Top 60 Academic Scholars of 1200-1793

I find these kind of rankings irresistible, even though they aren't all that feasible.

I always enjoy these kind of more or less impossible rankings on topics like the Great Minds of History (found via Marginal Revolution).

This top 60 list of “academic scholars” from 1200 to 1793 seems to lean toward analytical writers with some sort of connection to academia or at least the intelligentsia, although I remain puzzled by its biases.

Shakespeare, for instance, was, I guess, a showman with no connections to Oxford or Cambridge, so he doesn’t make the list. Schiller, the author of the lyrics for Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” was also a playwright, but less of a razz-ma-tazz ya gotta give the people what they want kind of guy than the Bard. And Schiller wrote a lot of philosophic nonfiction, so he’s #6.

Dean Swift (Gulliver’s Travels, 1726) is #7, but his more downscale rival in the ink-stained wretch profession, Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe, 1719), doesn’t make the top 60.

Paywall here.