Who is the Most influential Scientist in history?

[Stolen Rutters]

I vote Issac Newton, just from the laws, the advancements in mathematics (calculus is way powerful), and the whole scientific method thing that came into its own and influenced more-or-less every scientist and scientist wannabe since, but I've seen some good arguments for others.

I like Einstein, from the earth-shattering advances in worldview that resulted from his work, and since he influences the most people to become scientists, at least 'round these parts.

Maybe Aristotle had the most impact, and thus influence, over the longest time. Don't know much about Roger Bacon. I guess it would be more how early can you make a lasting impact to get your points up to be called "most".

I personally like Ben Franklin, though his impact is more in the application side. I always want to vote for Ben Franklin.

 

[ironduck]

I'd say that, rather than accusing medieval scientists of being too much in the thrall of Aristotle, there just weren't many medieval scientists to speak of in the first place.

In Europe, anyway. The islamic golden age was a different story.

 

[onejayhawk]

In Europe, anyway. The islamic golden age was a different story.

What happened with that? There are huge advances in mathematics and the sciences, then it all just fizzles.

J

 

[ironduck]

Two major things happened, First there was a change in the role of religion after a number of disputes between various factions which caused the relatively open view towards science to be discarded in place of strict theology (not unlike backwards Europe during the dark ages). Secondly the strong central power crumbled as the empire was under pressure from several fronts, not least the mongols.

 

[pboily]

But no-one would say that Aquinas and the others were scientists.

I certainly did...

Fair enough, however. If the worst criticism of the man as a scientist I can come up with was that he was too respected, I only have half a leg to stand on anyway.

 

[pboily]

A slight off-topical note re:

[...]Indeed, Aquinas' understanding of what science is was completely different from our own (and Aristotle's!) - he thought that science was a deductive discipline, proceeding from axiomatic first principles, like maths.

In some sense, modern physics has gone back to this approach: Livio (link to his book in one of my posts above) argues that breakthroughs such as general relativity (as opposed to special relativity), the unification of the non-gravitational forces (Yang-Mills) and superstring theory have come about directly as a result of natural deduction, axiomatically based on Galois' early concept of symmetry and group theory. In these cases, experiments confirm theories, rather than theories being built to explain observations.

Of course, I've also heard physicists proclaim that the marriage between physics and mathematics is over, so maybe we are back to experiment first, than think away.

 

[josephstalin]

Newton as of now. Einstein - later, when people will actually get it.

 

[nihilistic]

Nah, that would depend on whether you mean what Darwin actually did or what's being conveniently pegged on his name.

Evolution always was very much a group effort, beginning well before Darwin and only starting to look the way it currently does in the 1930's or so. One could perhaps say Darwin was extaordinarily influential because there was so much unfinished business surrounding his theory it allowed all kinds of people to make contributions.

Seems to be the case very often. But since science is a group effort, if you're lucky, it's no wonder either.

Well, many of Newton's Laws of Physics were more or less known by his time, but Newton was able to organize them and go several steps further. What resulted is the takeover of the physics world by the Newtonian world view. Similarly, having organized and then determined a mechanism for evolution, Darwin's work convinced the biologists of the evolutionary world view. As of today, I'd say that the evolutionary world view is more central to biology than the Newtonian world view is central to physics; since Einstein has revised Newton, while DNA/RNA has only reinforced Darwin.

 

[BaneBlade]

Aristotle, no doubt. There's nearly no topic he hadn't influenced for the next 2000 years in our western world.

 

[nihilistic]

Aristotle, no doubt. There's nearly no topic he hadn't influenced for the next 2000 years in our western world.

Obviously Aristotle was a philosopher, but I don't see why that stops him being a scientist as well, or why the fact that he was wrong about a lot of things stops him being a scientist. Aristotle was the first person to regard the natural world as an object worthy of study in its own right, and he even seems to have performed experiments (his famous description of the development of the chicken foetus in the egg). He wrote down what he saw as accurately as possible (though he did not yet have the emphasis on measurement common to later scientists), and he formulated theories to fit the evidence. Now of course many of his theories were wrong, but no doubt the theory of spontaneous generation fitted the evidence as far as he could see it. Besides which, some of his claims were subsequently denied or forgotten, and only vindicated quite recently: for example, his observation that octopuses use one of their arms for reproduction was only confirmed in the nineteenth century.

Except that by today's standards Aristotle cannot be considered a scientist. What Plotinus said isn't exactly true. Aristotle's "experiments", as you would call them, are mostly thought experiments and not physical experiments. In that lies the fundamental difference between scientists and philosophers: scientists use inductive logic, philosophers use deductive. Scientific theories are supposed to be explanations of experiments, not derivations from "principles". The reason Aristotle is famous is that even though he was so wrong people still believed him unquestionably for so long.

 

[Kyriakos]

Aristotle still is one of the most analytical people of all time, and i doubt that this will change in the next few aeons either.
Although he was not correct in all of his assumptions, his importance lies in the thoroughness of his work, and its volume. He wrote about all of the fields known at the time, and as has been mentioned created many himself as well.

Also i am against the false distinction between science and philosophy. In greek there is a distinction between "positive science" and "theoretical science", the latter being the humanities. Also the greek word for science, "επιστήμη" means "that for which observations can be made". I am not sure if the english word "science" has a similar break-up.

Some of the ancient philosophers, after all, were scientists in other fields too. For example Protagoras was a grammatician, and Pythagoras was a mathematician and a musical theorist.

 

[nihilistic]

Aristotle still is one of the most analytical people of all time, and i doubt that this will change in the next few aeons either.
Although he was not correct in all of his assumptions, his importance lies in the thoroughness of his work, and its volume. He wrote about all of the fields known at the time, and as has been mentioned created many himself as well.

I don't know what you mean by 'analytical' there, but yes, Aristotle is thorough. However, in termsof science, there is scarecely anyone like Aristotle who is also thoroughly wrong. His 'theories' are have such self-consistency and completeness entirely because it isn't tested in the real world at all. He basically conjectured a make-believe cartoonish world and simply claimed it as reality. The European scientific renaissance is in essence a repudiation of the Aristotelian ideal of "reality conforming to theory", as well as essentially every one of Aristotle's scientific theories.

Also i am against the false distinction between science and philosophy.

Then you should take physics 101 and ask yourself why the hell are they making you do those silly experiments. They are there because the basis of science is the real world experiments. Whatever the Greeks meant by whatever word they use is irrelevant as etymological arguments are loserly, but by the current definition of a scientist, Aristotle simply does not fit the bill.

 

[Plotinus]

But Aristotle did go out and look at the real world. That's the whole point of Aristotelianism as opposed to (say) Platonism. Look at his studies of marine life, for example (his account of how octopi mate was unconfirmed until the nineteenth century, but it was right), or his description of the different stages of development of a chicken foetus (he obviously cracked open an egg every day to have a look). Not controlled experiments as we would understand them, of course, but still clearly attempts to study the world first and describe it second, on the basis of the observations. I don't know what "Aristotle" you're attacking, but it's a mere caricature of the real one. What's your evidence that he "conjectured a make-believe cartoonish world and claimed it as reality"? Aristotle was wrong a lot of the time, of course - but it doesn't follow from that that he made no effort to try to be right.

 

[nihilistic]

But Aristotle did go out and look at the real world. That's the whole point of Aristotelianism as opposed to (say) Platonism.

The key words being "as opposed to". Yes, Plato is worse, but that doesn't mean Aristotle is any good. Note that I'm discussing their worth as scientists, not philosophers.

Look at his studies of marine life, for example (his account of how octopi mate was unconfirmed until the nineteenth century, but it was right), or his description of the different stages of development of a chicken foetus (he obviously cracked open an egg every day to have a look). Not controlled experiments as we would understand them, of course, but still clearly attempts to study the world first and describe it second, on the basis of the observations. I don't know what "Aristotle" you're attacking, but it's a mere caricature of the real one. What's your evidence that he "conjectured a make-believe cartoonish world and claimed it as reality"? Aristotle was wrong a lot of the time, of course - but it doesn't follow from that that he made no effort to try to be right.

I don't know of the specific marine account that you spoke of, but in stating you believed Aristotle is anywhere near empirical you've essentially ignored the vast majority of Aristotle's treatises. Read up on his "Physics", "On the Heavens", "History of Animals", among others. The guiding principle behind his theories is almost always philosophy rather than experimentation. Go ahead. Read up on his concepts too: his five elements, his four causes, his theories of matter and form .... In short, he is not an empiricist, therefore, he is not a scientist.

 

[Plotinus]

The studies of marine life that I mentioned all come in the History of Animals, so I'm not sure why you're telling me to read that book as evidence against Aristotle's empiricism if you've not read it yourself. In fact, here's a typical passage from the first book of the History of Animals:

Some animals at first live in water, and by and by change their shape and live out of water, as is the case with river worms, for out of these the gadfly develops.

Furthermore, some animals are stationary, and some are erratic. Stationary animals are found in water, but no such creature is found on dry land. In the water are many creatures that live in close adhesion to an external object, as is the case with several kinds of oyster. And, by the way, the sponge appears to be endowed with a certain sensibility: as a proof of which it is alleged that the difficulty in detaching it from its moorings is increased if the movement to detach it be not covertly applied.

Other creatures adhere at one time to an object and detach themselves from it at other times, as is the case with a species of the so-called sea-nettle; for some of these creatures seek their food in the night-time loose and unattached.

This is pretty general, but what's not empirical about it? Note in particular his comment about the apparent ability of the oyster to sense its surroundings - a claim which is supported by the evidence of what happens if you sneak up on as opposed to attack it openly.

Here's another passage where he goes into some anatomical detail:

Now, as the nature of blood and the nature of the veins have all the appearance of being primitive, we must discuss their properties first of all, and all the more as some previous writers have treated them very unsatisfactorily. And the cause of the ignorance thus manifested is the extreme difficulty experienced in the way of observation. For in the dead bodies of animals the nature of the chief veins is undiscoverable, owing to the fact that they collapse at once when the blood leaves them; for the blood pours out of them in a stream, like liquid out of a vessel, since there is no blood separately situated by itself, except a little in the heart, but it is all lodged in the veins. In living animals it is impossible to inspect these parts, for of their very nature they are situated inside the body and out of sight. For this reason anatomists who have carried on their investigations on dead bodies in the dissecting room have failed to discover the chief roots of the veins, while those who have narrowly inspected bodies of living men reduced to extreme attenuation have arrived at conclusions regarding the origin of the veins from the manifestations visible externally.

[He here quotes, at some length, earlier anatomists about the blood vessels]

The above quotations sum up pretty well the statements of all previous writers. Furthermore, there are some writers on Natural History who have not ventured to lay down the law in such precise terms as regards the veins, but who all alike agree in assigning the head and the brain as the starting-point of the veins. And in this opinion they are mistaken.

The investigation of such a subject, as has been remarked, is one fraught with difficulties; but, if any one be keenly interested in the matter, his best plan will be to allow his animals to starve to emaciation, then to strangle them on a sudden, and thereupon to prosecute his investigations.

We now proceed to give particulars regarding the properties and functions of the veins. There are two blood-vessels in the thorax by the backbone, and lying to its inner side; and of these two the larger one is situated to the front, and the lesser one is to the rear of it; and the larger is situated rather to the right hand side of the body, and the lesser one to the left; and by some this vein is termed the 'aorta', from the fact that even in dead bodies part of it is observed to be full of air. These blood-vessels have their origins in the heart, for they traverse the other viscera, in whatever direction they happen to run, without in any way losing their distinctive characteristic as blood-vessels, whereas the heart is as it were a part of them (and that too more in respect to the frontward and larger one of the two), owing to the fact that these two veins are above and below, with the heart lying midway.

The heart in all animals has cavities inside it. In the case of the smaller animals even the largest of the chambers is scarcely discernible; the second larger is scarcely discernible in animals of medium size; but in the largest animals all three chambers are distinctly seen. In the heart then (with its pointed end directed frontwards, as has been observed) the largest of the three chambers is on the right-hand side and highest up; the least one is on the left-hand side; and the medium-sized one lies in betwixt the other two; and the largest one of the three chambers is a great deal larger than either of the two others. All three, however, are connected with passages leading in the direction of the lung, but all these communications are indistinctly discernible by reason of their minuteness, except one.

The great blood-vessel, then, is attached to the biggest of the three chambers, the one that lies uppermost and on the right-hand side; it then extends right through the chamber, coming out as blood-vessel again; just as though the cavity of the heart were a part of the vessel, in which the blood broadens its channel as a river that widens out in a lake. The aorta is attached to the middle chamber; only, by the way, it is connected with it by much narrower pipe.

The great blood-vessel then passes through the heart (and runs from the heart into the aorta). The great vessel looks as though made of membrane or skin, while the aorta is narrower than it, and is very sinewy; and as it stretches away to the head and to the lower parts it becomes exceedingly narrow and sinewy.

First of all, then, upwards from the heart there stretches a part of the great blood-vessel towards the lung and the attachment of the aorta, a part consisting of a large undivided vessel. But there split off from it two parts; one towards the lung and the other towards the backbone and the last vertebra of the neck.

The vessel, then, that extends to the lung, as the lung itself is duplicate, divides at first into two; and then extends along by every pipe and every perforation, greater along the greater ones, lesser along the less, so continuously that it is impossible to discern a single part wherein there is not perforation and vein; for the extremities are indistinguishable from their minuteness, and in point of fact the whole lung appears to be filled with blood.

The branches of the blood-vessels lie above the tubes that extend from the windpipe. And that vessel which extends to the vertebra of the neck and the backbone, stretches back again along the backbone; as Homer represents in the lines:-

(Antilochus, as Thoon turned him round), Transpierc'd his back with a dishonest wound; The hollow vein that to the neck extends, Along the chine, the eager javelin rends.

From this vessel there extend small blood-vessels at each rib and each vertebra; and at the vertebra above the kidneys the vessel bifurcates. And in the above way the parts branch off from the great blood-vessel.

But up above all these, from that part which is connected with the heart, the entire vein branches off in two directions. For its branches extend to the sides and to the collarbones, and then pass on, in men through the armpits to the arms, in quadrupeds to the forelegs, in birds to the wings, and in fishes to the upper or pectoral fins. The trunks of these veins, where they first branch off, are called the 'jugular' veins; and, where they branch off to the neck the great vein run alongside the windpipe; and, occasionally, if these veins are pressed externally, men, though not actually choked, become insensible, shut their eyes, and fall flat on the ground. Extending in the way described and keeping the windpipe in betwixt them, they pass on until they reach the ears at the junction of the lower jaw with the skull. Hence again they branch off into four veins, of which one bends back and descends through the neck and the shoulder, and meets the previous branching off of the vein at the bend of the arm, while the rest of it terminates at the hand and fingers.

Each vein of the other pair stretches from the region of the ear to the brain, and branches off in a number of fine and delicate veins into the so-called meninx, or membrane, which surrounds the brain. The brain itself in all animals is destitute of blood, and no vein, great or small, holds its course therein. But of the remaining veins that branch off from the last mentioned vein some envelop the head, others close their courses in the organs of sense and at the roots of the teeth in veins exceedingly fine and minute.

This seems perfectly empirical to me - or was his recommendation about the kind of experiment to perform to check these facts purely speculative? Most of this work is like this. I don't see why you dismiss it as unempirical. Of course there's lots in there that is wrong or outdated, but that doesn't make it unscientific. Try this, for example:

Of water animals the genus of fishes constitutes a single group apart from the rest, and including many diverse forms.

In the first place, the fish has a head, a back, a belly, in the neighbourhood of which last are placed the stomach and viscera; and behind it has a tail of continuous, undivided shape, but not, by the way, in all cases alike. No fish has a neck, or any limb, or testicles at all, within or without, or breasts. But, by the way this absence of breasts may predicated of all non-viviparous animals; and in point of fact viviparous animals are not in all cases provided with the organ, excepting such as are directly viviparous without being first oviparous. Thus the dolphin is directly viviparous, and accordingly we find it furnished with two breasts, not situated high up, but in the neighbourhood of the genitals. And this creature is not provided, like quadrupeds, with visible teats, but has two vents, one on each flank, from which the milk flows; and its young have to follow after it to get suckled, and this phenomenon has been actually witnessed.

Fishes, then, as has been observed, have no breasts and no passage for the genitals visible externally. But they have an exceptional organ in the gills, whereby, after taking the water in the mouth, they discharge it again; and in the fins, of which the greater part have four, and the lanky ones two, as, for instance, the eel, and these two situated near to the gills. In like manner the grey mullet-as, for instance, the mullet found in the lake at Siphae-have only two fins; and the same is the case with the fish called Ribbon-fish. Some of the lanky fishes have no fins at all, such as the muraena, nor gills articulated like those of other fish.

And of those fish that are provided with gills, some have coverings for this organ, whereas all the selachians have the organ unprotected by a cover. And those fishes that have coverings or opercula for the gills have in all cases their gills placed sideways; whereas, among selachians, the broad ones have the gills down below on the belly, as the torpedo and the ray, while the lanky ones have the organ placed sideways, as is the case in all the dog-fish.

The fishing-frog has gills placed sideways, and covered not with a spiny operculum, as in all but the selachian fishes, but with one of skin.

Morever, with fishes furnished with gills, the gills in some cases are simple in others duplicate; and the last gill in the direction of the body is always simple. And, again, some fishes have few gills, and others have a great number; but all alike have the same number on both sides. Those that have the least number have one gill on either side, and this one duplicate, like the boar-fish; others have two on either side, one simple and the other duplicate, like the conger and the scarus; others have four on either side, simple, as the elops, the synagris, the muraena, and the eel; others have four, all, with the exception of the hindmost one, in double rows, as the wrasse, the perch, the sheat-fish, and the carp. The dog-fish have all their gills double, five on a side; and the sword-fish has eight double gills. So much for the number of gills as found in fishes.

Again, fishes differ from other animals in more ways than as regards the gills. For they are not covered with hairs as are viviparous land animals, nor, as is the case with certain oviparous quadrupeds, with tessellated scutes, nor, like birds, with feathers; but for the most part they are covered with scales. Some few are rough-skinned, while the smooth-skinned are very few indeed. Of the Selachia some are rough-skinned and some smooth-skinned; and among the smooth-skinned fishes are included the conger, the eel, and the tunny.

All fishes are saw-toothed excepting the scarus; and the teeth in all cases are sharp and set in many rows, and in some cases are placed on the tongue. The tongue is hard and spiny, and so firmly attached that fishes in many instances seem to be devoid of the organ altogether. The mouth in some cases is wide-stretched, as it is with some viviparous quadrupeds....

With regard to organs of sense, all save eyes, fishes possess none of them, neither the organs nor their passages, neither ears nor nostrils; but all fishes are furnished with eyes, and the eyes devoid of lids, though the eyes are not hard; with regard to the organs connected with the other senses, hearing and smell, they are devoid alike of the organs themselves and of passages indicative of them.

Fishes without exception are supplied with blood. Some of them are oviparous, and some viviparous; scaly fish are invariably oviparous, but cartilaginous fishes are all viviparous, with the single exception of the fishing-frog.

Looks to me like the good Stagyrite spent an awful lot of time looking at fish. Here's the passage I mentioned about the breeding habits of octopi:

The octopus, by the way, uses his feelers either as feet or hands; with the two which stand over his mouth he draws in food, and the last of his feelers he employs in the act of copulation; and this last one, by the way, is extremely sharp, is exceptional as being of a whitish colour, and at its extremity is bifurcate; that is to say, it has an additional something on the rachis, and by rachis is meant the smooth surface or edge of the arm on the far side from the suckers.

And here is the passage about the development of the chick inside the egg:

Generation from the egg proceeds in an identical manner with all birds, but the full periods from conception to birth differ, as has been said. With the common hen after three days and three nights there is the first indication of the embryo; with larger birds the interval being longer, with smaller birds shorter. Meanwhile the yolk comes into being, rising towards the sharp end, where the primal element of the egg is situated, and where the egg gets hatched; and the heart appears, like a speck of blood, in the white of the egg. This point beats and moves as though endowed with life, and from it two vein-ducts with blood in them trend in a convoluted course (as the egg substance goes on growing, towards each of the two circumjacent integuments); and a membrane carrying bloody fibres now envelops the yolk, leading off from the vein-ducts. A little afterwards the body is differentiated, at first very small and white. The head is clearly distinguished, and in it the eyes, swollen out to a great extent. This condition of the eyes lat on for a good while, as it is only by degrees that they diminish in size and collapse. At the outset the under portion of the body appears insignificant in comparison with the upper portion. Of the two ducts that lead from the heart, the one proceeds towards the circumjacent integument, and the other, like a navel-string, towards the yolk. The life-element of the chick is in the white of the egg, and the nutriment comes through the navel-string out of the yolk.

When the egg is now ten days old the chick and all its parts are distinctly visible. The head is still larger than the rest of its body, and the eyes larger than the head, but still devoid of vision. The eyes, if removed about this time, are found to be larger than beans, and black; if the cuticle be peeled off them there is a white and cold liquid inside, quite glittering in the sunlight, but there is no hard substance whatsoever. Such is the condition of the head and eyes. At this time also the larger internal organs are visible, as also the stomach and the arrangement of the viscera; and veins that seem to proceed from the heart are now close to the navel. From the navel there stretch a pair of veins; one towards the membrane that envelops the yolk (and, by the way, the yolk is now liquid, or more so than is normal), and the other towards that membrane which envelops collectively the membrane wherein the chick lies, the membrane of the yolk, and the intervening liquid. (For, as the chick grows, little by little one part of the yolk goes upward, and another part downward, and the white liquid is between them; and the white of the egg is underneath the lower part of the yolk, as it was at the outset.) On the tenth day the white is at the extreme outer surface, reduced in amount, glutinous, firm in substance, and sallow in colour.

The disposition of the several constituent parts is as follows. First and outermost comes the membrane of the egg, not that of the shell, but underneath it. Inside this membrane is a white liquid; then comes the chick, and a membrane round about it, separating it off so as to keep the chick free from the liquid; next after the chick comes the yolk, into which one of the two veins was described as leading, the other one leading into the enveloping white substance. (A membrane with a liquid resembling serum envelops the entire structure. Then comes another membrane right round the embryo, as has been described, separating it off against the liquid. Underneath this comes the yolk, enveloped in another membrane (into which yolk proceeds the navel-string that leads from the heart and the big vein), so as to keep the embryo free of both liquids.)

About the twentieth day, if you open the egg and touch the chick, it moves inside and chirps; and it is already coming to be covered with down, when, after the twentieth day is ast, the chick begins to break the shell. The head is situated over the right leg close to the flank, and the wing is placed over the head; and about this time is plain to be seen the membrane resembling an after-birth that comes next after the outermost membrane of the shell, into which membrane the one of the navel-strings was described as leading (and, by the way, the chick in its entirety is now within it), and so also is the other membrane resembling an after-birth, namely that surrounding the yolk, into which the second navel-string was described as leading; and both of them were described as being connected with the heart and the big vein. At this conjuncture the navel-string that leads to the outer afterbirth collapses and becomes detached from the chick, and the membrane that leads into the yolk is fastened on to the thin gut of the creature, and by this time a considerable amount of the yolk is inside the chick and a yellow sediment is in its stomach. About this time it discharges residuum in the direction of the outer after-birth, and has residuum inside its stomach; and the outer residuum is white (and there comes a white substance inside). By and by the yolk, diminishing gradually in size, at length becomes entirely used up and comprehended within the chick (so that, ten days after hatching, if you cut open the chick, a small remnant of the yolk is still left in connexion with the gut), but it is detached from the navel, and there is nothing in the interval between, but it has been used up entirely. During the period above referred to the chick sleeps, wakes up, makes a move and looks up and chirps; and the heart and the navel together palpitate as though the creature were respiring. So much as to generation from the egg in the case of birds.

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?

Aristotle was not always an empiricist, of course. You are right that his physics is not particularly based on observation, and obviously his metaphysics even less so. Yet the fact that Aristotle was sometimes not empirical doesn't mean he never was. Newton spent most of his time writing rubbish about the book of Revelation - does that disqualify his other work from counting as science?

 

[onejayhawk]

But Aristotle did go out and look at the real world. That's the whole point of Aristotelianism as opposed to (say) Platonism. Look at his studies of marine life, for example (his account of how octopi mate was unconfirmed until the nineteenth century, but it was right), or his description of the different stages of development of a chicken foetus (he obviously cracked open an egg every day to have a look). Not controlled experiments as we would understand them, of course, but still clearly attempts to study the world first and describe it second, on the basis of the observations. I don't know what "Aristotle" you're attacking, but it's a mere caricature of the real one. What's your evidence that he "conjectured a make-believe cartoonish world and claimed it as reality"? Aristotle was wrong a lot of the time, of course - but it doesn't follow from that that he made no effort to try to be right.

This raises an interesting question--where did modern scientific method come from? Was THAT the most significant single thing in the evolution of science?

J

 

[Timberline]

1. Charles Darwin. He didn't come up with everything himself, but he had the guts to put it all together. The concept of evolution completely permeates all aspects of modern biology, linking them together into a coherent field of study.

2. Carolus Linnaeus. Organized taxonomy into a coherent, logical process that was amazingly accurate given his knowledge and timeframe (and not knowing about the whole evolution thing). He also did alot in botany and introduced to the scientific community a seed that would eventually become ecology.

3. Louis Pasteur. Kind of self evident.

4. A gigantic 3-way tie between the 3 more or less joint discoverers of DNA. First off to Rosalind Franklin, who, to me at least, actually discovered a functional structure of DNA. But Watson and Crick also deserve credit for creating the model.

5. Gregor Mendel. Came up with the correct model for heredity long before evolution or DNA corroborated his work.

That's a tough list, and I know it doesn't include any physicists. But on the first few page of the topic at least, biologists, excluding (arguably) Aristotle were completely unrepresented -- and biology is the science that is improving and affecting daily life exponentially more as time goes on.

 

[pi-r8]

1) The topic is, the most influential scientist in history. I assume that that means, who has done the most influential scientific work, so as not to exclude people like Aristotle who, although not really a scientist by trade, did do a lot of science. This does, however exclude mathematicians. Yes, obviously math is of great use in science, but math is the same as science. To say that (for example) the development of calculus was beneficial to science is like saying that the development of paper was beneficial to science- it may have helped a lot, but it cannot be said to be influential science.

2) On the topic of Newton, I think he's a rather spectacular case of the "Mathew Effect".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
For example, Hooke actually proposed the idea for an inverse square graviational law to explain the motion of the planets. He even told Newton this idea. Newton just worked out the math a little bit further. Hooke also worked out a wave theory of light before Newton did his work in Optics.

And Newton's most famous piece of insight, the equation F=MA, in addition to being basically a definition, can actually be derived from Aristotle's definition of force in Physics.

To summarize, I think that Newton's most important contributions were simply mathematical, and that he is therefore disqualified as far as this topic is concerned.

3) My vote goes to Aristotle. Sure, a lot of his science was wrong, but that doesn't matter. The question is who is the most INFLUENTIAL, not correct. Everyone in the scientific revolution studied Aristotle, and he is probably the inspiration for the use of experiments as a source of knowledge. For that alone, I'd say he wins.

 

[Naskra]

And Newton's most famous piece of insight, the equation F=MA, in addition to being basically a definition, can actually be derived from Aristotle's definition of force in Physics.

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

 

[onejayhawk]

1) The topic is, the most influential scientist in history. I assume that that means, who has done the most influential scientific work, so as not to exclude people like Aristotle who, although not really a scientist by trade, did do a lot of science. This does, however exclude mathematicians. Yes, obviously math is of great use in science, but math is the same as science. To say that (for example) the development of calculus was beneficial to science is like saying that the development of paper was beneficial to science- it may have helped a lot, but it cannot be said to be influential science.

2) On the topic of Newton, I think he's a rather spectacular case of the "Mathew Effect".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
For example, Hooke actually proposed the idea for an inverse square graviational law to explain the motion of the planets. He even told Newton this idea. Newton just worked out the math a little bit further. Hooke also worked out a wave theory of light before Newton did his work in Optics.

And Newton's most famous piece of insight, the equation F=MA, in addition to being basically a definition, can actually be derived from Aristotle's definition of force in Physics.

To summarize, I think that Newton's most important contributions were simply mathematical, and that he is therefore disqualified as far as this topic is concerned.

3) My vote goes to Aristotle. Sure, a lot of his science was wrong, but that doesn't matter. The question is who is the most INFLUENTIAL, not correct. Everyone in the scientific revolution studied Aristotle, and he is probably the inspiration for the use of experiments as a source of knowledge. For that alone, I'd say he wins.

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..

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