Obviously I don’t think much of leaders. When I went through the rounds, I had three different criteria I used to make my selections:
- Originality of idea
-
of people affected
- Turning points
The only two leaders which may have broken my top 10 would be Washington or Alexander the Great, for #3 and 2 respectively. My criteria show a bias towards scientists and inventors, but that’s who I am.
Aristotle, to me, holds all three criteria in spades. His ideas are world-changingly original for his time. As one of the “fathers” of the Greco-Roman branch of Western Civilization, tens of billions of people have been affected by Aristotle’s ideas (most of them without knowing it), and his rationalist-scientific approach to the natural world was a turning point for all mankind.
Gutenberg is a turning point. In 1455, Europe had maybe 10 million books, scrolls, etc, about 1/2 of all written material in the world. By 1600, Europe had over 150,000,000 printed books (88% of the worlds store of knowledge) and innumerable pamphlets, brochures, flyers, and bromides. Combine this explosion of knowledge in a civilization that appreciates the Greek rationalist approach (and is ready to add modifications of its own), and it’s no surprise that 200 years after the presses invention, Newton, the winner of the SDMB voting, appeared.
Newton defies the categories - his triumph is showing what one could achieve in this new scientific age, from explaining why things fall down to making better telescopes, Newton generates awe in the completeness of his ideas. He showed mankind that the world, all of it, was open to our understanding… and our use. And he did so in a civilization with tens of thousands of printing presses and tens of millions of literate citizens.