mathematicians love to rate Euler as one of the greatest of all time, but how
he was a Christian, he believed in a God?
Just a guess, but probably because he was spankingly good at Math.
but can’t we question that his christian beliefs might of influenced his math?
How? Where’s the crossover? A rigorous mathematical proof is valid whether you believe the universe was created by a god or gods or whether you’re an atheist.
Sure, were his mathematical formulas had been presented as verified by faith rather than proofs.
thanatic, you’ve started a lot of threads where you want to know who the top n members of x profession are or were. I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to start such threads, but you’ve got to understand that these are minor side issues for most members of these professions. Yes, Euler is generally considered one of the best mathematicians of all time, but that doesn’t mean that most mathematicians know much about him. Most mathematicians don’t even have a good grasp on the range of theorems he proved. Most mathematicians have never given a thought to what his religious beliefs are. Once a theorem is proved, it becomes part of the structure of mathematical thought and the question of who proved it, let alone what that person’s religious beliefs were, just isn’t relevant to its mathematical truth in the view of most mathematicians.
Well stated on all fronts. Thank you.
ETA: to further the point that there is a difference between what is proven mathematically and other aspects of a mathematician’s life, look at Leibniz. He is held up to this day as a brilliant, field-creating (with Newton) genius. But his philosophical “Best of All Worlds” concept was widely mocked - as Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide - then, and to this day.
Yeah, and what’s so great about Newton anyway? He believed in and practiced alchemy, so I’m starting to look a little askance at that whole F=ma thing. And Calculus? It’s probably based on some sort of philosopher’s stone or something!
Look at this List of things named after Leonhard Euler.
Then take a look at this video, A Tribute to Euler, by William Dunham, who is a wonderful writer and speaker on mathematics, author of such books as Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics and Euler: The Master of Us All.
Yes, according to everything I’ve read about him.
Some people claim the three greatest mathematicians ever were Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss. I’m inclined to believe that Euler was their equal. Or at least, Euler is to mathematics as Joseph Haydn is to music: maybe not one of the Big Three, but certainly great and influential and prolific and from what I’ve heard a pretty decent, down-to-earth human being.
Leibniz was an extremely brilliant man who pioneered very many fields. His insights into mathematics and physics have been cited by important 20th-century thinkers.
The Best of all Possible Worlds concept even echoes today in the notion that we inhabit a Goldilocks zone in a multiverse. (And even without that connection, Leibniz’ teleology makes more sense than most origanized religions.)
He was indeed a genius, and it’s too bad he didn’t live in the age of computers; he would have understood them pretty well, I think.
It’s certainly easy to mock a straw-man version of his “best of all possible worlds” claim, but maybe Leibniz’s own views deserve to be taken a little more seriously. I’ve found explanations online here, here, and here. From the second cite:
I don’t know what reputation Leibniz has among modern philosophers, but I don’t think he’s totally dismissed.
All true. That doesn’t change the fact that “Panglossian” is an adjective in active use to this day and is defined as “blindly or naively optimistic”; and that Pangloss was specifically based on Leibniz. The dude got served by Voltaire.
is it fair to say Leibniz was even smarter than Newton?
I dunno, it seems trivial to dismiss both that arguments. “Maybe cancer isn’t actually bad because invisible beings that we don’t know exist might get some pleasure out of it” doesn’t seem very convincing.
As people have said in pretty much all of your threads on this subject, there’s really no way to evaluate relative intelligence between people in this manner.
But Leibniz was a better dancer.
Again, that is not the best way to approach how to consider them. They have an overlap in the shared achievement of the calculus, but each had huge achievements in other unrelated areas.
It is like asking why Stradivarius makes the best violins. He didin’t; he is one of many great makers, including current makers, who at the very top of the craft. He’s been marketed the best.
Both have history-making brilliance. Beyond that is fun silly disucssion.
one can say that Leibniz was a bigger polymath then Newton was lerned in much more diverse fields
How, in your mind, would the latter affect the former?
im arguing that Euler could of possibly got his inspiration for mathematics from god
You’re doing it badly, then.
Let’s hear the argument.