Thanks to www.toptentopten.com for this one - the ten greatest geniuses in the history of the human race:
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Leonardo da Vinci Albert Einstein | |
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Isaac Newton |
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Thomas Edison |
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Benjamin Franklin |
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Galileo |
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William Shakespeare |
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Alexander Graham Bell |
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Archimedes |
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Louis Pasteur |
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This is bait isn't it?
Like the pike I can't resist.
If you've got Einstein, why not Maxwell? Between Maxwell and Faraday they started big physics' current programme of coming up with a grand unified theory. Our best guess at the moment is that general relativity is just that - a good generalisation, but not an explanation, of how reality works. It will probably not look the same once we have a deeper understanding of the fundamentals.
If you've got Newton, why not Hooke or Leibnitz? There are a lot of Hooke's ideas on planetary motion in Newton's work, and Leibnitz got to the calculus at the same time. We remember Newton because he lived longer than both and did all he could to remove Hooke from history. He also dragooned the English establishment in to supporting his priority on calculus (or fluxions, as he called it - I think calculus is Leibnitz's term) and made a right old mess of English mathematics as the same time.
Edison and Bell had genius - a genius for claiming other folk's work as their own.
Leonardo da Vinci might have been handy with a mallet and a dab hand with a brush - I'm not qualified to say - but he seems to get most credit for his inventions, most of which are frankly bobbins.
Of the rest I don't know enough (I imagine the Germans might have something to say about Gothe vs Shakespeare) but the absence of Lavoisier is hard to justify.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest, now all I need to do is get this hook out of my lip ...
Of course it's bait, Stooriefit, but isn't it the vogue these days to present the hoi polloi with endless contentious litanies such as "top 100 classic films of all time as voted by people averaging 15 years old"?
The Baron
(p.s. modesty prevents me pointing out that they omitted me.)
That would leave music in the service room of humanity... What about good old J.S. Bach ?
You're absolutely right, Stooriefit, it's really to perk up the grey-matter on a cold, March pre-election, pre-austerity measures morning. Having said that there are some excellent points there. You've certainly perked up my grey-matter. Thanks.
I take exception, The Baron, to your desciption of the site's readers and commentators as hoi polloi, I should have thought even a nobleman could recognise them as people of intellect, learning, and sophistication. And though I agree that all generalisations like these rankings lists are flawed, nonetheless without generalisation the intellect is starved.
Interesting thoughts by Stooriefit.
Edison - brilliant marketeer. Nice to take Edgar Swann's product and make them both millions.
And Nikolas Tesla isn't on the list.
We all love an Entrepreneur don't we ?
I can see Edison being ideal Dragon's Den (Dragon) material.
If only TV was available a century earlier.
I was moving some heavy stuff at home recently, and i can assure you i was blessing the guy that invented the wheel some thousand years ago... :-)
Yes indeed, forgotten one, if only we knew his name he'd be up there in the top ten - he really should have signed the thing.
I think that's an excellent classification of the position of music in society, Pyecello, music does not sew, neither does it reap, but, like the lilies of the valley, it tickles our sensory organs. That, to me, makes it a service.
I thought the Wheel was designed by Hengist Pod, husband of Senna. Oh! hang on a mo. That was the square wheel
I'm with Stooriefit, for no other reason than he
managed to fit the word 'bobbins' into his argument. Nice one.
'Sceppers'
Yes, Sceppers, Stooriefit can be a bit of a wordsmith at times.
Everyone will produce their own top ten, but surely credit should be awarded to those who discovered something completely new or changed the way people thought?
So out with Edison and Franklin and in with Faraday and Darwin.
Out with Galileo - he only made an optical instrument. Credit to Copernicus for working out that the sun was the centre of the solar system against the powerful church's beliefs at the time.
And what about the musical compositions created by Mozart and Beethoven. Come on even us engineers appreciate music don't we?
As to music, Messi, in an earlier comment Pyecello suggested that composers are on the service side of genius and, by implication, worthy of less esteem than the discoverers of great truths which change the lot of mankind. Faraday yes, I agree he should be in, but Darwin was not all that far ahead of the pack. As for Copernicus, you have to ask did figuring out that the sun was at the centre of our universe really benefit many people at the time?