# On the Shoulders of Giants. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2002, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936 "2002-11-15T22:04:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![buzzz\_kill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/439d5e/32.png) [@buzzz\_kill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buzzz_kill)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/1 "2002-11-15T22:04:59Z")
Who was the greatest thinker of all time? I often ponder this, and Einstein quickly comes to the forefront of my thinking. However if Newton hadn’t made the great contributions to physics that Einstein built upon, would Einstein’s time have been consumed postulating classical physics? If this were to be true could the Theory of Relativity yet be realized? Could the equivalent also be argued of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilile? ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/2 "2002-11-15T22:06:53Z")
I don’t see how there _can_ be a single “greatest.” ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/3 "2002-11-15T22:26:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by buzzz\_kill \* > \*\*Who was the greatest thinker of all time? \*\* Welcome to the Board, **buzzz\_kill**. Are you looking for the smartest person or the most important innovation? If it’s the former, John von Neumann is a good candidate. He made important or even fundamental contributions to economics, game theory, mathematics, probability theory, weather forcasting, the atomic bomb, computers, physics,… ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2002, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/4 "2002-11-16T16:47:44Z")
Aristotle, while he was often wrong, was usually wrong for the right reasons (his geocentric theory, for example, was based on using proper reasoning with faulty information). Because of his contributions for the next several thousand years, he’d be up there. Thomas Paine would also, even though there was little truly original in his writings. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2002, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/5 "2002-11-16T19:56:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by december \* > \*\*Are you looking for the smartest person or the most important innovation? If it’s the former, John von Neumann is a good candidate. He made important or even fundamental contributions to economics, game theory, mathematics, probability theory, weather forcasting, the atomic bomb, computers, physics,… \*\* von Neumann? Pah. Either Turing or Gödel could’ve kicked his butt any day of the week, if brains were butts. Gödel practically _invented_ computer science. Turing came up with the Turing machine _and_ was instrumental in cracking the Nazi’s “Enigma” code during WW2. What was von Neumann’s big contribution? The notion that codes in computer memory could be used to represent machine instructions. (An important idea, to be sure, but Turing or Gödel could’ve came up with an idea like that for breakfast.) ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2002, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/6 "2002-11-16T20:42:10Z")
Turing invented computer science. He was heavily influenced by Gödel’s work, but Turing machines are what made computer science possible. On the practical side, however, von Neumann probably was the most significant contributor. He was the first person to think about storing programs in memory, which is so fundamental these days that I can’t imagine what it would be like otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2002, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/7 "2002-11-16T20:53:29Z")
Towards the OP, computer science has made a more fundamental change in our method of thinking than anything from physics (except the inception). Traditional science has always been about declarative knowledge–what is true, and what is likely. That’s been going on for a long time. Computer science deals with imperative knowledge–how to do things. This is completely new as of this century. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2002, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/8 "2002-11-16T23:59:47Z")
I enter this thread only to use my sig. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/9 "2002-11-17T01:15:29Z")
Gotta love Murray, **KarlGauss**! ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/10 "2002-11-17T01:33:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ultrafilter \* > \*\*Turing invented computer science. He was heavily influenced by Gödel’s work, but Turing machines are what made computer science possible. > > On the practical side, however, von Neumann probably was the most significant contributor. He was the first person to think about storing programs in memory, which is so fundamental these days that I can’t imagine what it would be like otherwise. \*\* The impressive thing about Von Neumann is the [variety of fields](http://www.geocities.com/type3kids/virajneumann.html) in which he excelled, in addition to his contributions to computer science. > [@](#): > > John von Neumann was famous for his many mathematical discoveries. He published his first mathematical paper in 1922. Neumann also published a definition of ordinal numbers when he was 20. He was so smart in mathematics that he was known worldwide in his mid-twenties. One of von Neumann’s areas of math was quantum theory. John also was working on his classic work on quantum theory, which was the mathematical foundation of the new statistical mathematics and the foundation of the theory of measurement in quantum theory. John developed the mathematical framework of the theory and analized the rules of interpretation. Quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, and group representations contributed in Neumann’s realisation that a theory of operator algebras was the next step in this area of mathematics. A paper by a man named Borel on minimax property led Neumann to one of his most original creations, the theory of games. He expanded his work in game theory with co-author Oskar Morgenstern. Game theory was used to investigate complex problems of economics and other fields. Another idea of problems of classical mechanics stimulated him to give the first mathematically rigorous proof of an ergodic theorem. He worked on the equations of hydrodynamics and the theory of shocks. John von Neumann did very complex things and was a major step in the field/area of math. In addition, he was the first to use scientific models for [weather forecasting](http://www.aip.org/history/sloan/gcm/prehistory.html). > [@](#): > > The Princeton mathematician John von Neumann was among the earliest computer pioneers. Engaged in computer simulations of nuclear weapons explosions, he immediately saw parallels to weather prediction. (Both are non-linear problems of fluid dynamics.) In 1946, soon after the ENIAC became operational, von Neumann began to advocate the application of computers to weather prediction.[3] As a committed opponent of Communism and a key member of the WWII-era national security establishment, von Neumann hoped that weather modeling might lead to weather control, which might be used as a weapon of war. Soviet harvests, for example, might be ruined by a US-induced drought.[4] > > Under grants from the Weather Bureau, the Navy, and the Air Force, he assembled a group of theoretical meteorologists at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). If regional weather prediction proved feasible, von Neumann planned to move on to the extremely ambitious problem of simulating the entire atmosphere. This, in turn, would allow the modeling of climate. Jule Charney, an energetic and visionary meteorologist who had worked with Carl-Gustaf Rossby at the University of Chicago and with Arnt Eliassen at the University of Oslo, was invited to head the new Meteorology Group. > > The Meteorology Project ran its first computerized weather forecast on the ENIAC in 1950. The group’s model, like Richardson’s, divided the atmosphere into a set of grid cells and employed finite difference methods to solve differential equations numerically. The 1950 forecasts, covering North America, used a two-dimensional grid with 270 points about 700 km apart. The time step was three hours. Results, while far from perfect, justified further work. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/11 "2002-11-17T01:53:43Z")
So it’s impressive. But is von Neumann the “greatest thinker of all time?” Is Turing or Gödel or Aristotle? Greater than Einstein, Hawking, Tesla? Greater than Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin? Greater than Lao-Tzu, Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth? Damn, I really could go on all night. As an intellectual exercise, I guess it’s fine, but it’s not like the question has an answer. ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/12 "2002-11-17T07:13:14Z")
to say that there was a greatest thinker of all time would be to blame the most important aspects of humanity on one man, and i think that would be a mistake. that being said, i think if one read’s bell’s book on mathematicians, one quickly believes that they (all) revolutionized the thinking of everyone. twas a bit sensationalistic, if not entirely factual. but good reading. anyway, in mathematics and sciences clearly newton was the frontrunner. inventing the calculus AND classical physics? that’s some pretty heavy stuff right there. not to say that fermat and leibniz couldn’t come up with it on their own (hell, it was archimedes who came up with the basic idea of differential calculus), but when one gets the entire world to believe him, it becomes a lot more interesting. now, if we think about the greatest thinkers, there are a lot of completely nuts people like my man nikko tesla or blaise pascal, a lot of simply misguided but brilliant people like archimedes or descartes, or just simply brilliant and unrecognized people like fermat and…ahem…ramanujan. which came first, the lucasian professorship of mathematics, or the calculus? clearly, one’s importance to society helps one become more important to society. anyway, i’m rambling, but i guess if you wanted to figure out who was the most important thinker, one has to determine what the most important development of modern society is. if you think it’s computers, the first computer programmer was actually the daughter of george gordon, lord byron. but i think it’s impossible to place supreme importance on one “revolution” that made us who we are, and clarified that who we are is who we can best be. hope that’s coherent. -d ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/13 "2002-11-17T11:31:02Z")
Gotta be Godel. […wondering what KarlGauss’s sig is, but lacking the motivation to enable sigs and then redisable them…] ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/14 "2002-11-17T15:32:37Z")
I’ll humor you, **lib** 😃 “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” - Isaac Newton “If I have seen further than others, it is because I have been surrounded by midgets” - Murray Gell-Mann ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/15 "2002-11-17T15:37:42Z")
😃 Ah, wonderful! Thanks, Qadgop. ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2002, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/16 "2002-11-17T21:15:33Z")
If, by “greatest thinker”, yo mean the person whose ideas have had the most broad and lasting effect on later thought, most of the 20[sup]TH[/sup] century is out; there hasn’t been enough time for that sort of influence to be established. Going strictly by the criteria I’ve proposed above, my suggested answer would be Roger Bacon, though it’s probably a fallacy to claim that there’s some sort of absolute pinnacle there. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/17 "2002-11-19T04:42:44Z")
I’m shocked no one has posted it yet. What single mind is greater than any other in human history? **UNCLE CECIL** ---
**Author:** ![gex\_gex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/136936/18 "2002-11-19T14:28:13Z")
I gotta say Shakespeare. I’m more impressed by cultural achievement than technological. Beavers build dams, but they don’t write _Hamlet_.