Greatest Genius in History

Dachs said:

Not necessarily more complicated. Devolution of work to staff officers wasn't as much of a factor in the Roman military. Caesar also managed to be a pretty good lawyer and author too, something that von Manstein lacked.

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Ancient military is comparatively simple, I'd say. This is obvious when you just look at the fact that they didn't have aerial combat, much less all of the other factors.

Modern generals seldom command, they tend to direct, and the two seldom meet.

I'm going to throw in a wild card and say Tesla.

Onionsoilder said:

I'm going to throw in a wild card and say Tesla.

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I see your Tesla and I raise you Georg Hegel.

We need to define Genius here. Genius in terms of what? In influence? In revolutionary ideals? In intelligence? In learning?

LightSpectra said:

Ancient military is comparatively simple, I'd say. This is obvious when you just look at the fact that they didn't have aerial combat, much less all of the other factors.

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At the same time, the modern military is much less centralized compared to those of the ancient era. A general of the classical age had to do a lot more micromanagement, so it's arguable that he needed to keep more things in his head -- and thus had a more complex job.

Joshua Sharwood.

I dunno, Archimedes?

Dave Thomas

For sheer stamina in penetrating through the mists of time I'd go with Imhotep, polymath-extraordinaire and general handyman to pharao Zoser. Considering the times he started out in, his achievements were pretty damn impressive.

Starting with being the first individual to go down in history without being royalty. Got the Egyptians hooked on building stuff out of stone. They thought the world of him, enough so to make him a proper god later in their history.
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/imhotep.htm

Polymaths appear to have a leg up in the genius nominations, esp. if their accomplishments are subdivided, making them even more impressive. Hence, a nominated genius might be all of the following: a novelist, science fiction author, poet, economic analyst, literary critic, essayist, journalist, historian,etc. or known as a great doctor who studied the circulatory system, the heart, arteries, veins, capillaries, etc.

I think that's why our geniuses are mostly in the past; nowadays you have hundreds of thousands of intelligent literati and doctors covering the same range of interests. Being a pathfinder is obviously different, it's harder to be the first in a field - though even then there exists the probability that in many cases the ideas are "in the air" circulating through what constituted their scientific or intellectual community.

Oh, well, just making an observation not a condemnation that this man or that woman was not "a genius" ...

aronnax said:

We need to define Genius here. Genius in terms of what? In influence? In revolutionary ideals? In intelligence? In learning?

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But how can you define genius? I was having a hard time doing it, and just tried my best in the OP. I'm asking for your first guess, and I'm not intending to let this degenerated into a nit-picking discussion about who's a genius and who's not.

Mowque said:

Every genius has to deal with math?

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I was told there would be no math!

Starting with being the first individual to go down in history without being royalty. Got the Egyptians hooked on building stuff out of stone. They thought the world of him, enough so to make him a proper god later in their history.

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My stock knowledge leads me to believe the first peepz to go down in history without being royalty were Mesopotamian merchants.

JonathanStrange said:

I think that's why our geniuses are mostly in the past; nowadays you have hundreds of thousands of intelligent literati and doctors covering the same range of interests. Being a pathfinder is obviously different, it's harder to be the first in a field - though even then there exists the probability that in many cases the ideas are "in the air" circulating through what constituted their scientific or intellectual community.

Oh, well, just making an observation not a condemnation that this man or that woman was not "a genius" ...

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Probably very true.

It has been pointed out that individuals like Newton loom partly due to the sheer mediocrity of the people surrounding them. The level of scientific competence not being particularily high, figures like Newton, Boyle, Hook, Wren et al. scientific gentlemen coalescing in the Royal Society stick out like sore thumbs. Same goes för victorian times with people like Lyell and Darwin.

The problem with science prior to the 19th c. however was to a large extent one of continuity. You get Newtonians for sure, but Newton himself didn't train them personally, there simply was not enough of an organisational framework to do that within, and building one wasn't yet a priority. Which leads to the curious situation of 19th c. scientists finding slews of "precursors" in the 18th c., people with ideas "ahead of their times", whose efforts weren't picked upon back then.

And while German, and French, science in the 19th c. produced enough brilliance to satisfy anyone, their real accomplishment was to push up the general level of competence and build infrastructure to reproduce scientific knowledge as a routine undertaking (universities, laboratories etc.). Bit boring, but still valid, as part of the "conditions of necessity" to get science rolling.

I'd go with Aristotle for writing so much diverse crap, but having read snippets of it, I wouldn't call it genius---probably a lot of it is at "Dummies" guide level. It's more polymath.

I'll go with Hero of Alexandria, since he has the handicap of being in the classical era. He's also a possible time traveller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

Found this cool site about who the geniuses are, and what their IQs possibly were: http://hem.bredband.net/b153434/Index.htm

Hero is teh awesome, he built a jet engine. So what was that about Caesar not having to deal with aerial combat, LS?

I doubt this would generate enough lift for a jet turbine:

Maybe the basis for an early WMD SCUD.

LightSpectra said:

Ancient military is comparatively simple, I'd say. This is obvious when you just look at the fact that they didn't have aerial combat, much less all of the other factors.

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Just because someone's field was more simple at the time and they didnt have as much to work with, doesnt take away from their genius. There are more complicated maths nowadays than calculus, yet people are nominating leibniz and newton.

GoodGame said:

I'd go with Aristotle for writing so much diverse crap, but having read snippets of it, I wouldn't call it genius---probably a lot of it is at "Dummies" guide level. It's more polymath.

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If it seems "dummies" level, that's because (a) a lot of his work was in fields he simply invented, such as formal logic or zoology, and (b) you evidently haven't read the tougher stuff, such as metaphysics and ethics.

GoodGame said:

I'll go with Hero of Alexandria, since he has the handicap of being in the classical era. He's also a possible time traveller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

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I don't see how Hero really qualifies. He made a few clever inventions with minimal practical value. Clever and interesting, but hardly one of history's greatest geniuses.

achilleszero said:

Just because someone's field was more simple at the time and they didnt have as much to work with, doesnt take away from their genius. There are more complicated maths nowadays than calculus, yet people are nominating leibniz and newton.

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That's because both Leibniz and Newton did far, far more than just inventing calculus. They were all-round universal geniuses, especially Leibniz.

Hero's steam engine was not the basis for an industrial revolution that got killed in the cradle. It was a small toy with minimal power output for a lot of energy input.