Womanhood from Mephistopheles, and Faust’s entrance into the ecstasy of Heaven.
5. The Statue of David (Michelangelo Buonarroti)
In 1464, the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Duomo (Operai) had planned to commission a series of 12 Old Testament figures to be sculpted for adornment atop the pedestals of the buttresses of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Donatello completed one sculpture, of Joshua, in 1410. His apprentice, Agostino di Duccio, was given a 17-foot (over 5 meter) high block of marble carved from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia.
Agostino managed to rough out where the legs would be (not their stance) and might have knocked out a hole between the ankles, but never did anything else on it. He gave up when Donatello died in 1466. For ten years the block of marble sat outside being rained on, sunned on, and blown on by the wind, until Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to continue it, but his contract was inexplicably canceled. A large portion of scholars claim that he was too scared to finish it.
6. Der Ring des Nibelungen (Richard Wagner)
Wagner did not compose the Ring Cycle in a very short amount of time, as is the case with several entries of this list. Composition of the four operas spanned 26 years, 12 of which Wagner spent writing not a single note of the tetralogy, working instead on Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
The colossal stature of the whole work is beyond belief. In terms of size, it is possibly the most epic single work in all literature, of any genre. And unlike almost all opera composers, Wagner preferred to write his own libretti. These he wrote first, and they are outstanding German poetry in their own right. Then he set them to music. His rate of composition was slow, especially compared to that of, say, #3, but he made up for this with very heavy, philosophical depth in his work. Wagner’s music is not for every taste, but there is no denying its power, and his extraordinary ability at weaving his leitmotifs, a concept uniquely his own, into richly textured, often contrapuntal music.
7. Messiah (George Frederick Handel)
Handel did not invent the oratorio, as is often claimed, but used the musical form to his financial advantage during Christmastide, when secular operas were not allowed to be performed in Britain. Handel had already written 9 oratorios and was well known for his mastery of Baroque counterpoint, second according to many scholars to J. S. Bach.
He did, however, have critics, who claimed his music did not possess sufficient depth. With Messiah, they stopped criticizing him. He wrote the entire oratorio in 24 days. It is 259 pages of full orchestral score, with comparatively few ink blots and scratch-throughs. He claimed to have written the Hallelujah Chorus in 5 hours of non-stop work. His servants or niece (sources differ) opened his study to find him weeping over his writing desk. He claimed to have seen the roof of his room disappear and Heaven descend through the sky, God Himself enthroned in glory, and a choir of angels singing. He claimed to have written the Hallelujah Chorus as dictated by God directly to him. He wrote the grand Amen at the end of Messiah in less than a day.
8. On Physical Lines of Force (James Clerk Maxwell)
The single most important event in all fields of 19th Century science took place during less than a year’s time, of 1861 and 1862, in Scotland. While America was fighting a Civil War, a Scottish physicist named James Maxwell was hard at work discovering and systemizing the laws of electromagnetism. Without mathematical comprehension and expressions of this, one of the four forces of the Universe, it would be impossible to harness the power that creates lightning.
We credit Thomas Edison with the invention of the light bulb. But Edison would not have known where to begin without the world’s understanding of Maxwell’s four-part mathematical treatise, “On Physical Lines of Force,” which took the next giant leap for mankind from the shoulders of Michael Faraday, who had, 40 years earlier, discovered electromagnetic induction, and subsequently invented the electric motor.
9. Knight, Death, and the Devil (Albrecht Durer)
One of this lister’s favorite works of art. It is not a painting, but a copper engraving. Durer personally engraved every single line of it onto a copper plate, using a burin, which looks a little like what you would use to open an oyster. A slight shift of the weight of your hand or body position and the burin can easily slip, scratching across the base metal and ruining the piece. Nevertheless, this piece, typically cited with Melencolia I, and St. Jerome in His Study, is one of Durer’s most richly detailed, highly ornate masterpieces, and that’s saying a lot, given that Durer’s works are revered today as perhaps the most photogenically realistic in all art.
One of the most amazing facts regarding it is that it is only 9.6 inches long by 7.5 inches wide. Typically, an artist works on a very large scale in order to attend to the details as minutely as s/he wishes. And yet in such a tiny space, Durer was able to pack such detail that many scholars call the horse the most perfect ever drawn. You can see individual hairs in its fur, as is the case with the dog under it, individual windows in the castle on the hilltop. A masterpiece of this complexity usually requires 2 to 4 years of an artist’s time, but Durer finished this one in only 5 months.
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Stevenson was intensely interested in whether free will could be overcome, with the result that a person would do something s/he would ordinarily refuse to do. So he set about addressing this issue in his legendary novella about a scientist experimenting with chemicals that will cause him to change into someone else. Dr. Jekyll has no idea, at first, that the person he will change into will be a pure misanthrope, Mr. Hyde, who hates everyone and enjoys hurting them.
Hyde’s first crime is beating a little girl and kicking her to death in the street. A year later, he beats a man to death with a cane. Why? Because he loves it. He is the polar opposite of Jekyll. Eventually, Jekyll realizes the danger he poses to society and attempts to explain himself in a letter to be read after his death, stating that he does not know what Hyde will do in the end, kill himself or be executed, but that he does know Hyde will win over Jekyll. Hyde does finally kill himself.
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