Hi All

Who would you pick as the most influential persons in History.
Just pick ten and put in order of MOST Influential.

here are my picks.

1-Muhammad
2-Jesus Christ
3-Isaac Newton
4-Budda
5-Confucius
6-St.paul
7-Tsai Lun
8-Johann Gutenberg
9-Christopher Columbus
10-Albert Einstein

Remember I said Influential not Greatest.

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joe moon/95Benzman

This is difficult, because some things/ideas were bound to be discovered by SOMEONE, and others..maybe not. It's the latter that are arguably more influential, because the rest comes out in the wash.

1st sort, not mentioned before:

Plato, Darwin, Hume

2nd sort:

Einstein, J.C. Maxwell, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, Feynman.


Whoever finds the first extraterrestrial organism will be high up this list.

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List #1: Philosophers

List #2: Physicists

Politics ( no particular order): Moses, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar; Frederick I (Barbarossa); Kublai Khan; Wu-ti (founder, Chin Dynasty); George Washington.

Religion: Moses, Siddhartha, Jesus, K'ung-fu-tzu (Confucius), Muhammed.

Art: Early artists were rarely named rather, the who commissioned the art. So, Periclean artists; Etruscan artists; Egyption artists; Chin artists.

Law: Moses; Hamarubi; Laws of Manu (don't know author, God?); Draco; Solon; Justinian; Jefferson; Blackstone.

MHO, by time periods:

Ancient History

3000 B.C. to the Fall of Rome 455? AD

Aknaton (Pharoah who first introduced the idea of 1 God)
Plato
Aristotle
Julius Caesar
Jesus Christ

Medievel 500 AD - 1500 AD
Mohamed
Edward I King of England (established the idea of Parlement and common law, and basic human rights such as habeaus corpus)
Leonardo Da Vinci

Enlightment
1500-1880
Thomas Jefferson
A. Lincoln
Darwin
Issac Newton
Louis Pasteur


Modern Age 1880-present
Einstein
Adolf Hitler (bad guy, but the consequences of his life is the story of the 20th Century)
Franklin Roosevelt
Gandi
Martin Luther King Jr.

I don’t want to put my historian’s hat on as the weight hurts my injured back. So I will submit that folks such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the former president of Intel (I forget his name) and other folks involved in the personal computer revolution have created the biggest short term favorable impact to the world in recorded history. Prior to the PC the US was heading the way of the USSR: more folks than we can care for, and not enough money to go around. The computer revolution has made by far the biggest impact since perhaps the invention of movable type.

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Moving the goalposts a wee bit here: But who was the most ORIGINAL thinker, as distinct from just serendipidy & inevitability?

uhh..where is Marx on those lists?

Isn't techological crap just that? "Simple tricks and nonsense" (name that film).

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'83 280CE
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'83 911 turbo

In that case, Frederick Nietzsche. He foretold modern psychiatry and to degrees psychotherapy, advanced historiography, phenomenology and superman alla Zarathrustra. Not a coincidence that he was nutty. But so was almost everything after.

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

I beleive the original thinker in the world of computers was Alan Turing, a British scientist who modeled a computer processor using a roll of toilet paper and rock. The result of his work resulted in a crude computer that helped track German submarines, leading to the defeat of the Uboats. He was gay, and killed himself when the KGB attempted to blackmail him on his sex life.

Marx's stock is way down. You couldn't get through college prior to 1987 without having to know his BS inside and out because all the profs thought he was the Great Original Thinker. Now noone cares less as his idealogy sinks into the quciksands of history. Communism, history wise, with only a 70 year highpoint, was a blimp on the radar.

If we were to classify on the Great Original Thinker, I'd say, in order of their appearance:

Aknaton
Plato
Aristotle
Jesus
Da Vinci
Jefferson
Einstein
Thomas Edison
Turing
Gandi

Original Thinker is over-broad. I guess what ya'll mean is one who's thoughts carried the most impact.

I mean insane asylums are full of wonderfully original thinkers. What's the value of an original thought if it has no consequence?

Then when you start down the definition road you end-up having to catagorize like Kirk and I did.

B

Which is more influential: the quill or the download site?

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Which is more important, the download site or the movable type printing press?

I asked the wrong question, sorry.

Which has had a greater impact on society, moveable type press or download site? I think the press has established a paradigm that, like the Bible, permeates our thinking such that it is nearly an organic part of our thinking.

Every aspect of our culture is influenced such that there are few places on Earth that do not see mass-produced written language as a necessity. The same cannot (yet) be said for Internet. Will it reach parity in this century? Probably. This half-century? I think that's an open question.

B

Copernicus.

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RedMeat cartoon

Number #1 Walt Disney hands down ........

William Rogers.......

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Number #2 Al Capone.........

William Rogers.......

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