In article <6u9guf$d93$1 at news.indigo.ie>, gerryq at indigo.ie says...
> MA Lloyd <malloy00 at io.com> wrote:
> >FWIW the most popular work playing this game is probably Michael H Hart's
> >The 100. His ordering can of course be debated, but it isn't too bad; I
> >doubt you can make a decent case for anybody he hasn't put in the top 25.
> >His entries in the top 25 that fall into this millenium are Newton,
> >Gutenberg, Columbus, Einstein, Pasteur, Galileo, Darwin, Copernicus,
> >Lavoisier, Watt, Faraday, Maxwell, and Luther.
>> What about Shakespeare??? That list is ridiculously biased toward
> scientists.
You know, some people don't even like Shakespeare. Personally, I think
many of his plays were totally worthless (though I do like some.) You
can't subject the validity of a scientists' discoveries to pure opinion.
In a previous post, I mentioned Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat's Last
Theorem. Since this is obviously turning into nothing more than who can
name the most famous people contest, allow me to offer at least a good
reason as to why I picked him.
I would argue that the ultimate achievement of human kind is their
ability to think and reason at an unprecendented level in ways not
observed anywhere (if we ignore the National Inquirer for a moment.)
I think most people can agree with that.
But we might differ on the "greatness" of any particular kind of thought.
For example, I think all great philosopers, lawyers, poets while
successful at their endeavour have essentially forfeited any claim to
greatness by virtue of thier chosen field alone. But I'm sure that not
everyone agrees with me.
Anyhow, so given that it might be impossible to put a metric on the value
of one kind of thought relative to another, why not instead measure the
intensity and depth of the thought.
Andrew Wiles spent 7 years in virtual solitude working by himself to
prove Fermat's last theorem after hundreds, if not thousands of
mathematicians before him tried and failed. When I think about all the
other achievments of man, I can't think of one that compares in total
depth and intensity. I think that this proof is the ultimate
intellectual trophy of man kind.
--
Paul Hsieh
qed at pobox.comhttp://www.pobox.com/~qed