I don’t know how “sure” you can be. Not counting the Western tradition of civilization, who were the other early pre 16th-century “organizers of science”? Who serves Aristotles role in the Mayan, Indus, Chinese civilizations? And if we can not find other occurrences of “Aristotlean” approaches in civilizations other than ours, than does that not argue for his importance in the development of mankind?
It may just be, flawed in the details or not, that Aristotle’s role in the formation of the modern mindset may have only happened once. If so, that makes him one of the most unique people to have ever lived and well worth his placement on these rankings.
On the other hand, if there is a rash of scientific organizing principles in other traditions of civilization that I am completely unfamiliar with, then that decreases Aristotle’s uniqueness. But I don’t really think you’ll find them.
Again, debatable at best. Aristotle didn’t declare himself an authority - people thousands of years removed from him declared Aristotle an authority. And once we’re talking about whether somebody was “correct”, why allow Newton on this list? After all, Newtonian mechanics do not take into account relativistic or quantum effects, and thus are “misconceptions” as well.
Sorry, Ari, just couldn’t save you no matter how worthy you are. Loved the “A is A” stuff, but your concepts of what is elemental apparently drove off much of your support.
THIS IS IT - THE FINAL ROUND!!!
Two men enter… one man leaves. The Inventor or the Scientist?
Isaac Newton, British Scientist, Theory of Universal Gravitation and Motion
Johann Gutenberg, Inventor, Inventor of Printing Press
My hero of influence, for transforming Dynamics, solving the Kepler Problem, and inventing the Calculus goes to …
[del]Gutenberg[/del]
…er, um, Sir Isaac Newton
Did you notice I’ve never voted to eliminate Aristotle throughout this entire game? I accept Aristotle’s importance, just not the rhetoric that seemed to imply he was hugely more important even than Newton. Perhaps Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī (c. 801–873 CE) would be one of the strongest alternative candidates for ancient scientific philosopher; note that I’m not claiming he was as “great” as Aristotle, and he certainly wasn’t as influential.
Of course, the most interesting thing about our list is that we’re about to vote as the Most Influential Person ever a man who did his major work after 81% of all humanity was dead.
This thread is so awesome. I’m only sorry that I stumbled upon it so late into the event. Props to JohnT.
Since this is the last round and all, might we extend the deadline (and angst) by 24-48 hours? Hm. Here’s another idea. Keep the deadline, tabulate the results, then retcon the ending by submitting the Gutenberg-Newton smackdown to Great Debates. Or maybe we should enter the Furious 5: Johann Gutenberg, Augustus Caesar, Aristotle, Isaac Newton and Mohammad.
I don’t know the answer to that. He did do a number of calculations involving the earth’s circumference (which he underestimated, following one Marinus of Tyre) and, critically, the existence of trade winds flowing both east-west and west-east.
But I understand that his voyage was popularized by letters of Amerigo Vespucci and others. Would Columbus have captured Europe’s imagination so much without fantastic chronicles of his journey?
If we delay the printing press’ invention by 100 years, then the Protestant Reformation goes away and Luther’s 95 Theses (1517) results in his hanging.
Incidentally, I may have overplayed the counterfactual approach: it’s typically used to assess historical significance. But it’s meaningful to say that modern biologists are profoundly influenced by Darwin, even if the theory of natural selection would have been proposed by Alfred Russel Wallace absent publication of the Origins of Species. After all, few have read Wallace or secondary sources based on Wallace. So his influence is muted.
Like most terms, the word “Influence” is ambiguous. But if we drop out the counterfactual aspect altogether, then the award has to go to Gutenberg. European literacy skyrocketed in the 1600s and 1700s and this was due almost entirely to the rise of print culture. It’s easy to imagine the the 1800s without Newton. But take away printing and we arguably lose the reformation, the enlightenment and the industrial revolution.
There’s another claimant for the invention of the printing press, one Laurence Koster (Coster) of Haarlem, Netherlands who died in the mid 1400s. The claim seems dubious though. Laurens Janszoon Coster - Wikipedia
“By the middle of the 15th century several print masters were on the verge of perfecting the techniques of printing with movable metal type.” Cite. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find elaboration for this point.
Then again, let’s not forget that Guttenberg worked for about 10 years on the project before rollout. So this wasn’t a trivial step. He invented movable type (though he wasn’t the first to do this) and he had to tinker with inks, presses (inspired by the wine press) and other devices.
And the breakthrough was real: “The real innovation of Gutenberg was its movable and interchangeable type. This presaged by 400 years the development of mass-produced machinery from standard, interchangeable parts. In the mid-19th century, use of similar techniques to manufacture guns and other products in the United States was known as “the American system of manufactures” and was the envy of European industry. In essence, the printing press was the first reconfigurable machinery for mass production; that its products were copies of texts and books was incidental to its true novelty. The press was a reconfigurable machine that could easily produce customized goods (e.g., books) in volume, then reconfigured to produce a run of a different book. This seeded development of a machine tool industry that produced standardized parts for assembly into a variety of different products.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia notes: "The invention of Gutenberg should be classed with the greatest events in the history of the world. It caused a revolution in the development of culture, equalled by hardly any other incident in the Christian Era. Facility in disseminating the treasure of the intellect was a necessary condition for the rapid development of the sciences in modern times. Happening as it did just at the time when science was becoming more secularized and its cultivation no longer resigned almost entirely to the monks, it may be said that the age was pregnant with this invention. Thus not only is Gutenberg’s art inseparable from the progress of modern science, but it has also been an indispensable factor in the education of the people at large. Culture and knowledge, until then considered aristocratic privileges peculiar to certain classes, were popularized by typography, although in the process it unfortunately brought about an internal revolution in the intellectual world in the direction of what is profane and free from restraint. "
Marshall McLuhan (The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) - love that title) first argued that the invention’s impact extended well beyond kicking off the Reformation. A more scholarly treatment is The printing press as an agent of change: (1980) by Elizabeth Eisenstein.
Hats off to Adolf of Nassau: his conquest of Gutenberg’s home city of Mainz in 1462 led to the involuntary but fortuitous dispersal of printmen skilled in Gutenberg’s art throughout Europe.
