# Anachronistically Modern People **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 11, 2010, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263 "2010-11-11T02:12:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2010, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/61 "2010-11-17T12:51:13Z")
Lots of people in the past have seemed uincharacteristically modern, at least in aspects of their work: **Archimedes** – a whole list of inventions and concepts **Titus Lucretius Caro** – His _De Rerum Natura_ has a lot of surprisingly modern physics concepts, including that objects in a vacuum fall at the same rate, how light and vision work, and how people’s ideas of the nature of god are rooted in their own quirks. **Lucian** and **Martial** – the satirist and the pigrammaticist are sophisticated in their humor. In a good translation, they’re still funny and witty. Which is more than I can say for some comedians from only half a century ago. **Leonardo da Vinci** – of course. The original Renaissance Man, with thoughts and drawings on damned near everything. **Theodoric/Dietrich of Freibourg** and **Qutb al din al Shirazi** and his student **Kamal al din al Farisi** had essentially the modern explanation of the rainbow, which they discovered independently by experimental work in the lab in the 13th century. al Shirazi was the first of them, and he observed third-order rainbows for the first time ever. Theodoric seems to have made the same discoveries independently 20 years later (unless he learned, in France and Germany, of al Shirazi’s work in Persia, which seems incredibly unlikely), and his surviving drawings of the rays passing through raindrops and forming primary and secondary rainbows look as if they could have come from a modern optics book. When you consider that only 50 and 200 years later people were fumfering around with plainly unworkable theories of the rainbow obviously uninfluenced by any experiments, the work of these three stand out as incredibly as a theory of the real elements would have in medieval Europe. ---
**Author:** ![passerby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a88e57/32.png) [@passerby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/passerby)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2010, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/62 "2010-11-17T17:03:44Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Did they actually practice that, though? Our own Declaration of Independence had no problem saying “All men are created equal” while slavery was in full swing. Athens felt fine calling itself a democracy, with the small exception of women and slaves. Where ancient Zoroastrian women free to study, work, travel and marry as they pleased? Did they hold positions of civil and religious authority- and were they found in these position in approximately equal numbers? Did they have the option not to marry, and to live independently with or without having children? Could they choose sexual partners with the same freedom as men could? Did they inherit the same as their brothers? Were there full legal protections against sexual violence? Was male virginity as prized as female? > **[The Role of Women in Ancient Persia](http://notes-on-iran.blogspot.com/2008/05/role-of-women-in-ancient-persia.html)** > > Women in Ancient Persia The study of women’s status in ancient Persia, as mentioned in Zoroastrian texts such as the Av... I don’t really get why you’re trying to argue about Zoroastrians by bringing up the Greek or worse Americans. Zoroastrians had no influence on either of those societies. WTF?!?! > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > There’s a claim that Zoroastrians believe in racial equality. Note though that it’s rare for someone to convert to Zoroastrianism. Nearly all Zoroastrians are born into a Zoroastrian family. It appears that Zoroastrians tolerate other races and religions but don’t intermarry with them. First of all religion has got NOTHING to do with race. If you equate religion and race, perhaps that’s the problem? Second, was the lack of inter-racial marriage in ancient times a matter of racism or geographical/transportation constraints? Modern Zoroastrians do marry people of other races and religion. Just go to any of their social or religious gatherings in North America to see it in action, the door’s open to everybody. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/63 "2010-11-17T17:54:37Z")
> [@passerby](#): > > I don’t really get why you’re trying to argue about Zoroastrians by bringing up the Greek or worse Americans. Zoroastrians had no influence on either of those societies. WTF?!?! I’ll say this slowly. It’s not unheard of for a society to profess a set of ideals, and then blatantly, completely and shamelessly fail to put those ideals into action and in fact probably practice the exact opposite. Basically, what a society writes down as their beliefs means jack shit. Show me what a society does in real life that show they actually practiced equality and you might have a point. ---
**Author:** ![passerby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a88e57/32.png) [@passerby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/passerby)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2010, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/64 "2010-11-17T18:21:31Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I’ll say this slowly. Ah flattery. That’s pretty much the end of this conversation. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2010, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/65 "2010-11-17T18:24:38Z")
I would like to include Newton and Hooke and their contemporaries (as well as some of the Lunar Men), but I confess I’m a bit uncertain about how much of their discoveries and life are real and how much sensationalized. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/66 "2010-11-17T19:49:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Ah flattery. That’s pretty much the end of this conversation. It never started. To start the conversation, you’d need to give some examples of Zoroastrian _practices_ that were modern or enlightened. It doesn’t mean anything that they _said_ that all humans were equal. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2010, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/67 "2010-11-18T03:47:29Z")
passerby writes: \> Just go to any of their social or religious gatherings in North America to see it in \> action, the door’s open to everybody. You’re trying to argue that Zoroaster, who lived in Iran no later than 600 B.C., was far ahead of his time by looking at the enlightened practices of his modern-day North American followers. Tell us about the practices of Zoroaster himself and how they compared with other people of his own time and place. “A lot of people today who I consider to be good people admire him” is no proof that he was good himself. ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2010, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/68 "2010-11-18T04:02:57Z")
After reading a little about him recently, I’d nominate [Epicurus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus). In addition to a number of important scientific, ethical, and philosophical innovations, e.g. > [@](#): > > Epicurus is a key figure in the development of science and the scientific method because of his insistence that nothing should be believed, except that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction. > [@](#): > > His statement of the Ethic of Reciprocity as the foundation of ethics is the earliest in Ancient Greece > [@](#): > > Epicurus emphasized the senses in his epistemology, and his Principle of Multiple Explanations (“if several theories are consistent with the observed data, retain them all”) is an early contribution to the philosophy of science. he also personally adopted practices which are remarkably consonant with modern sensibilities. > [@](#): > > He regularly admitted women and slaves into his school, introducing the new concept of fundamental human egalitarianism into Greek thought ---
**Author:** ![Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunshine_and_Smiles)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2010, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263/69 "2010-11-18T06:22:41Z")
> [@aesop](#): > > [Coloman, King of Hungary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloman_of_Hungary) from 1095 to 1116, issued a famous law: > > _De strigis vero quae non sunt, nulla amplius quaestio fiat_ (As for the matter of witches, there is no such thing, therefore no further investigations or trials are to be held). > > In this regard he was 600 years ahead of his time. Though I hesitate to respond without mentioning Zoroastrianism, I just wanted to thank you for showing me this. I’d never heard the quote (or of the speaker) but this is pretty badass. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anachronistically-modern-people/560263.md?page=3)