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Time Magazine: Man of the Millennium

Paul Hsieh qed at pobox.com
Sat Sep 26 05:52:16 EST 1998


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.com
http://www.pobox.com/~qed



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