I agree with this, though I wonder how he would have spoken had a 38 year old Congressman said of his policy
But the question asked was not “who deserves more credit”, it was “who impacted the world more”. I think in that case the question of alternative people is very relevent, as history may have looked very similar even if the person did not exist. This should in no way be considered a disparagement of their achievements.
Nothing against Lincoln (he gets my vote for greatest President in US history), but on a worldwide level, I think it’s Darwin, hands down. He fundamentally changed how human beings look at themselves and their relationship to the universe.
Maybe, but look at the impact America has had on the world. Had America broken up in the 1860s, look at the way the world would have changed.
The OP specified the men, not their ideas or actions. Darwin was dispensible to science, and the theory would have emerged just the same.
Lincoln was a rare case of exactly the right man with the right background at the right time and place, able to balance several hostile “friendly” factions, while motivating the great mass of people and fighting a brutal civil war - the first modern war in history - while being undercut by his supposed allies at every turn, and having some of the worst generals in history taking turns wrecking his armies.
Darwin did one impressive thing: he came up with a new idea, and it was good. Lincoln did damn near every impressive thing a man can do.
Darwin, no question. Discounting him because of Wallace, and not discounting Lincoln for the same reason isn’t much of an argument. There are always other leaders lurking in the background. Lincoln was one of a string of presidents. He made plenty of mistakes along with all he accomplished. But Darwin changed the entire world.
Maybe it would be better to compare the impact of the actions on these two men, and not focus on the men themselves. I can’t see how Darwin wouldn’t win easily.
Both of these claims are facile to the point of blind falsity. I’m not sure how the American Civil War can be considered “the first modern war in history,” other than being the first use of rapid fire machine guns (Gardner and Gatling crank guns) instead of grapeshot for mass anti-personnel weapons, and this doesn’t compare in usage and effectiveness to the Maxim in Afghanistan and Africa. The effects of the French Revolution and subsequent warfare, and the Great Game in Central Asia are better candidates for models of war in terms of strategy, military doctrine, and the focus on modern logistics and support versus straight confrontation, although WWI really qualifies as being the first true modern war.
Darwin hardly did “one impressive thing,”; rather, he spent decades of his life after his now-famous voyage on the Beagle (in which he was the captain’s companion, not the vessel’s titled biologist) studying various species in extensive detail and with a scientific rigour then rarely matched in such efforts. Most famous was his work with barnacles, which led him to develop specific theories of sexual selection and the role of variation of phenotypes in species transformation. He performed and published on a massive body of work in support of his theory (unlike Wallace, who did little after the joint publication and eventually turned his back on evolutionary theory entirely). To say that Darwin did only one thing is a claim in ignorance of the foundations of development of modern evolutionary biology. Read David Quammen’s The Reluctant Mr. Darwin for a brief but detailed summary of Charles Darwin’s efforts toward and conflicts with evolutionary theory.
Stranger
If Darwin was never alive, I can’t come up with a scenario that would change the present condition of the human race one iota. The knowledge of our prehistory has no bearing on our cultures ,or our technological achievements including applied science.
Lincoln however secured the union of the United States and given the subsequent power of that union and its influence on the world thereafter, I would have to go with him as the greater impact on the world.
It was the first war in which common rank and file troops were given rifles, iron clad ships were put into use, the railroad radically altered the logistics of warfare, trench warfare reared its ugly head, it was the first widely photographed war, it was possible for the general to communicate with his superiors in Washington thanks to telegraphs, and there are many other reasons.
Odesio
Unless you have a crystal ball allowing you to view alternate futures, the argument that “no other human being could do what Lincoln did, but had Darwin never been born things would have turned out exactly the same way” is ridiculous. You literally cannot make this argument without special pleading, pleading that Lincoln was unique and unreplaceable (to the degree that no other president could have won the war :rolleyes: ) while simultaneously pleading that Darwin’s evidence and arguments were utterly irrelevent to the success and acceptance of evolutionary biology.
The theory of evolution has no bearing on applied science? How is it possible to be so ignorant?
On the other hand, it lacked modern armour, air power, combined forces attacks, and a host of other elements of modern warfare.
No, it does not.
The Civil War saw the introduction of iron-clads and iron-hulled ships, the widespread use of rifles, the development of a true tactical infantry skillset (of which our modern soldiers use a vastly more refined version), truely vast armies, primitive automatic weapons, the use of telegraph to control strategic and tactical elements, and railroads used to move troops and supplies.
You are correct in saying that later wars were more refined. That is irrelevant. Every element used in every war since stems directly from uses in the Civil War. Even air power had some genesis in the Civil War’s use of balloons for scouting.
Lincoln. Hands down.
As for Darwin, there were others on his tail (no pun intended) who were likely to publish their own version of Origin of Species regarding Natural Selection. Darwin beat them to the printing press, but not by much. Someone else shortly after would have filled Darwin’s paws.
Now take Lincoln. No other man in that position at the time would have likely done the things he did in the way he did to save the Union. Fault him what you will for his motives, but reframing the breakout of the Confederacy andthe subsequent Civil War into a referendum on slavery itself was pure genius. This kept the French and Spanish (and probably even the English) from giving help to the Confederate States.
It was an era when many nations were just coming to terms with thier own historical contributions to the slave trade. Behind closed doors Great Britain, as an example, always turned a blind eye to Confederate Slavery because in return they got all the sweet rewards from the South of tobacco, sugar, and cotton. “We don’t have slaves,” England could say officially. But, unofficially, they were addicted to the products from the South. And thus England wanted to help the South. The North? Feh. England was up to its eyeballs in factories and universities already. What did the North hold for England that England didn’t already have? It was the South that gave England goods it couldn’t get as cheaply anywhere else and in such great supply.
Enter Lincoln. “Emancipation Proclimation!” Lincoln says. Pure genius. Now Great Britain and other countries are forced to take a position on the Civil War and which side to support. Officially support the Confederacy, and now you taking the side of the “Pro Slavery” states (as Lincoln has now cast it). Unacceptable. So, you either don’t take any side at all or you support the North (the “good” guys, because this is now about Freeing the Slaves, remember?).
Lincoln orchestrated this re-casting of the Civil War with such deft and political skill that I find it hard to believe that the Union would have survived without him.
Without the Union, the United States – or what was left of it – would have been a weaker country with fewer natural resources. The Manifest Destiny would have likely died, too. In any case when WWI and then WWII broke out decades later, the United States would not have been in the position to first help stop the Keiser, and later Hitler. Could you imagine who would have stopped Hitler had a strong America not? Can’t think of anyone.
No Lincoln, no union :: No union, no strong USA :: No strong USA, than all of Europe would be speaking German today. And that’s just for starters.
Who impacted the world more?
Darwin: The first guy to publish an idea others were about to, anyway.
Lincoln: The right man at the right place at the right time to save the strength of the USA, and in turn maybe the world.
No question. It’s Lincoln.
We’re talking history here not science so there’s really no objective definition of modern. Which is what makes these kinds of discussions all sorts of fun.
Odesio
Perhaps you could suggest an application of the theory of evolution that solved a practical problem.
I’ll take that question.
Here’s one, for starters, from Wiki:
*A major technological application of evolution is artificial selection, which is the intentional selection of certain traits in a population of organisms. Humans have used artificial selection for thousands of years in the domestication of plants and animals.[203] More recently, such selection has become a vital part of genetic engineering, with selectable markers such as antibiotic resistance genes being used to manipulate DNA in molecular biology.
As evolution can produce highly optimized processes and networks, it has many applications in computer science. Here, simulations of evolution using evolutionary algorithms and artificial life started with the work of Nils Aall Barricelli in the 1960s, and was extended by Alex Fraser, who published a series of papers on simulation of artificial selection.[204] Artificial evolution became a widely recognized optimization method as a result of the work of Ingo Rechenberg in the 1960s and early 1970s, who used evolution strategies to solve complex engineering problems.[205] Genetic algorithms in particular became popular through the writing of John Holland.[206] As academic interest grew, dramatic increases in the power of computers allowed practical applications, including the automatic evolution of computer programs.[207] Evolutionary algorithms are now used to solve multi-dimensional problems more efficiently than software produced by human designers, and also to optimize the design of systems.[208]*
There’s more where that came from.
As stated, The theory of evolution did not initiate artificial or rather intentional selection.
Perhaps, and I can’t rule it out, but a random spontaneous selection program involving perfecting iterations of favourable results in a sea of discarded garbage outcomes based on indirect or environmental stimuli might well have Darwin’s theory as a model. Whether such a program would be critical to a technological advance is questionable.
As has been stated repeatedly in this thread, Darwin’s contribution wasn’t a single book. It was a lifetime of work pushing the evolutionary agenda. Whilst others may have had a hint of the truth regarding evolution, they didn’t have the extensive, persuasive evidence that Darwin had, drawn from years of work in the field. To state outright that anybody else who came up with the idea of Natural Selection would have done the same, whereas nobody else could have filled Lincoln’s shoes, is ridiculous.
Besides, the question isn’t “which man could have been replaced more easily”, rather, “which man was the more influential”. Darwinism is the central concept in biology, it’s impossible to make sense of anything in biology without looking at it through the evolutionary lens. Lincoln’s legacy is tied to the fate of the United States.
How about the concept of evolutionary molecular clocks in DNA testing, phylogenetic analyses of bacteria and viruses such as bird flu to stop the spread of diseases, and directed evolution to enhance vaccine efficacy? Of course, I’m a computer scientist, not a biologist, so perhaps I could point out genetic algorithms and other evolutionary forms of computing?
As noted, evolution is the central concept in biology. You don’t get much more influential than creating an idea that is fundamental to shaping one of the basic sciences. There really is no competition between Darwin and Lincoln.