Talent pools prior to 1900?

Does anybody know any good primary sources of raw data on how many boxers were active in which eras? If there is any stark difference in the quality of modern and old school fighters, I can pretty much guarantee you it's going to come down to this and not alleged advances in training or nutrition. (Unless perhaps "nutrition" means PED's.)

Boxing is an art, and arts, quite unlike sciences, do not make steady, cumulative, incremental progress. (Kanye West damn sure is not a better musician than Bach or Coltrane.)

Also, it would be extremely helpful, or the very least extremely interesting, if anyone knows where to find reliable figures on the sizes of at least the top *100* heavyweights active in each era, not merely the top ten or twenty.

 

"How can you guarantee that the quality of boxers in an era is solely a function of the number of active boxers? That supposition seems to entail a number of highly suspect assumptions."

Oh that's trivially easy. I know what it *isn't*, and the number of alternative etiological mechanisms that are even remotely plausible is exhausted very quickly. I know it has nothing to do with advances in scientific training or nutrition because I'm scientifically literate and I know that these putative advances, without exaggeration, quite simply do not exist. This is not hyperbole.


"This is a stunningly inapt comparison. Why on earth would music progress (in whatever subjective way you're measuring musical progress) in the same manner as technique and abilities in a competitive sport?"

It wouldn't. The point is that *neither* progress in any sustained cumulative sense. A science (a real science, not worthless fluff like economics or sociology) progresses by observing what occurs in extremely simple, controlled, artificial scenarios designed expressly to see if an expected and well defined result will occur, then carefully altering the conditions of further experiments to see if different results occur. By very carefully controlling and recording both conditions and results, stronger and stronger causal patterns are gradually (for the most part gradually) discerned and built upon.

A competitive sport has nothing like this. Sure, there are recorded results but they are very often far from simple, and there are certainly no controlled, rigorous experiments to speak of.

If you think the comparison to music is a disanalogy, I suggest you read (to begin) Thomas Nagel's "The messy objective/subjective distinction" and Hume on whether artistic judgments are in any sense truth-apt.
In a nutshell, I think it's at *least* as to close to "objectively" true to say that Coltrane is a superior musician to Kenny G as it is to say Lennox Lewis beat Holyfield in their first fight.


"You never really explained why you were so dismissive of the top 10 data I brought up..."

I most assuredly did. A failure of comprehension on your part does not constitute a preterition on mine.

 

*grin*

Those souls will have to be very patient indeed if they seek to catch me in any logical fallacies. Just so you know, a non sequitur is a subset of logical fallacy. In fact all logical fallacies are either non sequiturs (more technically violations of the rules of inference) or the result of falsity in a premise.

 

Are you forgetting that Freddie Roach is Michaelangelo?[/QUOTE]

Heh, heh, but was Michelangelo an improvement upon Phidias or Praxiteles?

I think this is likely to remain the most impressively skillful sculpture in the world for quite some time, no matter what "advances" are made in chiseling techniques:

[url]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Laocoon_and_His_Sons.jpg/1200px-Laocoon_and_His_Sons.jpg[/url]

 

That is the stupidest assertion it's possible to make in the context of music. Coltrane is one of the supreme musical geniuses of all time - right up there with Bach and Beethoven - and will still be listened to centuries after Kanye West has been deservedly forgotten.

Not only is Kanye West an ungifted mediocrity in music, he is an extremely dimwitted and shallow narcissist. He's a repulsive buffoon.

 

It has nothing to do with boxing, which is why I was very brief in my reply. But I just couldn't let that go unremarked.

You're quite right both that it would be extremely easy to argue and that I presented no such argument. (See previous point.)

At the very least I have *some* idea how much more highly posterity will regard John Coltrane than Kanye West (who won't be regarded at all). There are many situations where humble uncertainty is called or.
This ain't one of 'em.