Who is the Most influential Scientist in history?

[classical_hero]

NOTE: I will not be doing a poll because that is an object in futility as in the Most influential person in history, because there are just so many.

My choice would be Sir Isaac Newton.

 

[blackheart]

Whoever invented the modern sewage system

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Isaac Newton. His influence is so far-ranging that it just can't be ignored.

 

[Adler17]

I am for Copernicus. Newton was very influencing indeed, but: He cheated. He used the ideas of other scientists as own ideas.

Adler

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Care to elaborate?

 

[Plotinus]

Either Newton or Aristotle. Aristotle basically invented the science of biology (and this is quite apart from his work on physics etc, which was arguably just as influential, though less well regarded now because it turned out to be wrong).

 

[classical_hero]

Either Newton or Aristotle. Aristotle basically invented the science of biology (and this is quite apart from his work on physics etc, which was arguably just as influential, though less well regarded now because it turned out to be wrong).

I wouldn't call Aristole a scientist. I would call him a philosopher instead. It was by the work of Louis Pasteur that Spontaneous Generation, or Aristotelian Abiogenesis was proven to be false. Louis Pastuer proved that this was wrong and thus this belief that Aristotle proposed was proven to be false. http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Pasteur.html
I regard Pasteur in much higher regard in science than Aristotle.

 

[Adler17]

Newton´s Principia was a plagiate as, what is true, Robert Hooke published a very similar theory before Newton. AFAIK Newton read it in a letter exchange.

Adler

 

[Plotinus]

[classical hero] 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.

Pasteur was, of course, a great scientist, but I really don't think he holds a candle to Aristotle, who invented the science of biology in the first place. Imagine what Aristotle would have achieved if he'd had access to the same equipment, such as microscopes, that Pasteur had.

 

[Adler17]

It is in no way a must philosophers were no natural scientists and vice versa. There are many examples of philosophical studies by physicists like Einstein or natural studies by philosophers like Kant, who ofr example identified the Milky Way as a galaxy.

Adler

 

[Shaihulud]

I think Einstein is the most influential.

Newton was very influencing indeed, but: He cheated. He used the ideas of other scientists as own ideas.

Also Newton and Leibniz both developed calculus independantly of each other, but Newton was such a jerk that he suceeded in discrediting Leibniz. Newton was the greatest but Einstein is unique.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Whilst he also was very much a philosopher (a Great Thinker) I think Aristole comes in as one of the most influential scientists in history. Knowledge of Aristole was widely known and respected as pretty cutting edge throughout Europe and Middle-East right into the times of Sir Isaac Newton.

Simply on the basis of thought that it is "right for man to enquire" and leading off to explaining the World around us by tests and also by pure theory. Not only that he looked at so much be it biology, zoology, physics, astronomy, government and ethics - some platform.

Maybe one of the best defences of my claim is that Isaac Newton himself said that "If I've been able to see further than most it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants". One of the most significant giants in a time over 2500 years later was Aristole whose contribution to the better understanding of the World around us had not been forgotten and he still isn't today.

As for Isaac Newton, he was rather dodgy is many aspects - his lectures were so bad no-one came to them (Aristole ran a school), he believed in alchemy and so made weird potions involving crushed beetles and such to make himself invisible and there are serious claims he nicked other people work.


As for whether Aristole was a scientist - he put forward ideas on how the World worked back up by reason, theory or experiment, that makes a scientist. That he also had the mind to engage himself on other weighty subjects just showed the breath of his knowledge, the extent of his enthusiasm to challenge the ideas of the time and his genius.

 

[Kyriakos]

he believed in alchemy and so made weird potions involving crushed beetles and such to make himself invisible .

Does anyone have a link with info on this? I love this type of thing

 

[mjb141]

My vote, again, goes to the oft overlooked Galileo Galilei. For a (somewhat) cogent defense of this viewpoint I refer you to the fifth page of the "Most Influential Person in World History" thread.

 

[Rambuchan]

I said Aristotle in another thread like this and I'll say it again. Partly for the reasons that Plotinus mentions but also because he was the giant that provided shoulders for the other later scientists to stand on. Despite and because of his faults he led the way in terms of methodology, observation and record keeping. In fact, these are the points Plotinus made!

Adler: Copernicus is highly overrated when you start looking at what other developments were made in his field by non-European scientists. I'd go as far as to say that the whole 'cult of Copernicus' is nothing but a narrow minded Eurocentric construct. He simply repeated work that many others had done well before. Like Bhaskaracharya II and Aryabhatta and they did so through deduction, mathematics and logic, without the aid of any fancy equipment.

I do believe that Aryabhatta's major work, strangely enough named "the Aryabhattiya", was written around 1000 years before Copernicus ever oggled into a telescope. He pretty much covered everything that Copernicus claimed to have broken ground on within it. The work was translated into Latin in Europe some time around the 13th or 14th centuries (sorry can't remember) and it is not inconcievable that Copernicus read this work, nor that he never admitted to it, nor that these ideas were swimming around Europe's scientific community for quite some time before its translation. It really begs the question why people harp on about Copernicus so much.

 

[Serutan]

{snip} It really begs the question why people harp on about Copernicus so much.

To be a bit cynical, there is that old saw about the victors writing the
history...

Or from another perspective, I suspect a lot of people would be shocked to
learn that Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. It's just that his name
got stuck to it (This may or may not be true outside the US...). So
Copernicus just happened to be the right guy at the right time to get the
credit, deserved or not.

I will steal an idea in an Isaac Asimov essay, and argue that Benajamin
Franklin deserves consideration for this honor. While he did not make
any major theorectical breakthroughs, he was one of (if not the) first to
come up with practical application of scientific principles (the lightning rod,
for example).

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Does anyone have a link with info on this? I love this type of thing

You need to listen to the Mark Steel Lectures.

If you have a big enough e-mail storage PM me your e-mail address and I'd happily e-mail you over my recording of the lecture on Isaac Newton, really top class. He also did a lecture on Aristotle, which helped my knowledge on that chap toon

 

[TrailblazingScot]

I said Aristotle in another thread like this and I'll say it again. Partly for the reasons that Plotinus mentions but also because he was the giant that provided shoulders for the other later scientists to stand on. Despite and because of his faults he led the way in terms of methodology, observation and record keeping. In fact, these are the points Plotinus made!

Oh, so I'm invisible now...guess that recipe Isaac Newton put together worked

 

[Plotinus]

I suspect a lot of people would be shocked to
learn that Henry Ford did not invent the automobile.

Surely there aren't people who think Ford invented the car, are there? I have never heard this said.

With regard to Newton, I always think it's a bit unfair that people cite his interest in alchemy as a sort of unscientific black mark against him. Newton, and others of his period, didn't know that alchemy doesn't work. On the contrary, as far as they were concerned it was a legitimate part of "natural philosophy" just like astronomy. There wasn't the distinction between science and pseudo-science that we have today, and even if there had been, how would they have known to categorise alchemy as a pseudo-science? We praise Leonardo for his designs for helicopters and suchlike because we happen to know that the principle behind them was sound, even though you need a bit more than plywood and musclepower to make them work. And we denigrate Paracelsus and his intellectual heirs for alchemy, because we know that it doesn't work. But that's just the judgement of hindsight - no-one at the time knew which would work and which wouldn't, and if you'd been living at the time you'd probably have thought Paracelsus by far the more sensible. He got results, after all, while all Leonardo got was some very bruised assistants.

 

[classical_hero]

Or from another perspective, I suspect a lot of people would be shocked to learn that Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. It's just that his name got stuck to it (This may or may not be true outside the US...).

What make henry ford so important is because he was the guy that invented Mass Production and thus he was the guy that got cheap production for the common man so that things became alot cheaper. So Ford does deserve some recognition for his achievements.