Greatest genius in history

[VetLegion]

Aristotle was a genius, and his world-shattering idea of empiricism was truly revolutionary. However, he got ALOT wrong, and some of his errors ended up retarding human development.

It doesn't follow from Aristotle's mistakes that they ended up retarding progress. If anything like that happened, it is the fault of those who took those wrong claims as holy scripture, and not of Aristotle who made them.

As a group effort I would consider the primary actors in the American Constitutional Convention - they created a Democratic Republic that worked, and showed the world it WAS possible.

It is impressive. But US republic never had to face the same challenges Europeans did, like dangerous neighbours.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by mitch


I don't think I made it clear enough. I didn't mean to ask who had the biggest impact on human advancement, but who was so smart that they did achieve significant advances.

Basically I want to know who everyone thinks is the greatest genius in history and has something to show for it. There are lots and lots of more choices when looking at who made the most significant impact on history.

If you want to know who made the most impact on Western and Middle/Near Eastern history, then Aristotle is your man.

His work underpinned Hellenic science and philosophy, and he was tutor to Alexander the Great- so his ideas spread throughout the Hellenic oikoumene, from the Cyrenaican Pentapolis in North Africa, to the Kushan kingdom and Gandharan civilization in northern India and even to China, with Sassanid merchants and Nestorian monks.

When the kingdoms of the Diadochi broke up, Aristotle was still influential through the Roman Empire, and then when Rome was Christianized, through the Roman Catholic Church.

He's also known as the First or Great Teacher, or simply 'The Philosopher' in Islam, and his work forms a basis for the great achievements of Islamic science- and his influence again extends to Islamic theology and philosophy.

Aristotle placed great emphasis in his school on direct observation of nature, and in science he taught that theory must follow fact.

Mediaeval Western scholasticism is indebted to Aristotle, as is the French drama of Racine and Corneille.

Even Darwin quotes Aristotle in the Preface of 'Origin of the Species'.

Da Vinci's work as an artist is surpassed in scale and achievement by Michelangelo's- Leonardo was too often distracted by Salai and his own probing restless mind and pointless endeavours that came to nothing.

His notebooks went unread, and his engineering designs could not be built or put to good use- so Archimedes and Heron of Alexandria beat him in those respects too.

Aristotle is not at fault for the errors of those who followed him, or who made his work into a dogma.

[FrostyBoy]

I would choose Confucius over Aristotle.

Then again, I would choose Jesus over everyone, not because of the son of God thing, but because of what he said, (and probably what he did too).

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
Neither Einstein nor Darwin can be considered the greatest - their theories were inevitable given the prior works that they built on, and both had competitors who nearly beat them to publication. If any of our Mathemitician/Physicists types might contribute, how about the folks who gave us quantum physics? I don't know enough of that history to say if their discoveries were inevitable, like Einstein and Darwin. But even Einstein had trouble choking down their theories, so I assume they were pretty brilliant.

Actually, I think that GR was pretty revolutionary (SR was not...), I could be wrong though, I don't know much about GR.

Quantum Mechanics was developed by a large number of geniuses (including a little bit done in 1905 by Einstein).

Jon Miller

[Drogue]

How dare this not be a poll?!

[Kuciwalker]

Neither Einstein nor Darwin can be considered the greatest - their theories were inevitable given the prior works that they built on, and both had competitors who nearly beat them to publication. If any of our Mathemitician/Physicists types might contribute, how about the folks who gave us quantum physics? I don't know enough of that history to say if their discoveries were inevitable, like Einstein and Darwin. But even Einstein had trouble choking down their theories, so I assume they were pretty brilliant.

As I understand it Guass was also insanely brilliant.

[Mr. Harley]

Jon - I can quote the names involved in parts of Quantum physics, but I don't know the story and context of the history of science for their contributions and to evaluate them individually. That's what I was asking about. How're you doing?