James Color and Samantha Colour respectively, they invented color in their respective regions, before then the world was in black and white. Similar to Sandy Loam, very little is known about their personal life, or even what they look like. Hell, even their first names are up in the air.
It’s really tragic that we don’t celebrate the history of the people of Color the way we could.
Mathematicians, Physicists, Scientists, and Astronomers: Good effort everyone. The foundation of a rational world.
Very Notable Mentions:
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Chemist: Fritz Haber. 1/3 of world food production today can be attributed to his discovery. Also an enormous negative impact, see German Chemical Warfare.
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Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.
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Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.
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Philosopher: Socrates. Critical Thinking.
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Computers: Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing. See empowerment of computation and relegating ridiculously complex math and data collection to machines.
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Computer Networking: J. C. R. Licklider, DARPA, and Tim Berners-Lee. See Internet and I/O on a global scale. Both positive and negative.
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Finally, the largest net positive of all: Artists. Yes, artists. Popularity as the prime determinant by nature of their work. For inspiration, desire, meaning, peace, community, and emotion. The language of all, an instinctive form of communication.
My visual pick is Leonardo da Vinci as both a practical and artistic contributor. As for classical, it’s nearly impossible to pick, but I’d say Beethoven and then Bach.
Eh, kind of ‘rediscovered’ more.
Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.
Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair.
Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh.
For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be."
- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4.1217-1232 (50 BCE)
Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.
In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn’t do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.
For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.
Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now.
- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 5.837-859
Certainly the more modern versions of these ideas had the benefit of the scientific method to help flesh them out and gain traction as opposed to being rejected and forgotten by dogma.
But let’s not be like the ancient Greeks in claiming Pythagoras invented ideas that we now know predated him by millennia. We owe a great deal to the giants on whose shoulders we stand on, but let us not forget the giants who tread the ground well before them and simply didn’t get taken up on the offer of their shoulders.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
It appreciate the knowledge and poetry. Thank you.
let us not forget the giants who tread the ground well before them and simply didn’t get taken up on the offer of their shoulders.
Rather, let us not forget the people whose ideas reflected reality. Data and science are not speculation, “must haves”, or attributions of unknown mechanisms to the favor of deities.
Many people speculated on gravity, astronomy, and falling things long before someone put it into a mathematical formula. That is, quantitative and qualitative assertions outweigh ideological ones. I speculated with a sibling about black-holes being potential wormholes or portals several years before I read a news article saying Stephen Hawing speculated the same. Yet I provide no supporting evidence, written and dated or not, thus I am no giant.
Yet I provide no supporting evidence, written and dated or not, thus I am no giant.
Much of Einstein’s work we recognize as monumental were things that could not be proven in his time and were only validated decades later.
The Epicureans may not have had the scientific method available to them, but their focus on observation driven speculation was literally one of the factors that fed into its creation (see the Pulizer winning The Swerve).
Much of Einstein’s work […] only validated decades later.
You mean Einstein’s equations? The maths that were solid enough to develop advanced destructive mechanisms and form entirely new theories equations?
the Pulizer winning The Swerve
To be clear, the prize for… art, and not journalism.
I’m not arguing that philosophy had no role in shaping history positively. Shaped history, yes. Came up with bright ideas, yes. Proved the atoms were arrangements of the four elements, not so much. Hedonism being the point of life, also not so much. Gave evidence for their claims? Very little more than speculation.
They gave contributions, yes. My point is they are contributors, but not giants in science. Having not had the method available to join the scientific revolution is core to this assertion.
Tim Berners-Lee is an excellent choice
Kinda settin the bar a little high here for Lemmy posts, ain’tcha?
I dont think evolution should be considered just a theory now, its basically proven.
In addition to what The Bard In Green said, while we know that evolution does happen, there is a lot of debate over what is its main driving force. Darwin argued that the main force was natural selection, and most biologists agree with him. But there are also other schools, such as Kimura’s neutral theory (evolution is caused primarily by luck) and Margulis’s symbiosis theory (evolution is caused primarily by mutualism).
Theory doesn’t mean what people think it means.
Culturally, we misunderstand theory to be equivalent to “hypothesis,” meaning “We have an idea, now we need to prove or disprove it.”
But accurately, theory means “We have a framework of interrelated ideas that fit the observable evidence.” In that sense, evolution is an EXTREMELY well supported theory.
Gravity is also a theory. So are general and special relativity. So is all of quantum physics.
I see, thanks for the nice explanation
You are wonderful. Well put.
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Whoever first domesticated fire. Whatever his name was, I forgot.
That was Ug. Really cool guy. His golf swing was immaculate, too.
Every hole, a hole in one.
And then his grandson invented the number two.
I mean, that could actually be many people for all we know. Back that far it’s hard to even pin down the millennia something happened.
I’d bet fire was involved in his/her name. Either fire was named after the inventor or the inventor was named after fire.
John Fire
Fire domestication happened before our species even existed. Who ever did it, made us possible. Great answer.
Newton
Karl Marx
Norman Borlaug
I believe many great human beings have existed throughout history, but the impact they cause is often limited by their circumstances. For example, there have been thinkers defending compassion towards human beings and animals in possibly every culture, but those sages live and die admired yet misunderstood. Their lives are seen as “extraordinary”, and thus, not attainable for normal people like us. We give up on following them since the start, instead of trying to achieve their wisdom or understanding…
Anyway, by mere impact, I guess Socrates, Plato, and Immanuel Kant are on the top for me. The first ones were influential in the development of many branches of knowledge, and solidified a tradition of critical thinking since antiquity. Immanuel Kant is kind of recent, but I’d say his works were really important for discussions around philosophy, science, arts, religion, and more. I admire Immanuel Kant greatly. I was recently reading a little text he wrote about psychiatric disorders and he was predicting modern paradigms in the 18th century. He was such a brilliant and knowledgeable person.
There are also incredible inventions and discoveries that have helped us all, but often those are the results of collective efforts. Still, as I said before, amazing human beings the ones that gave and still give these things for free. Getting personal again, I wouldn’t be alive without many of those advances (vaccines, medications, etc.). On the technological side, the founder of that website that unlocks academic papers has had an impact that is yet to be analyzed.
Sorry! So many people…!
Did you know that Kant used to criticize people who drank more than one cup of coffee per day. Also, he would refill his own coffee cup before it was empty, so he never had more than one cup.
That’s hilarious! I guess he was a normal man with normal blunders in his daily life. I’ve heard about his meticulousness, that we had strict rules for his routines and reunions, but never details (and never the cup of coffee thing). Thanks for sharing.
I intended to write that just as an intro paragraph to a critique of enlightenment philosophy, since I feel like, while the goal of objectifying the human experience was the natural predecessor to the eventual subjectification of the exterior universe, their confidence in their interpretations of their experience – or maybe just in the universality of their interpretations – makes their entire project a bit sus
But then life happened and I just said the thing about coffee.
Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman
I’ll have to argue that Santos Dumont and others inventors did Open Source in the XIX.
But compared to one of those. Who did the biggest impact?
I dont know them and maybe they made a much greater impact.
A person needn’t be good in order to do good things, just as a good person doesn’t necessarily impact the world positively simply by existing.
Sure.But if someone wants to say “X has done the most good because they fed 1 million people” but you don’t mention that X also killed 900,000 people, you’re being disingenuous. No, I’m not saying Stallman is a mass murderer. But normalizing pedophilia is a gross counterbalance to whatever good work he’s done.
You’re wrongly assuming that the opinion of one man on a subject he has no sway in is relevant to more than IRC discussions.
Yes. That Stallman is arguably one of the top few people why we have the internet as it is, at all today.
Most other people could be “replaced”. If it wasn’t X, it would be Y. But only Stallman pushed the copyleft license onto Linux. Only Stallman’s organization popularized it.
So yes, that sexist, neurodivergent, bigoted Stallman, is one of the most positively influential people of our time.
Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, and The Buddha all had profound impacts on the way that humans relate to each other, and the world around them. Each promoted non-violence and/or pacifism in a world ruled by ruthlessness and cruelty. I don’t think we would be anywhere close to where we are now with human rights without their contributions to human understanding of empathy.
One of these is not like the others. Gandhi is polarising at best in India, and just kind of a nice brown guy strawman in the West.
Why is he polarizing in India?
As I understand it: Too tolerant and Westernised for Hindutva people, too mystical and obscure for progressives. When they made the biggest statue in the world, it was chosen to be of his colleague Vallabhbhai Patel.
As for why he’s not the cartoonified nice guy he’s often made out to be, well, I could talk about a number of issues, but this quote on how far he would take pacifism is pretty shocking:
Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs…It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany… As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.
I figured that was the answer. Thanks for sharing. As for the quote on the Holocaust, that’s rough man. I guess I see his perspective, since what he did worked for him and India, but it sounds so ridiculous and callous to those of us who do not share the perspective.
I have never been a pacifist, but I understand its value and respect those with the strength to utilize it. It does take strength too. I can’t imagine enduring what pacifists have endured throughout history. Even here in the United States, I love MLKJ’s message, but I identify with Malcom X’s perspective more personally.
The Mitochondrial Eve.
Yeah my answer was “our Most Recent Common Ancestor”
Norman borlaug and Fritz Haber. The first was basically the father of modern agriculture helping feed over a billion people. The latter known as the man that saved billions and killed millions, helped develop the haber bosch process that produces ammonia used in fertillizers that are responsible for feeding half the world’s population. It was also used in explosives hence the “killed millions” part.
Is that the guy that discovered the gas used in the Holocaust?
Cyclon b was used as a fumigant before it was used in the holocaust. It was also called Prussic acid and would be known as Hydrogen Cyanide today. It was discovered by Carl Scheele back in the 1700s. It is also what gives poisonous (bitter) almonds their characteristic scent and toxicity.
Haber did however, suggest the use of Chlorine gas as a chemical weapon which his wife was so horrified by that she committed suicide. Haber was also partially responsible for the development of the Born Haber cycle which is a theoretical tool used to estimate the thermodynamic stability of salts.
Haber is only listed here because ultimately billions would have starved to death without the Haber process. And regardless of his intentions and the other things he did, that particular invention arguably saved more lives than anyone else that has ever lived.
Even the fertilizer thing is arguably bad. It’s allowed the population of the world to explode at an exponential rate and burn through resources even faster rather than be capped at a much more manageable level.
The alternative wasn’t a reasonable population, it was billions starving. The solution was, and still is, giving women better control over whether or not they have children.
Even more are going to starve when we run out of fossil fuels and can no longer sustain the agriculture required to feed the now massively inflated population. Not to mention all the other damage having so many more people is doing to the world that is also probably going to kill us even if we solve the resource problem.
Thank you for providing context. I did not mean to blame (or make people think that) Haber for any deaths, he was a smart person that made a great impact on all of us. It isn’t his fault people think of other ways to use his work for death. It most have been hard on him to have his wife commit suicide over it though. That’s rough.
Haber did not develop the Haber process to produce fertillizer. He did it precisely because German access to saltpeter from South America had been cut off and that threatened to severely compromise the German capacity for war. This was not a case where Haber’s work was meant for benign peaceful purposes and misappropriated for use in war. It was used exactly the way he intended it to be. It just happened to also be useful for keeping half the planet from starving to death. His wife did not kill herself because his work was misused. She killed herself because it was used exactly how Haber wanted it to be. And he can’t advocate for the use of Chlorine as a chemical weapon and have clean hands by definition.
Which is why I said that the only reason he was mentioned is because the Haber process ultimately saved the lives of billions of people arguably outweighing the harm that process was developed to enable. Haber wasn’t a good guy by any stretch of the imagination but without the Haber process, we would have had famine and death on a scale never seen in all of human history on this planet.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I guess I got mixed up with the process name and his actual intended use.
Bell Labs and the invention of the transistor.
It’s absolutely mind blowing how many innovations came from Bell Labs.
Louis Pasteur
Norman Borlaug helped develop a lot of techniques used by developing nations to gain food self-sufficency.
Not just developing countries but the whole planet.
Taylor Swift ❤️
Is this supposed to be ironic? Is this meant to instigate a discussion on her impact on pollution as an individual vs the value of her pop entertainment production?
No one changes me more than my girlfriend Taylor Swift 💖💖💖
