Comments. This is a great illustration of just what I'm trying to do. Of course it's conceptually easier, in that biologists have spent several hundred years working toward an explicit complete classification of species, so compiling such a list is just an exercise in selection judgement -- a bit like compiling a list of 15 U.S. cities "representing the diversity of U.S. cities" from a given list of all cities. In most contexts, like our context of Probability, there is no existing complete list to select from.
Advanced Flight | Aesthetics | Agriculture | Alphabet | Animal Husbandry | Archery | Artillery | Assembly Line | Astronomy |
Banking | Biology | Bronze Working | Calendar | Civil Service | Code of Laws | Combustion | Communism | Compass |
Composites | Computers | Constitution | Construction | Corporation | Currency | Democracy | Divine Right | Drama |
Ecology | Economics | Education | Electricity | Engineering | Fascism | Feudalism | Fiber Optics | Fishing |
Fission | Flight | Fusion | Genetics | Guilds | Gunpowder | Horseback Riding | Hunting | Industrialism |
Iron Working | Laser | Liberalism | Literature | Machinery | Masonry | Mass Media | Mathematics | Medicine |
Meditation | Metal Casting | Military Science | Military Tradition | Mining | Monarchy | Monotheism | Music | Mysticism |
Nationalism | Optics | Paper | Philosophy | Physics | Plastics | Polytheism | Pottery | Priesthood |
Printing Press | Radio | Railroad | Refrigeration | Replaceable Parts | Rifling | Robotics | Rocketry | Sailing |
Satellites | Scientific Method | Steam Power | Steel | Superconductors | Theology | The Wheel | Writing |
Comments.
Lists like this are fun, in that you instantly want to argue with parts of it --
some items don't seem important enough for a "top 100" list,
and you can think of important items that were omitted.
The exact choice of items is somewhat arbitrary, but the list as a whole seems to me
rather sensible; I guess that
any other sensible list would either
(i) have substantial overlap with this list
or (ii) have some manifestly different bias toward type of item chosen.