Our expert panel found it easy to boot Copernicus out of the Top Six. Maxwell was worth the Top Five but, despite having a Keep vote, his time was up also.
Round Thirteen is over. Round Fourteen will end Monday, Feb. 12 about 11:30 AM New York time.
For Round Fourteen you may cast two Evict (elimination) votes and one Keep vote. The order in which you list the evictions will be used for tie-breaking.
The Final Four are: Darwin, Charles - biology
Einstein, Albert - physics
Galileo - physics, astronomy, etc.
Newton, Sir Isaac - math, physics
Last round, Copernicus and Maxwell seemed like reasonable evictions from the Final Six, but ordering the Final Four looks more difficult.
I’ll be happy to continue as we have been and to exercise my (so-far rarely used) tie-breaking power if necessary to finalize the Ranks of the World’s Greatest Scientists Ever … but I am also open to suggestions or discussion about other ways to proceed. I’ll delay the end of Round 14 until Tuesday to ensure there’s time for discussion.
In the absence of discussion … the Dictator dictates!
Round 14 is canceled.
**We will finalize the rankings of the Final Four in one Final Round.
Everyone has eleven votes; they can be used as Evicts or Keeps; and up to five of your votes can be spent on any single candidate.
(And as usual, you’re free to change your votes after you’ve seen how others voted.)
**
For examples:
A player who wanted Darwin kept and cared about nothing else might vote
Einstein - 2 evicts
Galileo - 2 evicts
Newton - 2 evicts
Darwin - 5 keeps
A player who liked Einstein most and Darwin least (and no opinion of Newton vs. Galileo) might vote
Einstein - 5 keeps
Darwin - 5 evicts
A player who wanted to influence all four ranks might vote
Einstein - 5 keeps
Newton - 2 keeps
Darwin - 4 evicts
I’ll set no deadline for the End of the Final Round, but will post the apparent standings after a few days.
Of course, they are all great, I’m not worthy to judge them. All along, I’ve been voting Galileo, for his role in advancing observation and experimentalism. Newton next for numeracy in science. Darwin and Einstein were insightful geniuses, but it’s just more science. I guess I’d give the nod to Darwin for a simple theory that changed everything about how we think about living things (and some non-living things).
You could say the same about Einstein- others were knocking on the doors of relativity.
Newton had brilliant contemporaries as well, as I’m sure did Galileo. I’m still giving them the nod, as I think their work was more transformative of science in general.
Knocking on the door isn’t discovery. And relativity and calculus are far from all Einstein or Newton contributed. I don’t really think it’s comparable.
General relativity? Called the “most creative scientific theory ever”? No. This was Einstein’s alone. (Arguments that Hilbert shares credit are misinformed, as Hilbert himself declared.) When Einstein discovered, by himself, that his theory predicted the precession of Mercury’s perihelion, he reports that he had heart palpitations.
Plus, though often overlooked it was Einstein who took key steps toward quantum physics:
Darwin belongs somewhere in the Top Ten. Einstein belongs somewhere in the Top Two.