Who is the Most influential Scientist in history?

[pboily]

Oi. Where to start.
I am more or less agreeing with the part about mathematics not being science. Science is applying mathematics to reality. The fact that Newton invented a new math to describe what he was seeing, is definitely science.

I disagree. Science used to apply mathematics to reality. Modern science looks for realities from mathematics: the math comes first, then we look for the results in Nature/Universe/etc.

Natural scientists in the mold of "observe, then theorize" are few and far between these days. On the other hand, any scientist worth his/her bread goes "theorize, then observe"

This shift in the way we do Science can be attributed to Galois and a few other mathematicians (as Livio supports, see my post above).

As the saying goes: physics is much too hard for physicists.

 

[Naskra]

Euclid was not the originator of any of his theorems

Where did you get this idea?

His most FAMOUS equation is the one about gravity F = G*m1*m2/r^2,

Not much better. See my comments on Newton above.
Curiously, Newton's Principia is a much celebrated work, seminal, paramount importance, etc. I don't think more than a dozen people per
century actually read it.

 

[pi-r8]

You should give Newton due credit for being the first man in 2000 years to
properly understand Aristotle. You are the second.

Perhaps he deserves the title of most influential classicist then? Besides, I don't claim to understand Aristotle particularly well. Deriving F=MA from Aristotle is actually something that one of my physics professors showed me.

 

[pi-r8]

Oi. Where to start.

I am more or less agreeing with the part about mathematics not being science. Science is applying mathematics to reality. The fact that Newton invented a new math to describe what he was seeing, is definitely science.

The laws of motion, of which F = M*A is a part, taken as a group were transformingly important. His most FAMOUS equation is the one about gravity F = G*m1*m2/r^2, ie the inverse square relation you refer to..

I guess it's debatable what his "most famous equation" is. At any rate, did you read what I wrote about Hooke? My main point was that "Newton's law of gravity" should more properly be called Hooke's law of gravity. As for the laws of motion, I think they're a little overhyped too. It's not as though they actually led to the discovery of any new phenomenon. All they really do is give a neat way of expressing a lot of phenomon mathematically.

Euclid was not the originator of any of his theorems. That does not mean that Euclid was unimportant. Quite the contrary. There is a place for unifiers and popularizers. To dismiss Newton, by saying that he is nothing more than a scientific Euclid, is specious at best, and backhand praise to boot.
J

First of all, when did I say that Newton was a scientific Euclid? What I'm saying is that Newton is just getting the credit for things that other people have done, without him doing any of it.

Also, can I assume from your sn that you have something to do with KU?

 

[pi-r8]

I disagree. Science used to apply mathematics to reality. Modern science looks for realities from mathematics: the math comes first, then we look for the results in Nature/Universe/etc.

Natural scientists in the mold of "observe, then theorize" are few and far between these days. On the other hand, any scientist worth his/her bread goes "theorize, then observe"

This shift in the way we do Science can be attributed to Galois and a few other mathematicians (as Livio supports, see my post above).

As the saying goes: physics is much too hard for physicists.

Who on earth does science that way? Even the theoretical physicists that I know start with experimental data. The experimentalists, of course, do nothing that isn't related to experiments.

 

[pboily]

And I will counter that the (good) scientists I know (unlike the garden variety taxonomists) start with theory.

A quick example: spirals in the human heart. It is known that there is a link between spirals in cardiac tissue (rotors, in the literature) and atrial fibrillation. LeBlanc and Wulff first showed that if there is a site of high density (possibly a patch of cardiac tissue that has been "burned") close to the rotor, than the rotor will generically anchor at the site of inhomogeneity (or be repelled by it). People weren't too surprised because similar things had been observed in other excitable media. Then it was asked: what happens if there are two sites of high density near the rotor. It was assumed that it would anchor to either one of the sites, so experiments weren't even made. Turns out that's crap: the rotor anchors at some random point which is neither here nor there. It was observed only after the proof that it would be so observed. So to answer your question: cardiologists at the Heart Institute of the University of Ottawa do science that way.

 

[pi-r8]

Do you know what a theory is? It's something that explains past phenomenon, and predicts future phenemenon. So someone who "starts with theory" is really starting with observations.

 

[pboily]

No, what is this the-o-ry you speak of?

Someone who "starts with theory" (as opposed to experimentation) is someone that starts with axioms. Whether these axioms have any basis in observed fact is purely coincidental. Experimentalists find theories with axioms closely related to their previous observations to be prime candidate theories, but mathematicians are not constrained by that need.

In the above example, the axioms were symmetry properties that the heart does not even posess. An experimentalist would have gone no further because a) the heart is not infinite; b) it is not uniform; c) it is not even well approximated by infinity and uniformness. A theoretical scientist says: who cares, let's see what happens anyway. If we get a nice result, we'll be able to tell experimentalists what experiment they should run. And look at that. We're able to tell cardiologists how they should design their surgical experiments, and tell them what to expect.

EDIT: I should point out that theory without experiment (to confirm or infirm) is not science.

 

[pboily]

Natural scientists in the mold of "observe, then theorize" are few and far between these days. On the other hand, any scientist worth his/her bread goes "theorize, then observe"

@pi: I have thought about this some more and I cannot let this statement stand as is. You are correct: things are not like that (yet, if ever).

Experimentalists are still in the majority, and observations followed by theories are not simply "cataloguing the information."

Sometimes, the theory comes first: the author who came up with the rotor business above had no pre-knowledge of observations, but that's mainly because no experiment had been performed. Had there been results, the theory would have been developped to explain them, and not the other way around. Furthermore, shouldn't there be some sort of intent? If one sets out to prove a theorem but then by accident manages to be able to guide an experimentalist in his/her experiences, is that science, or mathematics guiding science?

 

[Plotinus]

It was Francis Bacon who insisted that science must begin with observations, and one can theorise only after you've done your experiments. But he was wrong. Every decent scientist must start with a theory before making any observations, because if you don't have at least some kind of theory you won't know what observations you need to make. It's said that Bacon died of flu after stuffing chickens with ice to see if it would help preserve them. Well, clearly he was starting with the hypothesis that ice might help preserve chicken, or he wouldn't have done the experiment in the first place.

It was Leibniz who really showed why pure empiricism is wrong, although for some reason people don't read him enough these days...

 

[ironduck]

That old discussion again?

Of course you can observe before theorizing and vice versa. It's perfectly possible to observe something without trying to construct any hypothesis around it. Try observing an animal, for instance. That will give you a bunch of data that might surprise you and inspire you to create a hypothesis (of course these things usually happen on their own because that's how the human brain works).

 

[pi-r8]

@pi: I have thought about this some more and I cannot let this statement stand as is. You are correct: things are not like that (yet, if ever).

Experimentalists are still in the majority, and observations followed by theories are not simply "cataloguing the information."

Sometimes, the theory comes first: the author who came up with the rotor business above had no pre-knowledge of observations, but that's mainly because no experiment had been performed. Had there been results, the theory would have been developped to explain them, and not the other way around. Furthermore, shouldn't there be some sort of intent? If one sets out to prove a theorem but then by accident manages to be able to guide an experimentalist in his/her experiences, is that science, or mathematics guiding science?

I'm sorry if I came off a little harsh when I responded to you. I didn't mean to be. I think I have a better idea of what you're saying now.

If I understand what you're saying correctly, it's that scientists will often make a prediction which hasn't been tested (such as where rotors will anchor), and only afterwards go out and test that prediction. I completely agree with this.

What I thought you were suggesting was that scientists (particularly physicists) were coming up with theories which were completely removed from reality, and basically just mathematical games. As someone who aspires to one day be a physicist, I felt that I had to object to this.

 

[Verbose]

I'm sorry if I came off a little harsh when I responded to you. I didn't mean to be. I think I have a better idea of what you're saying now.

If I understand what you're saying correctly, it's that scientists will often make a prediction which hasn't been tested (such as where rotors will anchor), and only afterwards go out and test that prediction. I completely agree with this.

What I thought you were suggesting was that scientists (particularly physicists) were coming up with theories which were completely removed from reality, and basically just mathematical games. As someone who aspires to one day be a physicist, I felt that I had to object to this.

If one asks scientists today they still usually claim to follow "the hypothetical deductive method":
http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/sci/hd.php

OTOH there's quite a bit of interest in working out what scientists do, in fact, DO (not what they say they do). So by now science studies has this big catalogue of microstudies of all and sundry kinds of sciences, and the general conclusions that as scientists are pragmatists (any which way ahead is good as long as it yeilds results), the hypothetical deductive method is in itself just an ideal description of how things should work. (Sometimes lucky guesses is what in fact gets you ahead instead.) And the business end of science is research anyway. So the pertinent question tends to rather be a nitty-gritty "How is research done?" than some kind of loftier "What are the principles of science?"

What's done tends to depend on what science, set up how, with what current tasks at hand too. There's currently a lot of research being done that simply revolves around running batches of tests to see what happens. In some ways that kind of research is more like the 19th c. idea of an inductive method; i.e. just make observations, no "premature theorising", and somehow in the end, when enough data has been collected, conclusions about the world will fall in the scientists lap like ripe apples — seemingly without him having actively done anything. Otoh that kind of research tends not to lead to radical new stuff. It's more like filling in the details between the broad strokes of a sketch.

Just generally I feel the attitude of scientists asking questions when looking at stuff might be summed up as: "Is this doing something interesting?"

 

[pboily]

What I thought you were suggesting was that scientists (particularly physicists) were coming up with theories which were completely removed from reality, and basically just mathematical games. As someone who aspires to one day be a physicist, I felt that I had to object to this.

The thing is, it happens some of the time; of course, since a mathematician would only get to work with such scientists (I guess you could say I was guilty of false induction), I sort of assumed that that's the way all scientists went about there craft.

Incidentally, the rotor business started out as a mathematical "game". But that's an exception, not the norm.

 

[ironduck]

Many of the best breakthrough results happen as a result of accidents

 

[nihilistic]

As I said before, it's clear that Aristotle cracked open an egg every day and carefully examined what was inside before writing up what he saw. Why is this not empirical?

Well, fine. I'll settle at that while there are perhaps many instances where Aristotle was empirical, you'll have to agree that his macroscopic world view is not, and that the following he attracted, the whole Aritotelian world view, is largely a failed philosophy rather than science. That while he himself may have actually done science, he generally fostered a world view of philosophy trumpeting empiricism.

 

[Verbose]

Well, fine. I'll settle at that while there are perhaps many instances where Aristotle was empirical, you'll have to agree that his macroscopic world view is not, and that the following he attracted, the whole Aritotelian world view, is largely a failed philosophy rather than science. That while he himself may have actually done science, he generally fostered a world view of philosophy trumpeting empiricism.

As for being a failure...?
Aristotle and his followers made it work for almost 2000 years.

And today we can sit in judgement over them, declaring their efforts a failure, but it's still their position we have progressed from. If that's failure, I want to get me some of it!

Because there's the bitter realisation of the history of science:
In retropsect people have always been getting it all wrong. And still they progressed depsite all their errors.

So, as we (or some of us) feel compelled to consider Aristotelianism a failed philosophy, in another 1000 years people will likely look at us, maybe give us full marks for effort, but still consider us to have been just as great a bunch of buffoons.

 

[nihilistic]

I disagree. Science used to apply mathematics to reality. Modern science looks for realities from mathematics: the math comes first, then we look for the results in Nature/Universe/etc.

Natural scientists in the mold of "observe, then theorize" are few and far between these days. On the other hand, any scientist worth his/her bread goes "theorize, then observe"

While what you said is correct, I think you missed the point. You are describing how new concepts are arrived at, while OJH is describing what is usually the what scientists and mathematicians present in the final, formal form as their findinds. The point is that you can arrive at a concept in various different means, but in the end the mathematic/scientific paper has to be written on a justification that distinguishes it from hearsay or metaphysics or alchemy or numerology or religion. It is precisely that process of justification that essentially defines math and science seperately from another, and it is that process of justification that mathematicians and scientists spend the majority of their time on. It is that important, because it is exactly what seperates science and math away from bullfeathers.

How are math and science justified differently? Science is based on the meshing of two principles: empiricism and logic. The logic is the math, and the empiricism is the part where it says "if theory conflicts with reality, reality wins". Scientific theories say "we have tested this many times, under various circumstances, compensated for all significant outside variables, and eliminated all other possibilities that we can think of". Mathematical proofs say something else: "this result follows deductively from these axioms", such that if the results are false, then either there is a mistake in the reasoning, a bad axiom, or that logical thought do not exist ... that if no mistakes are made then the result is true because it is essentially equivalent with truth.

 

[Plotinus]

Well, fine. I'll settle at that while there are perhaps many instances where Aristotle was empirical, you'll have to agree that his macroscopic world view is not, and that the following he attracted, the whole Aritotelian world view, is largely a failed philosophy rather than science. That while he himself may have actually done science, he generally fostered a world view of philosophy trumpeting empiricism.

Well, I'm not really sure exactly what you're referring to here. Yes, it is of course true that Aristotelianism - as a philosophical tradition - was about philosophy, not science. But what on earth is wrong with that? The medieval Aristotelians weren't particularly interested in science. If they took ideas from Aristotle's philosophical writings and not from his scientific ones, then I don't really see why that is a problem. It seems to me that you're basically criticising Aristotle and his later followers simply for being philosophers and asking questions that can't be settled empirically. But that is not an illegitimate thing to do, and neither does it make whatever science they also did illegitimate, either. Unless you really think that questions of logic, ethics, metaphysics etc should be settled using modern scientific methods. But Aristotle himself said that that sort of thing doesn't work - it would be stupid to expect the same accuracy you get in geometry when doing ethics - and surely he was right.

As for being a "failed" philosophy - well, I don't really see that. Aristotle's metaphysics aren't particularly fashionable these days, but Thomism - which is based upon them - is alive and well, you know. I've always thought that hylomorphism seems quite a sensible way of thinking. Modern predicate logic is still based upon his logical writings, despite all the refinements it has been subjected to over the centuries. And Aristotle's ethical theories have actually enjoyed a considerable renaissance among philosophers over the last twenty years. There's nothing "failed" about it.

 

[Millman]

They all seem important. I would say who ever discovered stuff the earliest, otherwise some other guy would have done it but it would have taken much longer.

Asking the one who was the most influential is not easy to answer. From a human point of view I could declare not one mathematican or astrologist would be important. Maybe philosophers like Socrates or writers like Shakespeare who came out with words that 'gave' others to perservere in the first place.

Also, it is likely other people common, kings, and scientific didn't care what others thought and pursued it anyway because they were good at it and had to do it because they knew they might find something.

The human desire to think anyone was any more or any less important distorts stuff. But many leaders would not tolerate equality.