On heroes, hero-worship and the heroic in history

What Hacker News says

1. keiferskiAug 2023
   From Wikipedia:

   > The theory is primarily attributed to the Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who gave a series of lectures on heroism in 1840, later published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History.

   From that series of lectures:

   1. (5 May) The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology

   2. (8 May) The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam

   3. (12 May) The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakspeare

   4. (15 May) The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism

   5. (19 May) The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns

   6. (22 May) The Hero as King. Cromwell. Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism

   Are any of those people scientists?

   Carlyle is talking about political and cultural influence, not technological development. Using scientists that made great discoveries as a counter-example to the theory is a straw man argument.

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2. lexcorvusOct 2014
   Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were the first form of the work of a Hero; Books, written words, are still miraculous Runes, the latest form! In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,—they are precious, great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives: can be called up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.

   —Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History, 1840

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