The Great People of Real Life

[puglover]

I think Abraham should be in the top ten. So many religions and cultures got their start with him and his descendents.

 

[Elta]

I acttually read that book
you know what the longest artical was?
Shakespear (spl?) it was mostly on how no one could prove who the real Shakespear was a few hundrad years after the fact ....
einstine , mao there on there too

 

[odintheking]

Wait... Isaac Newton beat Jesus? WTH? Jesus was waaaaaaayy more influentual than Issac Newton. Ask someone who Jesus is and they'll know. Ask someone who Isaac Newton is, and they won't know, .

 

[Masquerouge]

I think Abraham should be in the top ten. So many religions and cultures got their start with him and his descendents.

Except that Abraham's very existence is subject to caution.

 

[warpus]

Wait... Isaac Newton beat Jesus? WTH? Jesus was waaaaaaayy more influentual than Issac Newton. Ask someone who Jesus is and they'll know. Ask someone who Isaac Newton is, and they won't know, .

Who doesn't know who Isaac Newton is?

 

[GinandTonic]

Wait... Isaac Newton beat Jesus? WTH? Jesus was waaaaaaayy more influentual than Issac Newton. Ask someone who Jesus is and they'll know. Ask someone who Isaac Newton is, and they won't know, .

But Jesus didnt invent the cat-flap.

 

[odintheking]

Educated adults and smart people know who he is. Most normal people and kids don't know who he is. But all of those people know who Jesus is. You can't exclude them just because you want to.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Who doesn't know who Isaac Newton is?

That's what the people that made the study a long time ago with "Is America a continent ?" thought. Nobody thought 50%(or close to it) would answer no.
But then again the study was made only in the US so it shouldn't have been a surprise.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I would put Jesus at or near the top. As a Christian, of course, he is so far above everyone else that there is no question; but as an impartial historical observer he is up there just because he started the movement even if Paul spread it.

I would also put Marx up there as the inspiration for Lenin/Stalin/Mao et al.

 

[Thedrin]

Wait... Isaac Newton beat Jesus? WTH? Jesus was waaaaaaayy more influentual than Issac Newton. Ask someone who Jesus is and they'll know. Ask someone who Isaac Newton is, and they won't know, .

The aim of the OP is not to find the most famous person in history. It is, despite the thread title, to find the most influential person.

Personally, I'm leaning on the side of Jesus appearing low down the list. While many many people would claim to have adopted the teachings of Jesus as the rules by which to live their lives, the most influential thing in most peoples lives is politics - regardless of whether or not they want it to be. Jesus never did anything to change political realities and I cannot think of a simgle political body of signifigance in history that has actually based their actions on the teachings of Jesus.

Also, I wouldn't put Einstein very high up on the list either (I'm a big fan of his). While General Relativity is his theory and it's difficult to imagine anyone else coming up with it, it has had limited impact on the history. There is little else that he did which I could say with any confidence would not have been developed without him.

 

[Syterion]

Hmm, to me the religious guys aren't that important. So he started a huge religion? The period was ripe for change, and the roman religion was losing popularity regardless. If Jesus wasn't there, I'm sure some other person would have done something very close. There were lots of and lots of religions started out there, and only a few caught on, because they were started in the right place in the right time. If Jesus, or Muhammad or whoever else hadn't lived, someone else would have done something strikingly similar.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

By that standard, how influential is anyone? I mean, someone else could do what they ultimately did, right?

 

[warpus]

Educated adults and smart people know who he is. Most normal people and kids don't know who he is. But all of those people know who Jesus is. You can't exclude them just because you want to.

I've never met anyone over 15 who didn't know who he was..

 

[bad_ronald]

I would put Galton on any top ten list for: his pioneering work on human genetics, creating eugenics, founding differential psychology and psychometrics, all his work on statistics (regression, correlation, regression to the mean, and other innovations involving the normal distribution), creating the means for identifying people by fingerprints, hypothesizing the existence of the anti-cyclone, and various other contributions to meteorology. Of these, that which makes him the most influential is also the most taboo (i.e., human genetics/eugenics), but the Left can't hide from the truth forever.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Scipio Africanus anyone ?
Imagine a world where Rome lost the second Punic war...

 

[CaptainF]

Whoever invented the plow tops my list.

 

[Syterion]

By that standard, how influential is anyone? I mean, someone else could do what they ultimately did, right?

Hah. Not many people at all have the genius like that of the greatest minds the world has seen. Jesus couldn't even spread his religion in his own time.

But I do see your point. If we are judging influence, we can't take into account how easy or hard it was to do anything that these people did, just that they did it and the effect that it had on the world. On that note, I must change my opinion, but not completely. Jesus had a very large influence, but I still think scientific breakthroughs are more important as they contribute more to the progress of our society. It is also much, much harder to measure the social contributions of religions.

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree with Aristotle being on the list. He categorised the scientific fields, wirting treatises on all of them (their names are still those given by him) and provided a scientific method based on examination and proof.
Also the sheer volume of his work (of which only nearly half is estimated to have been saved) and the influence on scientists up to the 17th century, where Descartes and others begun the so-called 'new natural philosophy' justifies a position on such a list.
I am very much against granting such a position to jesus, mohammadh or st.paul. Afterall in my view they gave nothing scientifically, and instead caused a massive counter-evolution in the field of science. When the steam engine had already been discovered in the Hellenistic age, the dark age of christian (and other religious) thought burried it for the next 1700 years.
The amount of negative influence religion has had on science is simply massive on all respects, and the influence is analogous to that of ensuring human suffering for many aeons.

I would also place Freud on the list though, not so much because of his own work, but because he really started a new science, which is still developing.

Also one could mention several physicians and anatomists, for their inflience on neural science and general medicine. For symbolic reasons alone one should include at any rate Hippocrates.

Euclid could also be part of the list.

Also it is certain that we will never really find out who the very first influential people were, those who acted in the darkest of times, when man was still living in small groups, and hunting.

 

[Thedrin]

I am very much against granting such a position to jesus, mohammadh or st.paul. Afterall in my view they gave nothing scientifically, and instead caused a massive counter-evolution in the field of science.

If you believe this to be true then you've just said they shouldn't be on the list before giving a very good reason why they should be on the list.

Edit: I don't think that there's such a thing as negative influence.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Another one occured to me: the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius. I think that nothing had a worse effect on Christianity than becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, and that wouldn't have happened without them; pretty much all the harm it would eventually do can be traced to this, not to Jesus or Paul.