I want to make a poll on who is most influenced history in the last 500 years. Who...

[Kidlicious]

Lancer,

Why don't you just make the call? Are we talking about people who did stuff, or people who came up with ideas?

[Japher]

Innovation is a combination of both

anyone can make something up

unless it is put to use it IS useless

I am even more inclined to nominate ppl who, if not for them, would never get done....

[DanS]

Well, OK then. Among the founding fathers, I then nominate George Washington, for turning down the throne and lifetime rule, something revolutionary at the time. He also presided over the constitutional convention, which decided the form of government in detail.

Also you have Jefferson, who set down the legislative branch's mores and folquays.

[mrmitchell]

Were Gutenberg or Columbus still alive in 1505?

Napoleon, for being one of the few to conquer Europe, and for shaping 19th century history
Washington, for holding together the Grand Idea that everyone else deserves more credit for but couldn't do sh*t about
ENGELS - I always thought it was a team, like Ben & Jerry, or Batman & Robin--Marx & Engels?
Robert E Lee, for holding together the Southern cause which arguably has had more impact on America than any other thing. Think about it. No civil war, and the entirity of American history post-1861 is totally different to how it actually turned out.

[Lancer]

Kid, either or. if you think the person 'most influenced' history, and can say why, I'll put em in.

Btw, is there a limit to how many can be in a poll?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Japher
Innovation is a combination of both

anyone can make something up

unless it is put to use it IS useless

I am even more inclined to nominate ppl who, if not for them, would never get done....

The key word is "influencial" though.

[mrmitchell]

Btw, is there a limit to how many can be in a poll?

24, but you can do as others have done here and have multiple Round 1 polls, Round 2 polls consisting of those who advanced from Round 1, Round 3 polls consisting of those who advanced from Round 2, ad infinitum or until Ming pulls out the banning stick.

EDIT: but remember Lancer, only 2 threads a day

[Lancer]

Let the choice be in the eyes of the voters.

[Lancer]

Thanks mrmitchell

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Lancer,

Why don't you just make the call? Are we talking about people who did stuff, or people who came up with ideas?

My nomination did both . Martin Luther... the only choice. He splintered Europe and created a Protestant creed that had a great effect on the spurring of capitalism (Protestant work ethic and all that). The competition between Protestant and Catholic Europe also stimulated technological innovation. Protestant theories also transformed Western law and pushed for a categorization of all law.

[Japher]

Elvis

music is the soul that yields the product of life

[Agathon]

But the idea wasn't hard to come up with. DO you think the founding fathers would have elected a King? How else would they have ruled?

Baloney. It's the hardest thing in the world to come up with ideas that change paradigms, which is what those political philosophers did.

Trust me. I know people who try to do it - it takes a rare genius to do it.

What the philosophers did was analyse it, justify it, discuss it. The idea of rule by people and how much say the general populace should has been around for centuries before.

No. They invented it. The three philosophers I mentioned are primarily responsible for contractarian theory. Hobbes in particular identified collective action problems as the reason for the voluntary cession of authority to the state.

It's funny that things like this are taken for granted in non-English speaking countries. It's just the English speaking countries that are havens of anti-intellectualism. How typical that the language of boorish retards is becoming the world's common speech..

They codified it into something more understandable, sure.

No they didn't they pretty much invented new ways of thinking. You just have no sense of the history of ideas. New ideas are never obvious and they are not easy to think up. They look obvious now, but that is because they have become part of the cultural commons.

But the founding fathers, IMHO, would still have created a democratic state, and founded the modern style of government, which the French would have copied, after seeing working.

They might well have created a democratic state (since democracy had existed since Athens), but it would not have been one that heavily plagiarized from the writings of John Locke.

What else would the founding fathers have done? And if you're talking about specific people, remove those specific philosophers, and another one would have come up with the idea a few years later.

Really? That just seems like grasping at straws. It's like saying that someone else would have written Beethoven's symphonies if he had died young. Or that someone else would have written the Brothers Karamazov if Dostoyevsky hadn't.

These people are seminal figures: they said novel things. That is why they are still studied.

Removing individual people will only postpone something, whether it's the founding fathers or the philosophers.

That is a wholly risible view. I'd like to have seen the western world if Aristotle never existed. No-one has been as influential as him.

[Lancer]

Since this is fast sinking towards page 3, I'm getting ready to make the poll later today. If you want to suggest someone it's now or never and don't ***** later.

[Japher]

Ronald McDonald, or whoever the founder was, for making Americans fat