Newton frustrates me. He wrote some of the most revolutionary ever in his younger years then spent decades burying himself in alchemist wankery.
Leibniz needs some props here. He pretty much discovery calculas alongside Newton. Also he never seems to get credit for pretty much designing symbolic logic as we know it today.
[Hannibal for military genius maybe. Alexander the Great was supposedly pretty decent too, but he may have just been one of the early folks to prove that killing lots of folks is easy, if you put your mind to it, and work at it really hard.
I have to say it to be an asshole, but: I don't see why these people could have existed. They could just have easily been made up, especially considering how long ago it was. For the exact same reasons that Jesus didn't have to exist. I'm not religious, just reasonable. :P
Anyway, I think that a distinction needs to be made in terms of military genius. In my opinion, guys like Stonewall Jackson were the most advanced generals to ever exist, simply because the Civil War was the last major war where one general really made a difference. After that even guys like Rommel don't count because small-unit tactics meant much more. And in the older wars, the dominance of melee weapons in tactics really just seemed like most battles were just giant bar-room brawls. Strategy meant way more than tactics.
I just felt like I had to justify that as I submit Stonewall Jackson as the greatest military genius ever, rather than someone more epic.
For the exact same reasons that Jesus didn't have to exist. I'm not religious, just reasonable. :P
Ah, because Jesus, who's story is told practically exclusively in the bible, is exactly analogous to Hannibal, a noted leader who invaded Italy and persistently frustrated Rome. Yes, history from a long time ago is often filled with bullshit. Herodotus made half his stuff up out of whole cloth. Petrarch peppered accounts of wars up with inflated numbers of casualties. It's sometimes difficult to separate myth from reality when dealing with things that happened that long ago, to be sure, which is why I qualified Hannibal with a "maybe" and Alexander with a "supposedly".
Make a thread if you want to debate history. I haven't seen a solid case for Jesus, and I'm sure a thread on it would be interesting.
Newton frustrates me. He wrote some of the most revolutionary ever in his younger years then spent decades burying himself in alchemist wankery.
Newton was mad into the Jesus loving. I had no idea how much of the religious rhetoric was taken out of all of his early science by the French. It's all "prove the existence of God with maths" this and "look how this Gravity means that God is watching over us" that. Interesting stuff.
Also, because I haven't seen his name mentioned with the rest of the classical love in- Aristotle. Dude took Plato back down to Earth and basically invented scientists. Plus he was probably the first and last guy in history to know everything there was to know about anything.
In the Maths category we need more Fermat. He was fairly amazing given his background. Though "Greatest" is kinda predicated upon him actually having had a proof for his last Theorem.
Biggest Arseholes in history would be pretty good too. Galen was a knob jockey. Plato revovled way too many treatises around coaxing young boys into bed.
I wish the details of these people's live weren't so vague and fictional so I could slander them properly.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratorMod Emeritus
I dunno. Sonya is such a forced character. Oh, the good hearted prostitute. And Raskolnykov's rage is laughable at times, as is his fear. It's hyperbole. It comes off to great effect, and you leave the novel feeling entertained and having learned something, but I would not put him up as the best author of all time, let alone "best genius."
I mean...Shakespeare should be up there. I don't think that anyone has ever had a better understanding of human nature.
But in terms of authors traditional? I like Joyce, but I might put Thomas Mann or, perhaps in the future, DFW up there.
I don't know how you can chastize Dostoyevesky's emotional states as hyperbolic and three sentences later overlook Mann's ridiculous approach to human emotional state. Unbelievable and hyperbolic emotional states are pretty much a symptom of German and Russian writing. Look at Goethe or Bulgakov or I dunno Pushkin. Hesse is an exception, as he didn't really deal with human emotional states at all.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratorMod Emeritus
edited June 2007
Also, I'd nominate offhand probably Gauss, Dirac, Feynman, Einstein, Newton, Laplace. Maybe Galois, but he died so young and without formal training that it's hard to tell where he would have gone.
I think Nabokov is a magnificent writer and maybe the best I've read.
I just skimmed the first three pages, but nobody mentioned Alan Turing yet?
Aside from the whole fact of how without him, we'd all probably be speaking German right now, I'd say that his pioneering the concept of a computer will shape probably the rest of human history in ways that people even seventy years ago could never have predicted.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratorMod Emeritus
edited June 2007
Yeah Alan Turing is one of the most important figures of the past 80 years or so for sure. Bright dude too.
that dude was probably the closest thing to a magician that ever existed. but with science!
also, maybe not the greatest genius of all time, but i think Lincoln's intelligence and skill in the political arena is VASTLY underappreciated.
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"okay byron, my grandma has a right to be happy, so i give you my blessing. just... don't get her pregnant. i don't need another mom."
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
edited June 2007
I'd nominate Fred Rogers as one of the greatest geniuses of all time - not necessarily for smarts but just for the sheer capacity for warmth and kindness that the man had.
I'd nominate Fred Rogers as one of the greatest geniuses of all time - not necessarily for smarts but just for the sheer capacity for warmth and kindness that the man had.
this may be the best thing you see for the rest of your life, then:
Vitruvius was an idiot, lots of the explanations he gives for things in his book are flawed.
My vote would have to go to ARCHIMEDES. What with finding the closest approximation of Pi for hundreds of years, finding the area of the circle, finding the surface area and volume of the sphere, and for being basically the first scientist of all time.
He discovered the laws of hydrostatics, completed the world's first structural diagram, found the law of the lever, constructed a mechanical model of the solar system which accurately predicted the position of all the planets in relation to the earth and included eclipses, and was the first mechanical clock (I believe), solved the first calculus problems geometrically, discovered centre gravity, invented the archimedean screw (which though seeming simple in construction is completely counter-intuitive), single-handedly brought a ship (not a boat) ashore with the help of pulleys and levers, and supposedly, in the defence of syracuse, had huge cranes constructed that lifted ships out of the water, and then dashed them against rocks and sunk them.
He was the first person to ever actually apply math and physics to the real world with forces and weight as opposed to simply doing abstract geometry.
Also, because I haven't seen his name mentioned with the rest of the classical love in- Aristotle. Dude took Plato back down to Earth and basically invented scientists. Plus he was probably the first and last guy in history to know everything there was to know about anything.
Aristotle held physics back a few hundred years with his "fire goes up because it wants to go to the sun! water goes down because it wants to rejoin the ocean!"
My nominations aren't for the "greatest", just people I think should be tagged as a genius.
Edward Leedskalnin - The man went insane, built a castle, and nobody knows how. It's got to take some kind of genius to do that.
Trent Reznor - The man in my opinion, is one of the few true musical genii or whatever you guys said is right, of today. Feel free to disagree, but you'll never change my opinion on this one, so it'd be a pretty worthless to try and argue it with me.
H.P. Lovecraft - There must be something about him, if near every modern day horror writer quotes him as an inspiration.
Once again, I'm not trying to list the "greatest" just getting some people in who I believe should be recognized as a genius, to some point or other.
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Whether they find a life there or not, I think Jupiter should be called an enemy planet.
I've heard many people call Trent Reznor a genius, and they are usually quite serious about it. Can you care to elaborate as to what makes him a genius?
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I dunno. Sonya is such a forced character. Oh, the good hearted prostitute. And Raskolnykov's rage is laughable at times, as is his fear. It's hyperbole. It comes off to great effect, and you leave the novel feeling entertained and having learned something, but I would not put him up as the best author of all time, let alone "best genius."
I mean...Shakespeare should be up there. I don't think that anyone has ever had a better understanding of human nature.
But in terms of authors traditional? I like Joyce, but I might put Thomas Mann or, perhaps in the future, DFW up there.
I don't know how you can chastize Dostoyevesky's emotional states as hyperbolic and three sentences later overlook Mann's ridiculous approach to human emotional state. Unbelievable and hyperbolic emotional states are pretty much a symptom of German and Russian writing. Look at Goethe or Bulgakov or I dunno Pushkin. Hesse is an exception, as he didn't really deal with human emotional states at all.
Perhaps his earlier stuff. I think by Magic Mountain and Joseph and his Brothers, he really curbed down on the hyperbole. I mean, still incredibly longwinded, as any German will be, but Mann makes it work.
Nabokov is an interesting one. I wouldn't call him a particular genius in the way of TS Eliot or Thomas Pynchon. However, I think that he is the most Western writer the west has ever produced. Perhaps only Borges comes close to Nabokov's mastery of western culture and mindset.
Um so you guys realize a lot of these great dicoveries by Europeans were already common place in china hundereds of years before.
I really don't see why that would take away from the achievements of the people already mentioned.
I'm just saying the guy that invented the small pox vacine wasnt that great since it was already in place in China. Same goes for the printing press and tons of mathmatics.
Um so you guys realize a lot of these great dicoveries by Europeans were already common place in china hundereds of years before.
I really don't see why that would take away from the achievements of the people already mentioned.
I'm just saying the guy that invented the small pox vacine wasnt that great since it was already in place in China. Same goes for the printing press and tons of mathmatics.
Unless you're accusing their western counterparts of stealing the ideas, the fact that things were developed first elsewhere in no way diminshes the significance of their development in the western world.
Speaking for myself here, but if some guy came up with calculus on his own today I would still be impressed. Once a person develops an idea independently I think they deserve credit.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited June 2007
God, don't you know that aliens from the karkatan system invented calculus fifteen million years ago? :roll:
Yeah, I agree with you but I'm saying that since a lot of this happened a long time ago we don't really know how much was stolen and how much was independently thought up. These people on different sides of the eastern hemisphere did interact.
I've heard many people call Trent Reznor a genius, and they are usually quite serious about it. Can you care to elaborate as to what makes him a genius?
hes no genius if we're to compare him to the likes of newton, leibniz, giant taco salad inventor, etc, but he sure does make some good music
Don't forget the doors of paradise as well. Whatever it is he gleaned from the stonework of ancient rome disappeared with him as well, since we wouldn't even be able to make something like that today with the same materials. It shouldn't be possible, yet there it is dominating the skyline of Firenze.
If you were to go with architect/engineer geniuses I'd hitch my wagon to Bucky. That guy was just insanely gifted and way ahead of his time. We still haven't gotten there, geodesics and tensegrity are incredibly efficient but rarely used because they're just so damn difficult to figure out in comparison to post and lentils.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
geodesics and tensegrity are incredibly efficient but rarely used because they're just so damn difficult to figure out in comparison to post and lentils.
Hehe...we're still closer to stonehenge than we think.
Leonardo DaVinci, that guy practically visited the future and tried to bring to his present time.
That's the plot in one Donald Duck comic. And a Mickey Mouse comic.
Didn't Tesla invent the gyros that stabilise modern warships when firing their bigger guns? Or should I stop sleeping on the couch with Discovery on the TV?
Taxonomists, in almost any biological field, have heard of Carolus Linnaeus. His prime contribution was to establish conventions for the naming of living organisms that became universally accepted in the scientific world--the work of Linnaeus represents the starting point of binomial nomenclature. In addition Linnaeus developed, during the great 18th century expansion of natural history knowledge, what became known as the Linnaean taxonomy; the system of scientific classification now widely used in the biological sciences.
The Linnaean system classified nature within a hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into Classes and they, in turn, into Orders, which were divided into Genera (singular: genus), which were divided into Species (singular: species). Below the rank of species he sometimes recognized taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank (for plants these are now called "varieties").
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Leibniz needs some props here. He pretty much discovery calculas alongside Newton. Also he never seems to get credit for pretty much designing symbolic logic as we know it today.
I have to say it to be an asshole, but: I don't see why these people could have existed. They could just have easily been made up, especially considering how long ago it was. For the exact same reasons that Jesus didn't have to exist. I'm not religious, just reasonable. :P
Anyway, I think that a distinction needs to be made in terms of military genius. In my opinion, guys like Stonewall Jackson were the most advanced generals to ever exist, simply because the Civil War was the last major war where one general really made a difference. After that even guys like Rommel don't count because small-unit tactics meant much more. And in the older wars, the dominance of melee weapons in tactics really just seemed like most battles were just giant bar-room brawls. Strategy meant way more than tactics.
I just felt like I had to justify that as I submit Stonewall Jackson as the greatest military genius ever, rather than someone more epic.
Ah, because Jesus, who's story is told practically exclusively in the bible, is exactly analogous to Hannibal, a noted leader who invaded Italy and persistently frustrated Rome. Yes, history from a long time ago is often filled with bullshit. Herodotus made half his stuff up out of whole cloth. Petrarch peppered accounts of wars up with inflated numbers of casualties. It's sometimes difficult to separate myth from reality when dealing with things that happened that long ago, to be sure, which is why I qualified Hannibal with a "maybe" and Alexander with a "supposedly".
Make a thread if you want to debate history. I haven't seen a solid case for Jesus, and I'm sure a thread on it would be interesting.
Newton was mad into the Jesus loving. I had no idea how much of the religious rhetoric was taken out of all of his early science by the French. It's all "prove the existence of God with maths" this and "look how this Gravity means that God is watching over us" that. Interesting stuff.
Also, because I haven't seen his name mentioned with the rest of the classical love in- Aristotle. Dude took Plato back down to Earth and basically invented scientists. Plus he was probably the first and last guy in history to know everything there was to know about anything.
Also, biggest mathematical asshole: Fermat.
I wish the details of these people's live weren't so vague and fictional so I could slander them properly.
I don't know how you can chastize Dostoyevesky's emotional states as hyperbolic and three sentences later overlook Mann's ridiculous approach to human emotional state. Unbelievable and hyperbolic emotional states are pretty much a symptom of German and Russian writing. Look at Goethe or Bulgakov or I dunno Pushkin. Hesse is an exception, as he didn't really deal with human emotional states at all.
I think Nabokov is a magnificent writer and maybe the best I've read.
Aside from the whole fact of how without him, we'd all probably be speaking German right now, I'd say that his pioneering the concept of a computer will shape probably the rest of human history in ways that people even seventy years ago could never have predicted.
that dude was probably the closest thing to a magician that ever existed. but with science!
also, maybe not the greatest genius of all time, but i think Lincoln's intelligence and skill in the political arena is VASTLY underappreciated.
What the British government did to him was really one of the dark pages of recent history.
Go ahead, wiki it.
Nintendo Network ID: PhysiMarc
this may be the best thing you see for the rest of your life, then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41lJIhW7fA
Wasn't he arrested for being gay and then killed himself?
My vote would have to go to ARCHIMEDES. What with finding the closest approximation of Pi for hundreds of years, finding the area of the circle, finding the surface area and volume of the sphere, and for being basically the first scientist of all time.
He discovered the laws of hydrostatics, completed the world's first structural diagram, found the law of the lever, constructed a mechanical model of the solar system which accurately predicted the position of all the planets in relation to the earth and included eclipses, and was the first mechanical clock (I believe), solved the first calculus problems geometrically, discovered centre gravity, invented the archimedean screw (which though seeming simple in construction is completely counter-intuitive), single-handedly brought a ship (not a boat) ashore with the help of pulleys and levers, and supposedly, in the defence of syracuse, had huge cranes constructed that lifted ships out of the water, and then dashed them against rocks and sunk them.
He was the first person to ever actually apply math and physics to the real world with forces and weight as opposed to simply doing abstract geometry.
Tesla is pretty good too.
Aristotle held physics back a few hundred years with his "fire goes up because it wants to go to the sun! water goes down because it wants to rejoin the ocean!"
Edward Leedskalnin - The man went insane, built a castle, and nobody knows how. It's got to take some kind of genius to do that.
Trent Reznor - The man in my opinion, is one of the few true musical genii or whatever you guys said is right, of today. Feel free to disagree, but you'll never change my opinion on this one, so it'd be a pretty worthless to try and argue it with me.
H.P. Lovecraft - There must be something about him, if near every modern day horror writer quotes him as an inspiration.
Once again, I'm not trying to list the "greatest" just getting some people in who I believe should be recognized as a genius, to some point or other.
Perhaps his earlier stuff. I think by Magic Mountain and Joseph and his Brothers, he really curbed down on the hyperbole. I mean, still incredibly longwinded, as any German will be, but Mann makes it work.
Nabokov is an interesting one. I wouldn't call him a particular genius in the way of TS Eliot or Thomas Pynchon. However, I think that he is the most Western writer the west has ever produced. Perhaps only Borges comes close to Nabokov's mastery of western culture and mindset.
Thank god for opium.
I really don't see why that would take away from the achievements of the people already mentioned.
I'm just saying the guy that invented the small pox vacine wasnt that great since it was already in place in China. Same goes for the printing press and tons of mathmatics.
hes no genius if we're to compare him to the likes of newton, leibniz, giant taco salad inventor, etc, but he sure does make some good music
If you were to go with architect/engineer geniuses I'd hitch my wagon to Bucky. That guy was just insanely gifted and way ahead of his time. We still haven't gotten there, geodesics and tensegrity are incredibly efficient but rarely used because they're just so damn difficult to figure out in comparison to post and lentils.
Hehe...we're still closer to stonehenge than we think.
That's the plot in one Donald Duck comic. And a Mickey Mouse comic.
Didn't Tesla invent the gyros that stabilise modern warships when firing their bigger guns? Or should I stop sleeping on the couch with Discovery on the TV?