# Who, in all of human history, has had the greatest impact upon modern society? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 17, 2012, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264 "2012-05-17T23:09:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/101 "2012-05-19T20:00:07Z")
People citing Jesus seem pretty provincial to me - 2/3 of living people don’t accept Jesus. > [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Well, the first question is who to exclude. Because, of course, Uggh, who invented fire, Aaagh, who invented the wheel, and Og, who invented Gods, win. Fire wasn’t “invented”. On modern life - that’s ‘modern’ - life, I’d probably have a stab at Henry Ford - if it is indeed correct he came up with the 8 hour a day, 5 days a week concept. ---
**Author:** ![bdgr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bdgr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bdgr)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/102 "2012-05-19T20:15:41Z")
Cecil Adams. ---
**Author:** ![AtomicDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@AtomicDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomicDog)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/103 "2012-05-19T20:51:45Z")
Willis Carrier. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/104 "2012-05-19T20:55:33Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > People citing Jesus seem pretty provincial to me - 2/3 of living people don’t accept Jesus. Jesus influenced and influences even those who do not believe in Him. [http://www.johnreilly.info/ijhnbb.htm](http://www.johnreilly.info/ijhnbb.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/105 "2012-05-19T22:25:16Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > On modern life - that’s ‘modern’ - life, I’d probably have a stab at Henry Ford - if it is indeed correct he came up with the 8 hour a day, 5 days a week concept. I could have sworn the first to come up with that was the [First International](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association#The_Geneva_Congress.2C_1866) in 1866. Turns out it goes back [even earlier than that](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States): "In 1835, workers in Philadelphia organized a general strike, led by Irish coal heavers. Their banners read, From 6 to 6, ten hours work and two hours for meals. Labor movement publications called for an eight-hour day as early as 1836. Boston ship carpenters, although not unionized, achieved an eight-hour day in 1842. In 1864, the eight-hour day quickly became a central demand of the Chicago labor movement. The Illinois legislature passed a law in early 1867 granting an eight-hour day but had so many loopholes that it was largely ineffective. A city-wide strike that began on May 1, 1867 shut down the city’s economy for a week before collapsing. On June 25, 1868, Congress passed an eight-hour law for federal employees which was also of limited effectiveness. (On May 19, 1869, Grant signed a National Eight Hour Law Proclamation.) In August 1866, the National Labor Union at Baltimore passed a resolution that said, ‘The first and great necessity of the present to free labour of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is achieved.’" All of which, I’m guessing, is how the First International took up the idea and promoted it. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/106 "2012-05-19T22:41:43Z")
Johanna - Nice post, thanks for the information. You don’t say if you agree, though! ---
**Author:** ![newcomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e5b9ba/32.png) [@newcomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcomer)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/107 "2012-05-19T22:55:11Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > But Muhammad is widely assumed to be illiterate. Well, how else would he “explain” divine aspect of the verse. > [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Jesus influenced and influences even those who do not believe in Him. [http://www.johnreilly.info/ijhnbb.htm](http://www.johnreilly.info/ijhnbb.htm) Can you really link WWI and WWII to Jesus? Or, I don’t know, whole notion of usury (interest)? I don’t see any influence there… ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/108 "2012-05-19T23:04:02Z")
c’mon! Both were essentially about the tectonic plates of empire shifting around. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/109 "2012-05-19T23:24:43Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > You don’t say if you agree, though! Well, it was organised labour rather than any one person that’s given us many of the comforts we have today. If there were no social systems in place to perpetuate and distribute the technology or politics espoused by individuals mentioned in the thread, they wouldn’t have meant a damn thing to any of us. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/110 "2012-05-20T03:48:21Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > Well, it was organised labour rather than any one person that’s given us many of the comforts we have today. If there were no social systems in place to perpetuate and distribute the technology or politics espoused by individuals mentioned in the thread, they wouldn’t have meant a damn thing to any of us. +1 The force of organized labor for social and economic change, collectively, means far more to the world than any of your men on horseback. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/111 "2012-05-20T07:45:43Z")
Bloody socialists! Wiki has an interesting angle on the history: > [@](#): > > Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of medieval Europe, though the relationship between the two is disputed.[3] Medieval guilds existed to protect and enhance their members’ livelihoods through controlling the instructional capital of artisanship and the progression of members from apprentice to craftsman, journeyman, and eventually to master and grandmaster of their craft. A trade union might include workers from only one trade or craft, or might combine several or all the workers in one company or industry. These things varied from region to region, based on the specific industrialisation path taken in the place in question. [4] > > Trade unions and/or collective bargaining were outlawed from no later than the middle of the 14th century when the Ordinance of Labourers was enacted in the Kingdom of England. Union organizing would eventually be outlawed everywhere and remain so until the middle of the 19th century. > **[Trade union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union#Origins_and_early_history)** > > A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting and increasing the b... ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/112 "2012-05-20T08:06:10Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > People citing Jesus seem pretty provincial to me - 2/3 of living people don’t accept Jesus. And it looks like even more don’t accept Aristotle. Not relevant, though. You don’t have to “accept” someone to live in a world influenced by him. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/113 "2012-05-20T10:36:32Z")
Michael Hart’s book spends a few pages reviewing his criteria. People of unknown name (“inventor of fire”) are not allowed. (In any event most early discoveries did not have a single inventor. Bronze, for example, was a gradual development with early advances in S.E. Asia and Cornwall as well as Serbia and Anatolia.) > [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > I agree that technology would have progressed without Columbus. I meant more in the geopolitical sense that the world would probably be significantly different. For example, it might have been someone working for the English or the French discovering the Americas under much different circumstances… Hart makes this same point in placing Columbus at #9. I wonder though – why didn’t France or England compete more strongly for the New World if they had the power to do so? BTW, I don’t know how long the New World would have waited undiscovered without Columbus, but didn’t its discovery excite the imagiation and accelerate the Renaissance? > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Compare that to going back and killing Newton… in which case it’s very likely that the only real effect is that his discoveries are made 10 or 20 years later by a different person… As I mentioned above, that Newton’s Gravitation was questioned for 70 years argues against this. Another scientist whose importance may have been immense was Copernicus. That the Earth orbits had been staring astronomers in the face for almost two millenia, yet very few dared to say it. (But perhaps Copernicus’ discovery was another result of excitement due to Gutenberg and Columbus, and was “an idea whose time had come”?) > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > As **Chronos** mentioned earlier is Jesus more important than Mary? Without Mary there is no Jesus. 😕 One could say the same thing about Newton’s mother. Or blame it all on the butterfly that flipped its wings a million years ago. Unproductive path. Here again are Hart’s Top Twenty in order. To me, the two most obvious who do not belong are Euclid (several greater mathematicians of that era, Euclid being a compiler) and Moses (prob. mostly fictional). Muhammed Isaac Newton Jesus Buddha Confucius St. Paul Ts’ai Lun Johann Gutenberg Christopher Columbus Albert Einstein Louis Pasteur Galileo Aristotle Euclid Moses Charles Darwin Shih Huang Ti Augustus Caesar Nicolaus Copernicus Antoine Lavoisier ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/114 "2012-05-21T22:14:25Z")
Everyone knows that Darwin discovered the theory of Natural Selection. But fewer people know that he only published his work because he got, in the mail, a letter from Alfred Wallace outlining the new theory Wallace had just come up with, and did Darwin think it was worth publishing? Lots of major scientific and technological advances are discovered independently by different people at the same time. Or, they are discovered but never publicized and are only credited later as the inventor decades later when someone else independently discovers the same thing and doing some research runs across some old papers outlining the exact same thing. The canonical example is Mendel, whose work on genetics was totally ignored until decades later when it was rediscovered. So even though Mendel’s work was highly original, it didn’t actually matter until later when people realized their original work had been anticipated much earlier. ---
**Author:** ![dngnb8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@dngnb8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dngnb8)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/115 "2012-05-21T22:52:54Z")
Fred Flintstone ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/116 "2012-05-22T07:36:00Z")
> [@PrettyVacant](#): > > On modern life - that’s ‘modern’ - life, I’d probably have a stab at Henry Ford - if it is indeed correct he came up with the 8 hour a day, 5 days a week concept. Wasn’t the 8 hour day the rule of King Alfred the Great? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/117 "2012-05-22T09:08:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by **Whack-a-Mole** > As Chronos mentioned earlier is Jesus more important than Mary? Without Mary there is no Jesus. But we are talking about influential. A better question would be if John the Baptist should be placed ahead of Jesus on the ‘influence path’. Jesus was heavily influenced by John. Without the John movement no Jesus movement. So, how original was John? Who was he influenced by? I gather there were several apocalyptic/repentence movements at that time. I agree with those who put the influence of single individuals through war and conquest to be more dramatic than the progress of technology. I agree with Muhammed having a huge impact. Let’s also not forget Temudjin of the Mongols, who knows what the world would be like if the wealthy, advanced regions of transoxania and other Eastern cities hadn’t been massacred and destroyed. Would someone else have united the Mongols? ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/118 "2012-05-22T14:11:19Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Wasn’t the 8 hour day the rule of King Alfred the Great? Not according to the Internet - are you a time traveller? ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/119 "2012-05-22T14:41:49Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Well, the first question is who to exclude. Because, of course, Uggh, who invented fire, Aaagh, who invented the wheel, and Og, who invented Gods, win. > > Hm. Okk, who invented the lever, making the first spear-thrower, is right up there too. The spirit of the question is not how you are answering. The spirit of the OP’s question is, I think, if you reran history without that single person in it…which person’s rerun would come out with a present time the most different from the original history? If Uggh hadn’t invented fire, OOOgghh would have a little later so Uggh had little effect on history. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264/120 "2012-05-22T20:42:42Z")
> [@](#): > > The canonical example is Mendel, whose work on genetics was totally ignored until decades later when it was rediscovered. So even though Mendel’s work was highly original, it didn’t actually matter until later when people realized their original work had been anticipated much earlier. On the other hand, what Mendel did _could_ have been done by any farmer at all, all the way back to the dawn of agriculture… And yet, it wasn’t. That, to me, seems to suggest that Mendel _did_ make a major breakthrough. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-all-of-human-history-has-had-the-greatest-impact-upon-modern-society/622264.md?page=7)